Instructor Notes – Helen Krasner
How to handle flight test nerves Aviation must have more practical tests than just about any other career there is. From PPL, through CPL, FI rating, IR; then there are type ratings, revalidations and renewals, check flights… The list is endless, and it doesn’t stop even when you qualify and get a job as a professional pilot. So, if you suffer from exam nerves, flying training can be very difficult. Written ground exams can also cause...
From the Flightdeck – James McBride
Carrier Landings – part I I was born too late. In fact, they said that about my father as well, so perhaps it runs in the family. For different reasons. In his case he had all the manners and gentility of an Edwardian Gentleman* – he even wore a cravat. Imagine that, a Cravat?! I mean back in the 1960s that was really something… I don’t know anyone else who wore a cravat in the 60s… well, apart from Mick Jagger, but I would...
Grounded! Aviation faces its greatest peacetime crisis
There is now no doubt that measures to combat the Covid-19 pandemic will include the longest ever grounding of Europe’s General Aviation (GA) fleet, in addition to the well-publicised suspension of virtually all airline operations. From mid-March onwards events moved quickly in Europe and by Friday 20 March most non-essential businesses had closed in the UK, adhering to government social-distancing advice, encapsulated by the phrase,...
Battening down the hatches – Tad Higher
In the world outside Sinking-in-the-Marsh organ transplants are still taking place. The teams of surgeons, the patients and the life-giving organs still have to travel long distances for lives to be saved. Social distancing, keeping clean and the increased demand on our NHS, add to the workload already required of pilots, handling staff and ambulance crews. Not type rated, I can’t be one of them, but Mark, Eraticus, Maximus, Coleridge...
SOLI, we’re leaving – UK to leave EASA, Government confirms
Transport Minister Grant Shapps has confirmed that the UK is to terminate is membership with the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). During an interview given in Washington DC on 06 March, Shapps told US news outlet Aviation Week, “We will leave EASA. The powers will revert to the CAA, who are probably one of the world’s leading regulators and the expertise will need to come home to do that, but we’ll do it in a gradual...
United Airlines buys Flight School for Scholarship Programme
USA airline United Airlines has signed a purchase agreement to become the only major US carrier to own a flight training academy. United expects approximately 300 students to graduate from the United Aviate Academy in its first full year of operation. The flight training academy – currently operating as Westwind School of Aeronautics in Phoenix, Arizona – will be an extension of the airline’s Aviate program, a pilot development...
