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“Yeah, [I] need to take a day off to work around here,” Rick responded, which was his way of saying he’d put it off indefinitely. He liked tinkering with his airplane and projects, but he just wasn’t as devoted to housekeeping. I hadn’t meant for him to dedicate a whole day, just to work at it continuously.

From a practical standpoint, hangar-keeping is necessary to finding tools, retrieving parts, and minimizing hazards. A clean floor not only looks nice, it facilitates search and recovery. Rick’s standard was fix and fly now, clean up later…much later. A corner of the hangar contained a pile of empty oil bottles, lunch wrappers, and shipping boxes, next to an overflowing trash container, marking his concession to waste management.

I began my journey into aviation life as a hangar rat, poking around open stalls at the airport and offering to sweep out hangars for lunch money. A quarter or 50 cents meant a hamburger, and sometimes my efforts resulted in a ride. The average T-hangar could be given a once-over in 30 minutes at the hands of a diligent teenager, I soon learned.

In the subject case, I debated between a push broom and scoop shovel. Rick was going flying, so I offered to take advantage of the open space and uncover his concrete. As friends, he knew he could trust me to throw away the trash-worthy. Anything usable would be left on the workbench, but the corner detritus was obviously already slated for the community dumpster. “How about I sweep up for ya?” I said, volunteering. “Sure, go for it,” he responded.

With his workaday Cessna gone, I made short work of the trash pile and floor accumulation. I live in a four-ship bay, so my own airplane, always in the back, gets rolled out more expeditiously when my cohabitors are gone. I often take advantage of such an opportunity to advance the state of sanitation. One doesn’t have to move every pallet or lounging couch—any sweeping out is an improvement.

The important focus on hangar-keeping is to use the floor as smooth pavement, not a place for tool storage, air hoses, and extension cords. If you drop a nut or cotter key, it’s a lot easier to find if the floor is clean. Drip pans are a better solution than oil-dry granules or pieces of old cardboard. The finest Snap-on rollaway is no substitute for organization and a strong return policy. A place for everything and everything in its place speeds the workflow when you need a tool. You should know not just which drawer it’s in but which corner of that drawer.

In sport aviation, we are blessed to benefit from the community of like-minded folks, which means sharing space and stuff. Sharing some cleanup work is just part of our membership dues.

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In recent years, the problem has been exacerbated. It used to be that pilots and controllers communicated in a fairly simple fashion, resorting to plain language when it suited. I recall attempting to affect an airline captain’s “Ah’, roger” drawl after obtaining my commercial certificate 60-odd years ago. Maybe I threw in a “Wilco” once in a while, signifying “will comply.” Instructions and requests were traded in a relatively clear manner.

We called ground control with an “On the ramp, ready to taxi” and got a terse “Taxi to one-eight.” If we wanted help finding our way, we could ask, otherwise, it was expected that we knew where the runway was and would call the tower for takeoff in due course. The frequency remained relatively uncongested. 

But pilots botched up from time to time, blundering into blind-alley taxiways or heading across an active runway. So taxi instructions gradually got more complex and wordy, first with a mandate to read back all “hold short” instructions and then with specific designations for a full-route clearance, all to be repeated verbatim. 

“Taxi to one-eight” became “Taxi to Runway 18 via Juliet, Alpha, and Romeo, hold short of Runway 31, confirm you have information Delta.” We soon learned we could get away with parroting “Taxi 18, Juliet/Alpha/Romeo, hold short 31, we have Delta.” 

Back in the beginning, we simply acknowledged receipt of a clearance by replying with our N-number, clipped to the last three ciphers if the tower had so stated it, just enough to assure that the right airplane heard the word from above. In all cases, the conversation was being recorded, and confirmation was important in the event of an investigation.

At this point, the controller’s manual requires controllers to state so many more advisory reminders, much of which we dutifully repeat back, that the frequency is filled with rapid-fire, nearly unintelligible verbiage, filed away in our mental cavities but not truly listened to. But, duty must be done.

The danger is that habitual repetition leads to hearing what we expect to hear, not what was truly said. 

“Cleared for the visual, report three mile left base for Runway 31,” becomes “Cleared to land, 31” in our mind, even though we read back the visual and report instructions. Or, as in the case of the Hawker crew at Houston recently, “Line up and wait” was interpreted as “Cleared for takeoff,” leading them to clip the tail of a cross-landing Citation. The old pre-ICAO “Position and hold” instruction was much more declarative, in my humble opinion.

