Technique

I wanted to cry. It was my Initial Operating Experience for the jet after transitioning from a turboprop and we were going into OHare. In a snowstorm. During rush hour. Wed just gotten our third approach change. I was so lost that I was little more than a voice-activated systems interface for my instructor pilot. If my brain had any spare cycles, Im sure it would have been thinking about truck-driving school.

Non-standard is one of those tricky terms that could mean anything from a trivial change to a detail critical enough to change your whole game plan-or ruin your day if ignored.

Pull out your average approach plate for your favorite ILS. What youre looking at is really two approaches that share a piece of paper: the ILS and the localizer-only. Its even stated this way in TERPs: two separate approaches.

Surprisingly, the FAA is not the place to look for a definition of established. The AIM and the Instrument Flying Handbook say nothing on the topic. Only in the Instrument Procedures Handbook (FAA-H-8261-1A) does a definition pop up, and it just says that ICAO defines established as within half-scale indication on a localizer or VOR course. Useful, but there must be more.

In the film The Kings Speech, the future King George VI stammers and fumbles trying to start a nationally broadcast speech in front of a packed Wembley Stadium. With obligatory camera shots of the red On Air light blinking in mockery, the prince gives up and walks away from the microphone.

On a fine spring day, you trundled off to Driggs, Idaho, to meet your buddy and sneak off to the best-kept-secret fishing spot in the west Tetons. Your buddy made a killing because he was an Apple geek in the '80s and bought no stock but theirs. He chartered a plane to Driggs. You invested heavily in the DeLorean Motor Company-and arrived in your dads old 172H.

After a long weekend at the cabin with the family, youve packed up the flying family truckster for the Sunday afternoon return from Rural Island Muni back to Bigtown International. Passing through 1000 feet AGL, you push Direct-Direct to re-center the GPS route and turn on course-no obstacle departure procedure from this uncontrolled field-when the engine stumbles badly.

The M.O. of IFR magazine is bringing to daylight all those little corners of instrument flying where the real-world practices differ from the regs, or at least where playing the game a bit differently than you learned in ground school has payoff without jeopardizing safety.

As the holiday season gives way to the interminable darkness of winter, we pause in our discontent to honor, ridicule and learn from those pilots whove slipped the surly bonds of reason and, once again, slapped the face of God-knows-what foolishness.

Every year I fly from my home base at Rock Hill, S.C., to Fond du Lac, Wisc., for the Oshkosh AirVenture fly-in. I normally take a route east of both Cincinnati and Chicago, which takes me over Lake Michigan. As I near the lake, I always get the following re-route: Cleared direct Pullman, then via the Pullman 333 radial to intercept V510, Falls, direct Fond du Lac.

If none of your vast experience involves a major international airport, it is incomplete. There are times when flying into a big airport is...

It's Food Network's fault. You and your buddies from Jacksonville have a hankering for some Cajun food from New Orleans. Hundred dollar gumbo, here...