I found myself with a week clear in Southern Spain; free time spanning in front of me and not a single claim to my time. Add to that a Piper Saratoga parked in Málaga gathering dust and it was clear: it was time to go flying. After months of bad weather followed by hectic schedules…
Read more… 9 Jan 09
Part One of Two – originally published in Piper Flyer Flying feels different in the dark. Sitting in a commercial plane, looking at the black outside the window, the viewpoint strikes me as so completely different. This isn’t an issue during the day, I look out at cities and farmland and lakes and railway lines:…
Read more… 12 Dec 08
Kidlington Airfield, now known as Oxford Airport, has been in use since the 1930s. Their training history began in World War II when it was used as a training centre for Royal Air Force pilots. Today, even with a downturn in new pilots, 73% of their traffic is training flights. Their circuit can get very…
Read more… 7 Nov 08
Cliff taxied the plane over to the pumps and I hopped out to get us some fuel. “I’ll get out in a moment,” Cliff said. “I just want to put our route into the GPS first.” “No problem.” I walked over to the tiny booth behind the pumps and tapped at the door. A pale…
Read more… 19 Sep 08
Cliff shoved my shoulder. “Wake up.” I squinted and realised it was still dark. The shutters act as my alarm clock but they weren’t due to rise for another half an hour. I ignored him and rolled over. “Get up,” he said. “It’s your birthday.” I put the pillow over my head. “Wake up! Come…
Read more… 10 Mar 08
I’m working on an article called Sylvia’s Mother at the moment (er, if you are my editor, read “working on” as “finishing off”. I swear you’ll have it by Friday) and wrote about my thoughts before taking my mom and my son up in the Saratoga. This is from my initial draft. I can’t help…
Read more… 17 Oct 07
On the 28th of May 2019, a customer arrived at a flight school at Archerfield Airport, Queensland for their first flight experience. The aircraft that day was a Cessna 152,…
The Gulfstream G150, a twin-engine business jet, arrived at Kittilä airport in Lapland on a cold Tuesday afternoon on the 2nd of January 2018, carrying three crew and four passengers.…
When I was learning to fly, I remember someone in the pilots’ bar insisting that all that talk about life jackets under your seat was a waste of time; if…
This photograph has been posted to aviation forums repeatedly, each time with a thread of pilots wondering what the hell could have happened to cause the light aircraft to be…
I was on the radio on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, in a show called The History Listen. They asked me to tell them about a famous story in Australian and…
The Beagle B.121 Pup is a British, single-engine, all-metal aircraft produced in the 1960s. British Executive and General Aviation Limited, who traded as BEAGLE, designed the Beagle B.121 Pup as…
When the Kantonspolizei Zürich (the police department of the Swiss canton of Zurich) posted a photograph on Facebook showing the contents of a standard patrol car, they had no idea…
I was on the radio on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, in a show called The History Listen. They asked me to tell them about a famous story in Australian and…