My associates and I are now given to speaking slower, at the risk of overstaying our welcome on frequency, in hopes that ATC will reciprocate in intelligible delivery. Even so, well-meaning imposition of advisories and southern-exposure protections burden controllers with so much “New Speak” that we long for the days of shorter communication.

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Soon we are taxiing to the ramp while I’m admonished to raise the windward aileron (we have a 5-knot crosswind the Kid seems to think of as a small hurricane), and, “Taxi no faster than a person would walk.”Once again, I pretend not to hear his advice, a product of his many years of aviation experience and a grossly swelled head.

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Everybody has memories of the original Microsoft Flight Simulator software versions. Then not too many years later, computer programmer Austin Meyer developed his Archer II simulator which morphed into the famous X-Plane simulation program we fans have grown to know and love. Today, when talking of PC civilian sims, most of us immediately think of just two. MSFS2020 and X-Plane 12 dominate the market. However, others exist for military and civilian fans and won’t be neglected in future articles.

But I want to focus on how both X-Plane and MSFS can benefit newly certificated pilots and students alike, so I will look at a few scenarios the fairly new pilot would benefit from flying virtually in a snapshot of both sims, both pros and cons.

Slow Flight, MCA, Stalls, and Spins

For this scenario, I started by using X-Plane 12, basing the simulation at Alpine Airport (46U) in Wyoming, for a somewhat high-altitude challenge (airport elevation is 5,600 feet msl), along with variable weather conditions. After starting up the Cessna 172XP in a realistic manner—partially leaned for takeoff and using live weather—I climbed up over the local area to roughly 2,000 feet agl to practice slow flight and minimum controllable airspeed (MCA). I noticed the X-Plane 12 Cessna handled all this quite realistically from what I remember years ago as a CFII: full flaps, with speeds in the 50- to 60-knot range. Then I flew some MCA with the stall horn beeping and mushing controls, watching the vertical speed indicator stay at zero with power but not too much back pressure to induce a stall—just an aerial dance of working feet, pitch, and throttle.

Slow flight and MCA were extremely realistic and accurate in XP12 as if the aircraft was alive and reacting to the world as it should.

Soon I decided to go all the way into some stalls at a fairly unsafe altitude. At only about 1,500 to 2,000 agl, I started with power-off and power-on stalls, both in turns and straight ahead. Then it was time to see if the airplane spins as I remember from CFI training days. The feeling of the flight model during this was very high and precise.

Power to idle, then back pressure into a squealing stall horn and a turn rolled me rapidly into a left-hand spin—shockingly real and startling.
Sure enough, the back pressure in a turn did the trick, with a fully breaking stall—horn screaming—and bam, the rapid roll into a spin was shockingly real. The recovery inputs felt natural and realistic—slightly sloppy but well modeled—and I recovered at about 300 agl after probably two rotations. It’s certainly not the way we teach in the real world, but having poor risk management skills is the norm on a PC. The fluidity of X-Plane 12 aerodynamics is on full tilt here.

I tried the MSFS2020 Cessna 172XP, at the same airport for the same tests, and the same live weather, only this time as MSFS interprets it.

MSFS never used to model spins nor have a really high-fidelity flight model, but in this test the modeled airplane produced a realistic spin. This was prompted by a power-on stall that resulted in a rapidly winding spin. Sounds of the stall and spin were pretty much on par with X-Plane 12, with the exception being the stall horn X-Plane 12 sounded more realistic and dynamic.

Once airborne in the MSFS 172, I tested slow flight, MCA, and spins in the same manner. Where the MSFS franchise was never known for realistic flight modeling in the past, it is clear this newest version represents a breakthrough. It felt very similar to X-Plane 12’s reactions, with still a wee bit of the “flying-on-rails” feeling we know from previous MSFS versions—but a massive improvement overall in flight modeling for this scenario. I was impressed it spun—and spun well. Recovery was realistic and responsive.

Failure and Emergency Training Scenario

No pilot training would be complete without failure and emergency options, and this is where X-Plane has always smashed the competition, with hundreds of possible failures and emergencies you can either precisely set to occur or randomize each and every option for a nerve-wracking experience.

In this example, I set up a bird strike to occur at exactly 200 feet agl. Despite this setup, I was still startled when it happened. The results were unknown until the engine oil pressure and temperatures started trending to the bad side. I cheated by looking outside and was shocked to see fire and smoke trails.

