Professional Flying
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Currency and the Professional Pilot
A reader has asked me an interesting and somewhat complicated question concerning flying currency for both military and civilian professional pilots especially when coupled with the life expectancy of various airframes and allowable budgets. Wow. I don’t know, but I would guess that even a small part of that topic has been the subject of […]
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The AF 447 Black Boxes
I’m sure that by now you have read all about the recovery of the flight recorders from the Air France A-330 crash in the Atlantic in June 2009. There have been several articles about the information they are releasing from the data analyses. Here is one from the Wall Street Journal that was published a […]
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Airbus Incident in New Orleans
In case you missed it, back in the first week in April an Airbus A-320 took off from New Orleans and then climbing through 4000′ the crew got a message on the Electronic Centralized Aircraft Monitor (ECAM) concerning an Autothrottle system problem and then another saying that there was smoke detected in the Avionics Bay. […]
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Airline Pilot Seniority
You have probably heard that seniority is everything in the airline pilot business (or flight attendants, for that matter). An airline pilot’s date of hire with his company determines how he will live throughout his airline career. It’s probably one of the few professions where your ability to do your job has very little to […]
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Cockpit Experience
One of my readers (Craig) posted a comment recently that contains questions or comments that could generate probably a half dozen articles. Thanks! We’ve all heard of the changes to go into effect soon requiring a minimum of 1500 hours of experience before a pilot can fly as an airline pilot (captain or first officer). […]
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Pilot Crash Pads – Nothing New
There has been quite a discussion going on over at AvWeb concerning the current series of reports being aired by ABC. The FAA Administrator has even weighed in on the subject. The Crash-Pad Experience It has been a bit over 20 years since I started working for Northwest Airlines, but I can still remember those […]