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Safety

Getting Back at It: Efficiently, Safely

Rick Durden
Verified
Landings, it's all about landings. Reduced to its simplest form, accident data and interviews with CFI's tell us that the pilot skill that erodes the fastest - and that a pilot doesn't recognize how far it's eroded - is the ability to make a landing, particularly in a crosswind. When getting current again, plan on practicing a lot of landings after carefully maintaining the published approach speed.

No matter how many times we hit the delete key, 2020 is still here. With Abby Normal the new normal, a lot of pilots have been flying infrequently at best, with many unable to do any aviating at all. 

Our readers are nothing if not perceptive—they know that a pilot who isn’t flying regularly can be a ball of aircraft aluminum looking for a place to a stop—and they’re looking for ways to get back into flying, when the opportunity arises, safely, without breaking the bank. They are also expressing concern about the insurance market and rightfully worried about what will happen to their insurance rates when renewal comes around and they haven’t been flying. 

Rick Durden

Senior Editor Rick Durden has written for Aviation Consumer since 1994 and specializes in aviation law. Rick is an active CFII and holds an ATP with type ratings in the Douglas DC-3 and Cessna Citation. He is the author of The Thinking Pilot’s Flight Manual or, How to Survive Flying Little Airplanes and Have a Ball Doing It, Vols. 1 & 2.