The scenery is compelling, but the overall lack of failure scenarios and a slightly less fluid flight model makes the emergency practice slightly less beneficial and startling. It’s too predictable since you must pretend a failure or emergency is unfolding. But the visual beauty and accuracy of the world around you are awesome. You’ll gain knowledge, crisis handling, and emergency off-airport planning in either sim.

The birds came out of nowhere fast in the simulation. I had nowhere to go and was coping with a big startle factor at that. You could cope in real life far better by having had the ability to experience that sudden event in simulation.

This engine had really taken a hit. Time to secure and shut down or choose to delay your response to see what might happen next.
I aimed for a road along the shore with some scrubby areas that could provide a safe landing site, although there were houses and bigger trees at the far end of the view.

With a comparable setup in MSFS2020 but without failure modeling, I cut the engine at a similar location and altitude. The scenery is more realistic as it’s based on true Earth images that load by default as you fly. Subscribing to Ortho scenery photorealistic terrain is possible on X-Plane 12 as an option.

I made a safe touchdown in MSFS in a grassy area, dodging road traffic. This is where MSFS takes the cake, “off-roading” with very photorealistic scenery by default. X-Plane will provide similar scenes via downloads and simple installations but by default isn’t as sharp as MSFS.

Convective Dangers and Weather Modeling

Simulating thunderstorms is a thrill, especially when the danger and risks involved can be simulated realistically. Fortunately, both simulations do this quite well now—a new breakthrough for MSFS and an old tried-and-true risk/danger model for X-Plane reworked and improved for X-Plane 12. I manually set up thunderstorms to begin developing, with a trend toward deteriorating weather, so storms would slowly increase in coverage and intensity, making for some cloud shots as well as danger. I know X-Plane has an advantage here.

I looked toward the bad weather and compared it to what I saw on ForeFlight. It’s easy hooking up any X-Plane session to ForeFlight to get the exact thing you’d see in real life. ForeFlight can be added to X-Plane 12 readily.

The depiction on radar, based on my area, was pretty realistic, I must say. What I really wanted to test was the weather over time, and a particularly fun exercise in X-Plane 12 is to park somewhere, use the outside view, and watch and wait. You’ll see and hear the weather forming around you and moving in.

MSFS does something similar, yet I felt the special effects, especially the audio world of these storms approaching, in X-Plane 12 was a bit more dramatic. The things that really caught my attention were the violent wind and rain noises. The rain sounds in X-Plane 12 are loud, especially in flight. Hitting rain at twice highway car speed is dramatic; at 500 knots in a jet it is mind-blowing. I recall once icing up so severely during an X-Plane 12 session that I had to set it down in the bush, with smoke billowing about. I waited, listened, and heard severe wind, rain, and hail lash the cockpit. The water was pouring over my view outside my broken world. The view out the window was scary, and I was trapped and needed rescue.

Iced-over windows as thunderstorms in high altitudes can quickly turn rain into snow and hail as happened to me in this manually set scenario.

What is this?! I had left for lunch while “tied down” as storms were approaching only to return to my horror to see the severe weather had dropped the temperatures from 20 degrees Celsius to about 5 degrees with snow or hail covering the ground. The windows actually had some ice clearly on them. The airplane had been blown far off the ramp into the grass. What amazing realism, danger, variability, and great fun this was. I wish I had stuck around to watch. On second thought, another advantage in X-Plane 12 is replay mode.

Convection building in MSFS2020 is okay. There are great skies and graphics for sure—just slightly less exciting and it just quite doesn’t have that feeling of danger I got with X-Plane 12.

Both sims have amazing weather. The realism of storms in X-Plane 12 wins in my opinion. The turbulence and dangers are genuine, with consequences. The daytime chop, thermals, and under-cumulous base roughness are all better modeled in MSFS2020, which recently had a massive weather engine redo. The cloudscapes and textures looked almost photorealistic in MSFS currently and are beautiful, but thunderheads in X-Plane 12 form, tower up, and stand more realistically than MSFS.
In X-Plane 12, using live weather was far too smooth in thermals, or sunshine versus shade. I felt that a few jumps, jarring, and/or nauseating motion was needed in X-Plane 12 when flying on a sunny day down low. All this can be tweaked by manually setting conditions.

