The Pre-Flight Briefing - Pilot Shop Blog

While driving, a simple call to roadside assistance can easily solve any car troubles. However, with airplanes, even minor mechanical or electrical failures have the potential to be catastrophic.

Unlike cars, there is no breakdown lane in the sky, making aircraft inspections invaluable for preventing and addressing airworthiness issues before they become dangerous.

In this guide, we will cover everything you need to know about aircraft maintenance and inspections for your plane's airworthiness. Get out those aircraft logbooks and get ready!

Are sectional charts becoming obsolete? With the advancement and widespread adoption of electronic flight bags since receiving FAA approval in the early 2000s, there has been a growing movement towards ditching traditional paper charts.

Before we jump on this bandwagon, let's weigh the pros and cons of both paper and electronic aviation charts. After all, when it comes to safety in the cockpit, we want to make sure we're making the most informed decision.

So, is it time to say goodbye to paper charts or do they still have a valuable place in our arsenal?

Pilots just love their checklists, don’t they? Part of being a pilot is managing and methodically working through a series of checklists designed to keep us safe through each phase of our flight. We know they are vital and that properly following the checklists significantly cuts our risk of preventable and potentially catastrophic critical fails.

Learn from their misfortunes and remain one of the pilots who has “not done it” by learning and using the GUMPS checklist before each landing.

The idea for the helicopter has been around since the 15^th-century when Leonardo da Vinci sketched his diagram of an “aerial screw.” Additional theoretical designs were conceived over the following centuries, but first-generation working helicopters weren’t built until the early 1900s around World War I. These early models were unstable and unreliable. It wasn’t until 1939 that Igor Sikorsky finally produced the first truly functional and practical helicopter—the VS-300.

A safe, precise landing is the goal of every pilot at the end of their flight, and one of the keys to nailing that perfect landing is approaching it at the proper rate of descent.

We get it-you're not an aircraft mechanic. Your usual level of involvement with your aircraft’s fuel system may be the cringe you make as you pull out your wallet to finance yet another fill-up. Still, it doesn’t hurt for us to build our knowledge base and improve our ability to do some basic troubleshooting if something goes wrong.

In all the excitement and anticipation of sliding into the cockpit of that dream aircraft rental, stop for a moment to make sure that all the paperwork is in order. No, not the preflight check, although that is of course critical too.

A fixed pitch propeller does an okay job for takeoffs and a decent job for cruising while ground adjustable propellers force pilots to choose between maximizing either their climb performance or their cruise performance, but not both. At some point, many pilots say that “okay,” “decent,” and having to choose only one phase of flight whose performance to optimize are just not good enough. The solution is to choose a constant speed propeller.

As a Bahamas Flying Ambassador, I often hear from pilots that are interested in flying to The Islands Of The Bahamas, but are concerned about taking their first trip. The most common concerns are related to crossing into foreign airspace, dealing with customs and overwater flight. This article explains policies and procedures in order to insure your flying adventure will be a success.

"America’s favorite taildragger" is a high-wing, single-engine, tandem-seat aircraft that is value packed and perfect for short fields, bush flying, high altitudes, and landings at unimproved airstrips. The Husky is custom designed to fit the needs of the backcountry adventurer who wants sturdy, rugged, high-quality bush plane performance paired with a generous payload and the fuel capacity to support the journey.