Charts & Plates

More than once Ive been accused of needing to get a life. Im not sure what theyre talking about, but in my spare time I do enjoy reviewing various aviation publications, including accident reports and incident summaries.

Many of you have written to express confusion and disbelief about my ILS Nuances article in November. A couple of you even caught an important mistake I made. First, thanks to all of you for your notes. Now, let me recap a few things to hopefully help you (and me) better understand.

Some of the best remote scenery is in northernmost Utah, well away from the hubbub of Salt Lake City. Dozens of mountain peaks, ranges, national forests and year-round resorts all make the mid-size city of Logan a nice destination. Logan-Cache airport offers everything you need to fly in and enjoy the area. While travel choices abound once youre there, flying back out is a different matter.

Now that winter is upon us, its a good time to look at cold-weather patterns and get an idea of what to expect. You may be familiar with the weather around your local airport, but your travels could take you into unusual corners of the United States, and perhaps into Canada. Winter brings a huge number of weather hazards to worry about, including the thunderstorms that plague the summer months, but by understanding how things are linked together, you can stay on top of things and remain safe.

En route to Leesburg Executive around 1:00 a.m. inside Dulles Class Bravo, I heard a controller ask a United flight, United XXX your choice 19R or 19C.The pilot came back with 19C and once cleared for the visual he responded, Cleared for visual. 19C United XXX. Over to tower, nighty-night dont let the bed bugs bite!

Again we follow in the footsteps of the late crash investigator Macarthur Job and focus on aviation accidents. This time, instead of taking a look at forecast ingredients, well look at cases of where the pilots simply made the wrong decisions for the weather.

The milestone of sorts that I discovered is that this issue marks my fifth anniversary at the helm of IFR. Now, in many views, thats simply not noteworthy. Other editors in the Belvoir Aviation family, like Jeb Burnside at Aviation Safety, have been at this for, well, a very long time indeed.

NBAA Expo Focuses On ATC ProposalThe business-aviation world gathered in Las Vegas in October for their annual convention, and topping this years agenda was the fight against efforts in Washington to turn over the FAAs air traffic control services to a private nonprofit corporation. Opponents argue the system would favor the airlines at the expense of business flyers and private pilots. Also at the show, Bombardier brought the new Global 7000 large-cabin corporate jet for the first time, and Cessna displayed the first production-conforming prototype of its super-mid-sized Citation Longitude. Dassault officials said they have a clean-sheet design in the works for a new business jet, but no details yet. Pilatus said it will start deliveries of its PC-24 twinjet this year.

About a year ago, my wife bought several economical replacement knockoff chargers for her employees Mac laptops, the cords of which their cats had found delicious. They charged very slowly, yet seemed to run extremely hot. Within a month these chargers had all failed with an ominous brown patch on the side from overheating.

Youre on a straight-in visual. Although theres not a cloud in the sky, you loaded the ILS for situational awareness. Its early evening and the sun is blinding any attempt to look out the window. You transition to the gauges and fly the approach, intercepting the glideslope and keeping the crosshairs centered. You finally see the runway and land. The FAA has said we may log an instrument approach if we are in actual or simulated conditions inside the final approach fix. Were you?

Shortly after getting my Cessna 340, one afternoon I was flying an ILS into Modesto, CA, where wed found a temporary home for our airplane. Id recently achieved the heady milestone of 1000 hours total time and a whopping 100 hours of multi-engine time. Plus, Id just gotten all my Is (CFI, CFII, MEI), so, of course, I was truly a great pilot. Id then gotten my initial training (ground and sim) in the 340, finished off with 25 hours with an experienced Twin Cessna instructor pilot. Humility wasnt in my self-image that afternoon. By evening, it had returned with a vengeance.

Call it the familiarity trap. When planning a new route or destination, you carefully examine the charts, procedures, airport diagrams, and approach minimums. But you tend to skip a lot of these steps on well-worn routes and at your home drome. Its near-certain that youll eventually discover how this complacency can be a big gotcha.