Our two front-runner civilian sims undergo frequent enhancements and refinements. By using either sim or both, as many of us do, any level from beginner to airline pilot can find something to enjoy and use as a tool of proficiency, exploration, and adventure.

There’s never been a better time in the past 40 years to enjoy this hobby since almost daily there’s something new to discover.

The hottest links to visit often for X-Plane and MSFS include www.x-plane.to, www.x-plane.org, and www.flightsim.to. Don’t forget to grab the Honeycomb Starter set from our friends at Sportys as well to launch your sim into the next level of realism and precision.

Finally, I am a huge advocate of both XPRealistic and FSRealistic add-ons, as both sims need that extra sound, vibration, head action, and motion thrown in. 

Editor’s note: This story originally appeared in the August 2023 issue of Plane & Pilot magazine. 

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50 Hours After Private Certification

An experienced CFI once told me: “They are at their sharpest when you sign them off.” I share this knowledge with my learners, and I caution them to work hard to maintain their skills. It is not uncommon for the private pilot—as they gain more hours and experience—to become more relaxed, and procedurally, they may start to get sloppy. It starts slowly. Maybe it’s forgetting to use the checklist during the preflight inspection or engine run-up. Or maybe it’s using the “look out the window” technique to check the weather.

For the pilots that don’t pursue additional certificates or fly on a regular basis, their skills and attention to detail may wane until just before their first flight review. That’s when they practice again with great intensity with the purpose to pass the review.

It can be alarming when they realize how much their skills and knowledge have degraded. I encourage these pilots to make a list of their soft spots and the things they want to work on and bring those to their flight review. You can’t fail a flight review, but you can practice things until both you and the CFI are satisfied you are flying to the level of your certificate.

Losing Your Landings

Sometimes working toward an additional certificate can create soft spots in other areas. For example, the learners’ procedural skills increase during their training for the instrument rating because they have to stay two steps ahead of the aircraft. However, their landings may suffer because most instrument approaches are practice approaches followed by missed approaches. You just don’t do as many landings for the instrument rating as you did for private pilot certification. Expect this, and take action to prevent it.

Set aside a few hours to focus on pattern work to keep from getting too rusty.

Failure to Practice Pilotage

If the pilot is enrolled in a Part 141 program, there is often a black hole where the learner needs to build hours to qualify for the commercial pilot certificate. The pilot often flies multiple cross-country flights usually to the same airports over and over again, often following the magenta line. Basic pilotage skills are lost. It can be especially challenging if the training organization limits where the learners fly to. When you fly to the same seven or eight airports, it is easy to see why some pilots burn out during this phase and start to zone out in the aircraft, often letting it arrive someplace well before their brain gets there.

Overconfidence Can Kill

Overconfidence can sneak up on any pilot. It often manifests as the “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should” syndrome, when a low-time, low-experience pilot tries to do something beyond their capabilities, like flying into the backcountry or doing a mountain crossing in an underpowered airplane. It can bite higher-time pilots as well, such as those with thousands of hours flying a turboprop or light twin who decide to attempt a cowboy maneuver like flying between buildings or doing a buzz job at an airport for sport.

Milestone Metrics

Reaching certain metrics, such as 500 or 1,000 hours, can also inspire a pilot to do something silly. If the majority of those hours are so-called junk hours—the same laps in the pattern at the same airport and no stretching of skills or practicing maneuvers or proficiency—they might as well not be in the logbook at all.

CFI Challenges

If the pilot is pursuing the flight instructor certificate, there will be a learning curve as they adjust to flying from the right seat. Once certification is acquired, their basic VFR skills may soften a bit because CFIs usually don’t do much of the flying beyond demonstration of a maneuver—especially landings. CFIs need to make time  to stay proficient.

Many CFIs, unless they have their instructor-instrument rating, will find their instrument procedures get rusty as well. CFIs are required to have an instrument rating, but it is very common for instructors to have their instrument skills become soft because they don’t have the time—or money—to practice instrument procedures. Some flight schools try to thwart this by giving their CFIs an allowance for proficiency flights.

When a CFI-rated pilot reaches 750 hours, this appears to be a time when they take more chances, sometimes with poor results. Why? It is pure conjecture, but it might be because the pilot, if a time builder, is at the halfway point to the minimum hourly requirement for the airline transport pilot certificate.

