Cockpit weather equipment gives IFR pilots an edge. You can still get painted into a dangerous corner when your equipment tells you one thing about thunderstorms, while your eyeballs tell something different.. Finding your way out of this tight spot will help avoid such situations in the first place.
You have a new glass-panel airplane, but you’re not instrument current or proficient using the new equipment. You are planning an important business trip and might need to fly IFR. A local CFI whom you’ve never flown with offers to make the trip with you. It seems like a good idea, until you get into […]
You’re cruising along in the clear, but below you is a widespread cloud layer with areas of forecasted icing. As you continue along your route, the weather conditions diverge from the forecast, and the situation deteriorates to the point where you need to make a critical decision.
A visual approach can expedite traffic and save fuel while retaining an IFR clearance. However, visual approaches are not without risk for the pilot. The weather is good VFR and it’s a familiar airplane in familiar airspace. Yet you can still fly a perfectly functioning airplane into the ground.
There are critical parts of instrument (and VFR) flying that are often overlooked. Ride along and discover how something that seems so easy can overload pilots of all skill and experience levels. John Krug offers a unique perspective and valuable lessons on this important issue.
You’re highly experienced, have made the trip to your vacation home on Martha’s Vineyard island dozens of times and fly a very capable, high-performance airplane. While these factors should work in your favor, they can also stack the deck against you in the right circumstances.
It’s not unusual for an instrument flight to present challenges that we couldn’t have predicted before departure. Making a diversion during the flight is one of those situations you must work out on the fly, and no two situations are every quite the same. Practice helps you prepare, however.
Failures are never good, but the worst place is in the last stage of the approach—especially when you can’t do anything to fix it. Ride along as John Krug presents a scenario based on a real situation that happened to him. Nothing is off limits when the stuff hits the fan.
Even though you received transition training for a faster airplane capable of flying at higher altitudes, you discover a significant gap in your IFR knowledge while on what should be a routine flight at higher altitudes. It would have been if you review the procedure before departing.
Non-precision approaches can be challenging, especially when the weather is near minimums. The risk increases when the airport is surrounded by terrain in all quadrants. Add a high-performance airplane that’s new to you and a wet runway, and you’ve got the recipe for trouble.
You have a problem with your airplane that could be a minor inconvenience or a full-blown emergency situation. First you’ll have to evaluate this problem in-flight. Then you’ll have to take the necessary actions for the best possible outcome even though none of your options are ideal.
At a critical moment during an IFR flight, frequency congestion can turn from inconvenient to downright dangerous. This is further complicated when there are multiple airplanes in the same sector of sky with similar call signs. This scenario is based on a real accident situation that could happen to anyone.
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