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Is Flying Really Safe?
Any person who is fearful of flying will be shocked to hear that Premier Flight Center logged nearly 3,500 flight hours in 2011! The inspiration for this article came about when several people at our flight school were having a discussion about how to advance awareness about how safe flying really is and how to combat the general public’s negative perceptions of flying. During the discussion, one person remarked that, “We know flying is safe because we at Premier fly a lot, and we do it safely. I mean, clearly we couldn’t fly as much as we do without problems if flying wasn’t a basically safe activity.” Still: How to present that… Then, I realized we should present just that: The numbers! And when I got them, we were pleasantly surprised by them! We found our airplanes flew 3,491 hours in 2011. What made it so surprising was that, here in the Northeast, most people’s recollection of the year 2011 is best summed up as, “Wow, can you believe all that weather?!?” What amazed us even more though was Read more... |
Motion Induced BlindnessPilots are taught that the “rules for the road” in the skies are “see and be seen”! From the very beginning, instructors remind students to look before they turn and to continuously scan the sky for other aircraft. Pilots are always cautioned against “fixating”, or staring at a point in space. Here’s an interesting visual/perceptual illusion to help demonstrate why this can lead to not seeing what you think you’re looking for! It’s also just a fun demonstration through which we can learn a little more about how we humans work. 
Click here to see this amazing effect and to read about why it occurs. Microsoft Internet Explorer Users Note: This demonstration doesn't work on the Microsoft Internet Explorer Browser. If you are using IE, please click here to be taken to the demonstration creator's page, but please be sure to read the article at the link above for the explanation. |
Knowing Your NOTAMs: FICONAs more and more pilots move to using 21st century technology to obtain weather briefings, more and more pilots will have to decipher the abbreviations used in NOTAMs (Notices to Airmen) on their own. Of course, a fair number of pilots will still choose to have their 21st century technology translate the NOTAM for them, but many others find it faster to read the shorthand version of the NOTAM as it is transmitted. It really isn’t an overly daunting task to read NOTAMs in their raw format, and for those who do so, it’s good to know about new abbreviations as they’re added. It’s also important to know where to find a comprehensive list of the abbreviations. See the FAA’s website for a list of current NOTAM abbreviations. One new abbreviation that hasn’t made it to the FAA’s NOTAM lexicon yet that you may see is “FICON”. It is the abbreviation for “Field Conditions”. The reason given for its inception is so that pilots and dispatchers can more easily find, in a lengthy list of NOTAMs, any information pertaining to an airport’s surface conditions.
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Amazing |
Lightning Strikes Passenger Plane Sitting on the Ramp
Mother Nature can be the source of the most amazing performance around, especially when it's the power of thunderstorms that is used to provide the display. Watch carefully, though the lightning strikes the tail of this jet, it exits through the nose gear and sends the manhole cover next to the nose wheel soaring toward the approaching tug operator. Fortunately, it appears all of the ground crew were uninjured! |
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FAA Changes Regulations for Renewing Instrument Currency!?!
Did that headline catch your eye? A remarkably similar statement certainly caught my ear while milling about our flight school’s office! I couldn’t fathom having missed such a sweeping change to the FARs, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have happened. |
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Would you like to get your Discovery Flight for Free?
Winter Special!What is a Discovery Flight? Discovery Flights allow you to spend about half an hour in the plane seeing what your flying lessons will be like! You will take the controls yourself and fly around Hartford with one of our highly experienced instructors. Is it really free? During our winter special, we will give you a rebate certificate for the full cost of your discovery flight. Once you start your lessons with us, you can redeem the certificate. Your money will be credited to your account after you’ve paid for your 4th lesson*. So, in the end, yes, it's free! Come fly with us and see why Premier Flight Center is known as “The Flight Training Professionals”. Click here for details about all of our flight courses. 
*Certificate is non-transferrable. |
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A Preview of Premier's Digital Media Center |
Thank you to our loyal customers and friends who have shared items of interest with us, asked questions that have resulted in flight training articles and to all of you who have taken the time to read what we post! If you're interested in being notified when we post new items, fill out your name and email information in the request form on the right. Please enjoy these informative training articles, or click here to see the index of our entire collection of material in the Digital Media Center: |
From "Standing Lenticular Clouds" |
Every region of the country has its unique challenges for pilots. I tend to think of the Northeast, where Premier Flight Center is located, as the “Airspace Capitol of the World”. Yup, if it’s the complexities of airspace you want, you’ve got it here! Pilots who venture out in the American West have a whole new challenge facing them – mountains, and all of the complexities of mountain weather! Below are some awesome shots of one of those mountain weather spectacles, standing lenticular clouds. |
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As one alert reader observed, “fabulous pictures, and from what I have read, best taken from the ground.” He's right, and let’s review why. Standing lenticular clouds are associated with a phenomenon known as mountain wave turbulence. Read More... |
From "Light Gun Signals - The other way to communicate" |
Most pilots learn to interpret light gun signals during their student pilot days. Yet, when I conduct flight reviews, or help students pursue an advanced certificate or rating, they often confide that they hope that they’ll never have a radio failure and be forced to interpret light gun signals from a control tower. Most pilots claim that they forgot about light gun signals at the conclusion of their student pilot days! Just another self-deprecating remark? Perhaps, especially since most of them end up able to fumble through the meanings of most of the signals as they think them over. Apparently, many of us pilot types only think about the meaning of light gun signals when some flight instructor asks about them! Perhaps more interesting though is that, although we know the light gun signal meanings, we don’t have much insight into situations that would result in receiving one light gun signal over another. For example, why would you get a “Flashing Red” signal? Read More... |
From "On Guard!" |
There’s an old adage – “Pilots don’t get lost, they just get temporarily disoriented.” The good news is that modern radios are very reliable, and pilots don’t normally “lose” their comms either, they just get a bit disoriented about where they are. The most common problem that is seen is with the volume knob! Really now, it’s not ever a good idea to turn down the volume, especially while you’re out flying around because you’re very likely to forget to turn it back up when you’re ready to chat with the tower about your return to the airport. You’ll think you've had a radio failure. You'll be glad you recently read the above article. Meanwhile, after your second or third call to them, the tower will know what you’ve done and be waiting patiently for you to catch on. As an instructor, I know how busy the tower frequency can be and what a distraction to teaching all of that chatter is when you’re out working in the practice area. Yet, I never turn down the volume to avoid the intrusion of the radio. I’m far too likely to forget to turn it back up, and I don’t want to teach a student to turn down the radio lest they too forget to turn it back up! So what’s an impoverished flight instructor to do? How about something useful with the radio? |
From "Speaking of effective radio communications..." |
When I began the process of studying for my CFI (Certified Flight Instructor) certificate, I worked with a few highly experienced pilots who were wonderful teachers. One will always hold a special place in my heart. First, and foremost, he taught me an amazing amount about teaching people to fly. Secondly, after I earned my CFI, hired me! Anyway, this particular instructor often observed that “if you poll people, one of their most common fears is the ‘fear of flying’; after that, it’s the ‘fear of public speaking’. So, what do we do? We put them in airplanes and make them talk on the radio!” Okay yeah, it’s probably not very clever of us “instructor” types, is it? Many students attribute their apprehension toward radio communications to a desire to “sound professional.” That is an admirable sentiment, but the desire to sound good should be a low level concern. Instead, all pilots should desire to communicate effectively. In fact the greatest enhancement to professionalism on the radio will be found by each pilot who learns to speak concisely and accurately! It is certain that there are proper phraseologies that should be used, but since we cannot learn or invent a specific phraseology for every situation, I tell my students, when all else fails, just use English! Read More... |
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