Pretty much every flight school has a story about the 700-hour-ish pilot that ran out of fuel, flew VFR into IMC, and got themselves in a situation with a learner, or took an airplane without permission at night to get some more hours. And the list goes on.

Tedium

For those building their hours as instructors, the 1,000-hour mark can be dangerous.

Although you’re keeping busy, training and endorsing  people for check rides, the road to 1,500 hours can seem very long, and it’s easy to get bored with teaching and burn out.

If you are a CFI and this is happening to you, please find a time-building program that is something other than teaching, because just going through the motions with learners isn’t fair to them—and might even be a little dangerous.

Editor’s note: This story originally appeared on flyingmag.com. 

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One way to do this is for the CFI to review the Nall Report, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association’s (AOPA) Air Safety Institute’s annual report that looks into accident causal factors—and to develop training scenarios to give learners the tools to address these risks.

AOPA released its 32nd report in October. The report looks at the number of events, the phases of flight where accidents happen, and contributing or causal factors. According to this latest release, most accidents happen during the approach to landing—in particular, when the pilot overshoots the turn to final, overcorrects with bank angle, and inadvertently allows the aircraft to get slow, resulting in an unrecoverable stall/spin. If you check the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) database, you will find hundreds of these accidents, which are usually fatal.

A scenario to address the risk involves taking the airplane to a safe altitude—like 5,000 feet—and practicing the base turn to final as if the airplane is in the pattern. This is a basic descending turn. Experiment with a combination of bank angles during a descent, working on coordination. Practice approaches with flaps and without. Use a cardinal heading as “final” and practice making 90-degree turns to that heading. Work on making the turn about timing—do a base-to-final turn at standard rate and roll out right on “center line.”

Make it a rule that if the aircraft is not stabilized on heading, speed, glide slope, and centerline—you will go around.

• Read More: Four Loss of Control Survival Scenarios

Uncommanded Loss of Engine Power After Takeoff

How many CFIs teach the “loss of thrust on take-off” briefing from day one? I do, as a part of the pre-takeoff checklist. There are too many fatalities caused by a loss of engine power shortly after takeoff—resulting in a stall/spin situation—to skip this critical briefing. It goes as follows, for flight in a Cessna 172:

Loss of thrust on takeoff briefing:

• During the takeoff roll, if there is any issue with power production or controllability, the aircraft will be brought to a stop.
• If there is an uncommanded loss of engine power during the takeoff and there is runway ahead of you, land straight ahead.

Loss of thrust after takeoff no runway remaining, below 700 feet:

• If there is an uncommanded loss of engine power during the takeoff and the aircraft is out of usable runway, and at less than 700 feet agl, pitch for best glide and aim straight ahead for an open area, or, if needed, veer no more than 30 degrees off the extended centerline.

Loss of thrust after takeoff no runway remaining, 1,000 feet:

• If there is an uncommanded loss of engine power during the takeoff and the aircraft is at an altitude of at least 1,000 feet agl, pitch for best glide and turn back to the runway at no more than 30 degrees of bank to reach either the runway or some other uninhabited landing field that’s free from obstacles.

Accidents During Landing

Most accidents overall occur during landing, a common cause being the unstabilized approach. Too fast and the airplane floats in ground effect, eating up all the available runway. Touching down too fast can also lead to a bounce and the dreaded “porpoise,” which can lead to a bent firewall and prop strike. Go around at the first indication you have that you won’t touch down and come to a stop within the first third of the runway.

Plenty of accidents happen when the pilot gets behind the airplane and takes incorrect action, such as trying to stretch a glide by pulling the nose up, or dumping the flaps in on final when the aircraft is going too fast and/or improperly configured—read that as the gear is still up. Dumping the gear and flaps at the same time can result in a loss of control with occasionally fatal results. If you are not configured by the time you’re on a long final, go around.

Fuel Mismanagement

Poor fuel management continues to be a causal factor in a great many situations resulting in accidents and incidents best described as “unscheduled off-airport landings.” This often breaks down to inadequate planning, poor decision-making, and a lack of knowledge about the aircraft’s fuel system. Just about every flight school has a story about a learner who either didn’t understand how the fuel system worked or failed to execute the emergency checklist by switching fuel tanks, resulting in an unscheduled off-airport landing that could have been avoided.

You can obtain the fuel endurance of the aircraft readily from the pilot operating handbook, yet sadly, many learners do not learn how to apply this information until they enter the cross-country phase of training. Anytime you land, check the fuel before taking off again. Every time.

