I Learned About Flying From That Flying Magazine

Landing in a parking lot on a private pilot checkride provides a powerful lesson in preparation and humility. Dave Schoen  shares a story from his student pilot days.

Joey and Rachel Brown give their Cessna 150 a workout hand-flying flying from California to Florida and back. It was all good until the final leg when headwinds and downdrafts exceeded aircraft performance and they were no longer able to maintain altitude (even in a climb configuration). Fortunately, avoiding get-home-itis made for a happy ending.

Flying is unforgiving, soaring even less so. Hear how glider pilot Bob Katz turned a loss of lift out of range of his airport into a picture perfect off airfield landing on a golf course after his Plan A and Plan B didn't work out. But good outcomes of unplanned situations don't happen by chance, every flight is an opportunity to rehearse a "what if" scenario.

A low time instrument pilot launches into IMC with a gradually failing vacuum pump and learns a lesson about proficiency and instrument cross-checking. The wisdom to invite another pilot along as a second set of eyes in the cockpit likely changed the outcome of this lesson.

British pilot Mark Brooke has flown many different airplanes, from light singles and 727s for DHL to the Dassault Falcon 7X and even a Bucker Jungmeister. Hear how he handled a maintenance faux pas in a Beech Baron and his own faux pas on a downwind landing in a Tiger Moth.

Turbulence and windshear drove CFII Anna Serbinenko and her
students to attempt a difficult diversion. Then, a search and rescue crew runs into trouble when they decide to push for their home airport following a hydraulic failure.