A bad habit

January is the rainy season in Northern California, and when a cold front arrives off the Pacific Ocean the weather observation often calls for VFR conditions with mountain obscuration — if you wish to fly out of the San Francisco Bay Area this means you'll have to file IFR. Those were the conditions on a January day in 1996 when I flew my wife, my mother-in-law, and a friend from Palo Alto Airport of Santa Clara County to the Monterey peninsula for a business event that I was to host. The trip in the Cessna Cardinal RG to Monterey was a routine IFR flight with the majority of the 45-minute flight under actual instrument meteorological conditions, ending with an ILS approach that turned out to be a piece of cake.
http://www.aopa.org/pilot/never_again/2006/na0601.html

Always check the oil

The weather forecast was good, with clearing skies typical of winter weather patterns in New England. I had booked my favorite Cessna 182 Skylane for an afternoon flight out of Laurence G. Hanscom Field, Bedford, Massachusetts, to Bangor International Airport, Maine. I had been logging a lot of hours lately in an American Champion Super Decathlon doing an aerobatics course, and I was looking forward to spending some time again in the Cessna in which I had accumulated most of my flight time. If all went well, I would touch down before sunset.
http://www.aopa.org/pilot/never_again/2005/na0512.html

There's a T-28 on your tail!

It was a beautiful spring day so I headed for Heber City Municipal-Russ McDonald Field in Heber, Utah, for a little pattern work in my Piper Clipper, N5773H. As a fairly new taildragger owner I have come to understand the true meaning of "practice makes perfect."
http://www.aopa.org/pilot/never_again/2005/na0502.html

Runway incursion of the worst kind

Back in the early 1970s, before runway incursions were a notable and common problem, I experienced my worst close call. After returning home from military service, I applied for the GI Bill, and I obtained my airplane flight instructor certificate. I returned to the flight school where I had learned to fly and received a job flying Piper Colts. Shortly thereafter I moved up to the modern and nimble, all-metal Cessna 150 and was much happier in that airplane. Had I been flying a Colt when this incident took place, I don't believe my student and I would be alive today.
http://www.aopa.org/pilot/never_again/2005/na0504.html

A Tiger's tale

After a year of training and a lifelong yearning for the skies, I finally became a pilot, earning my certificate on the second to last day of 2004. Having logged all of my training hours in a Cessna 172SP, I had been looking forward to the day that I could fly one of the more interesting airplanes on my FBO's flight line. The airplane that I coveted was brand new AG-5B Tiger.
http://www.aopa.org/pilot/never_again/2005/na0506.html

That queasy feeling

She was a beautiful little 1963 Piper Cherokee 180. I watched her being meticulously rebuilt by our FBO.
http://www.aopa.org/pilot/never_again/2005/na0511.html