Understand that some aircraft—because of age or engine modifications—may burn more fuel at a particular power setting. The art of leaning the mixture for best economy and endurance should be taught early in training.

VFR Into IMC

Flying VFR into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)—followed by poor IFR technique—were cited as causal factors in a sizable portion of accidents. The FARs require private pilot candidates to log three hours of flight controlling the aircraft by instruments, and there are requirements for IFR currency—but not proficiency. That responsibility rests with the pilots. If you have an instrument rating, make a plan to fly under the hood at least once a month. Fly in VFR or MVFR with an appropriately rated pilot for practice.

If you are a learner pilot, ask your CFI to teach you how to fly an actual instrument approach as an emergency procedure. It is a practical application of the three hours of instrument training you are required to have during your initial course. Remember the most important skills you can have to avoid VFR into IMC are checking the forecast before flight and the 180-degree turn.

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared on flyingmedia.com

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This can make flight training a challenge—not only are you at the whims of Mother Nature (who frankly sometimes behaves like a drunken hockey mom), but you also find yourself bringing an extra jacket or sweatshirt on your flight as a precaution. I tell my learners it is better to have that extra layer with you and not need it, than need it and not have it. I learned a long time ago to keep an extra jacket with my flight gear—one for me, one for my learners if needed. Getting too cold in the cockpit is bad for learning.

Dress To Survive, Not To Arrive

Learning to fly is a physical activity, and you may get sweaty and dirty doing it. You need to dress for this. You will likely be climbing up ladders to reach the fuel tanks if you are flying a high-wing, and will be crawling under the aircraft if you fly a low-wing. Brushing against an aircraft can leave grime marks on your clothing, and fuel stains your clothes, so plan your wardrobe accordingly.

You may consider having your ‘flying’ pants and shorts and ‘everything else’ pants and shirts. I switched to cargo pants when I became a full-time CFI because I ruined too many pairs of khakis to count—the fuel stained them pink. And by pink, I mean I had Mary Kay Cadillac pink spots where fuel had splashed.

The clothes need to be loose enough to allow freedom of movement. It can be embarrassing if they don’t. One of my coworkers suffered a wardrobe malfunction going on the wing of the Cessna 172 to check the fuel. I offered strategic placement of my flight jacket around her waist to avoid deployment of the werewolf salute (full moon) on the ramp. She ran back to the locker room and re-emerged in sweatpants, which she wore for the rest of the day.

The choice of footwear is the most important. At many schools, flip-flops and sandals are not allowed in the aircraft because you need good traction on the rudder pedals. Also, if there is an unscheduled off-airport landing and you have to hike out, open-toed shoes will put you in a world of hurt. The soles of the shoes need to be thin enough that you can feel the rudder pedals and brakes, however. I often recommend my learners fly in tennis shoes.

As for the rest of your outfit, dress like you will have to hike out of rough terrain. In any season, wool socks are a good choice because wool is warm even when wet.

You may want to wear a cap when you fly. A ballcap shades your face and can help retain body heat because you lose approximately 30 percent of your body heat through your head.

For your upper torso, light layers are your best bet for warmth and flexibility in the cockpit. You don’t want to have so many layers on that you can’t move your elbows (think Randy in The Christmas Story) but still need to stay warm. Remember that for every 1,000 feet you ascend, you usually lose 2 degrees centigrade, or 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit. That may not sound like much until that day when you’re comfortable on the ramp in short pants and shirt sleeves, but when you get up to cruise altitude of 4,500 feet, you’re shivering and the heater in the cockpit can’t keep up.

Aviation Careers Mean Uniforms

Most Part 61 flight schools don’t have a dress code for their clients, but they may have one for their office staff, mechanics, and CFIs. For CFIs, this usually consists of shirts and possibly jackets with the school logo paired with khakis or cargo pants. Schools that have them tend to appear more professional, as the uniform makes it easy to distinguish the employees from the customers sitting on the couch. Schools that do not have uniforms come off as more casual, which can be off-putting to some clients looking for a professional organization on par with the airlines, where everyone is in a uniform—or it can signal the kind of atmosphere the client is seeking. It’s a bit subjective.

If you are applying for a job at the flight school—any job—you would be wise to dress professionally, even if the job will have you wearing coveralls and boots. Consider a dress shirt, a blazer (weather permitting), a tie if appropriate, and khakis or slacks.

The work uniform may be casual, but you want to get the job first.

Just because you are familiar with the flight school, don’t make the mistake of dressing casually for the interview. Sadly, it happens.

There was a young man I had flown with off and on for several years. He had just earned his CFI certificate and was invited to interview for an instructor job. He showed up in jeans, a t-shirt, and sneakers. The owner of the flight school was surprised by his casual attire and asked him if he thought jeans and a t-shirt were appropriate attire for a job interview. He replied that he wasn’t aware he was there for a job interview—despite the fact he’d be asked to come into the flight school on a certain day, at a certain time, with his logbook and copies of his resume to talk about being a CFI at the school. He was not offered the job. Frankly, I don’t think he wanted to work there, and I would have been happier if he’d just declined the interview instead of wasting our time.

Some flight academies have a dress code for both their CFIs and learners. Both wear airline-style uniforms consisting of slacks, white shirts with epaulets, and ties, because the purpose of the flight school is to prepare you for the professional airline environment where uniforms are required. You will learn how to wear a uniform. There is an art to performing a military-style shirt tuck that gives that professional A-line. I can’t say that dressing this way makes a person fly better, but it sure doesn’t hurt. For many years while working at a Part 141 school that didn’t have uniforms, I wore a white dress shirt and aviation-themed tie with cargo pants, and I was selected by walk-in customers because I ‘looked the part’ more so than my coworkers.

However, this level of structure does not sit well with some learners and some CFIs—especially the tie part for some reason. If this is you, perhaps a career at the airlines is not the right path. There are plenty of aviation careers that don’t have this dress requirement, so you will likely find one that works for you.

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared on flyingmedia.com

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While there’s no concrete evidence a similar chain of events occurred in the world of aeronautical engineering, the concepts utilized by the Dayton Wright RB-1 certainly suggest at least one time machine was involved in its development.

When the RB-1 was constructed in 1920, the vast majority of aircraft were still rickety-looking contraptions. Most were biplanes utilizing fabric covering, external wire bracing, and spindly-looking fixed landing gear. World War I-era rotary radial engines were still commonplace, their crankcase and cylinders spinning in their entirety as though the engine manufacturers were sponsored by gyroscopic precession itself. 

At the time, developments like a variable-camber wing and retractable landing gear must have resembled science fiction to most, but not to the people at Dayton-Wright in Ohio. There, a small team of engineers was tasked with creating an aircraft specifically to compete in the Gordon Bennett trophy race in France. This prestigious race consisted of three laps of a 300 km (186 mile) course, and a victory would bestow enviable bragging rights to the aircraft manufacturer.

Favorites for the 1920 race included aircraft built by Neuport, Spad, and Verville-Packard. All were among the fastest aircraft in the world at that time. But all were also open-cockpit biplanes, seemingly designed and built with little regard for parasite drag. 

Dayton-Wright identified this as an opportunity. In a flight regime where any horsepower gains are quickly overshadowed by exponentially-increasing drag, they designed and utilized features unheard of in that era. Features that in the following decades would become commonplace on virtually all aircraft built for speed.

Prioritizing drag reduction from the beginning, they designed a fully-enclosed cockpit and opted for a single wing instead of a biplane configuration. They utilized a cantilever wing, avoiding extraneous wing struts or bracing cables that would slow the airplane down. They understood that a smaller wing would be more efficient at higher speeds, but they also understood that additional lift would be necessary for takeoff and landing. 

To balance these opposing demands, they introduced what is thought to be the first wing with adjustable camber via leading-edge and trailing-edge devices. Like a modern wing with slats and flaps, the RB-1’s wing could be configured in flight by the pilot. For takeoff and landing, camber would be increased and slower airspeeds would be possible, but for high-speed cruise, the wing could be flattened and streamlined to reduce drag.

The engineers didn’t stop there. Recognizing that landing gear is a massive source of drag at higher speeds, they developed (and patented) a novel retractable landing gear design. By turning a hand-operated crank linked to chains and gears, the pilot could raise the gear in approximately ten seconds and lower it in approximately six.

The engineers also linked the landing gear to the variable-camber wing. Retracting the gear also retracted the leading and trailing edges of the wing. When it was time to land, everything extended at once, in unison.

The entire front section of the airplane was dedicated to the engine’s massive radiator, which completely enveloped the crankshaft. No forward windscreen was provided to the pilot; like the Spirit of St. Louis, they would have to make do with the side windows and utilize their peripheral vision for takeoff and landing.

Having sculpted the monocoque fuselage and wing to their liking, Dayton-Wright turned to the powerplant. They chose a water-cooled inline six manufactured by Hall Scott and producing 250 horsepower. At the RB-1’s maximum takeoff weight of 1,850 pounds, this gave it a better horsepower-to-weight ratio than a similarly-loaded Republic P-47 Thunderbolt. 

The RB-1 first flew in 1920, not long before the trophy race. Test pilots conducted a short series of test flights at the company’s facilities near Dayton, Ohio, and estimated the airplane’s top speed would approach 200 mph. Afterward, the airplane was disassembled, packed into a crate, and shipped off to France.

When the big day came, the RB-1 took off from Ville Sauvage near Étampes in the company of the other competitors, only to have to abandon the race and return to the airport after only 15 minutes. Sources vary with regard to the reasoning. Most claim the pilot was unable to retract the gear and flaps, but Flight magazine reported that he experienced “difficulty with his steering.” 

Given the complexity of the wing, it’s possible only one wing had experienced mechanical issues, thus introducing asymmetry and affecting the control and steering. In any case, the RB-1 returned safely. It was shipped back to the U.S., and it never flew again. It remains unclear why no further flying attempts were made.

Today, the RB-1 is on display at the Henry Ford Museum near Detroit, Michigan. It has been properly restored and hangs with its gear and flaps retracted. An elevated walkway provides visitors with a view of the unique flap mechanism on top of the wing.

Although unsuccessful in its intended mission, the RB-1 brought a blend of remarkably futuristic technologies to light in an era of relatively primitive aircraft and permanently altered the trajectory of aircraft design. To date, no evidence of time travel has been discovered in the development of this groundbreaking aircraft.

Previously published on flyingmag.com.

The post The Race to Build Dayton-Wright’s Time Machine appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

There are stories of SWA pilots waiting on the phone for more than a dozen hours to talk to a dispatcher—one pilot reportedly was on hold for 17 hours. This is not to mention the tens of thousands of customers who were left in the lurch, with SWA unable to provide to many of them the kind of cancellation care, hotels and/or rental cars, that isn’t just the right thing to do but required by law.

How bad was it? As you might know, airline pilots are notoriously reluctant to share publicly anything bad or good about their work life. Yet after this debacle, hundreds of Southwest pilots took to social media to detail the degree of the misery, though several have showered praise on customers, who were said to be were largely supportive and understanding. Others, of course, were asked to get the plane going right now! There was even an (unverified but legit-sounding) memo from SWA telling pilots not to go into SWA employee lounges to shop for flight attendants to work their flights, though the attempt by pilots to find flight attendants who hadn’t been able to talk to dispatch for a day or more seems a reasonable alternative to us.

The other bad news for SWA is this: In a political climate that has become polarized beyond easy repair, this is one issue, Southwest’s failings, that has united the parties like few other issues have done. DotSec Pete Buttigieg appeared on the Sunday morning news shows, including Meet the Press and Face the Nation, where he made no effort to disguise his unhappiness over the meltdown and express wonder that the company could have been relying on a system that has been in use for decades—this is not an uncommon practice, by the way. Pilots at other airlines have shared with P&P their gratitude that it didn’t happen to their carrier.

Legislators are riled—after all, every one of them has constituents who were left stranded by SWA’s failures, many of whom have yet to see a penny in reimbursement for their fares, never mind the required penalties airlines must pay when something like this happens. There is certain to be a Congressional investigation, perhaps more than one, and the DoT is also likely to issue fines after it gets a handle on the extent of the damage done. What kind of financial hit is SWA looking to take? It’s too early to say with any certainty, but industry it could be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Politico‘s Weekly Transportation newsletter noted two other areas of concern. One is consolidation. With mergers among airlines at an all-time high, consumers are left with fewer choices and higher fares. And Southwest, the author notes, was the first airline to resume shareholder dividends once the legislative ban on them expired late last year.

One agency that can’t get too high and mighty right now is the FAA, which had a three-hour ground stop into all Florida airports after one of its air route traffic control systems failed, forcing airlines to cancel hundreds of flights and leaving, again, thousands of flyers stranded, at least temporarily.

A Pilot’s Views from The Jump Seat

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