Advanced skills

Articles to help increase your flying knowledge and practical skills.


Little holes – big trouble

What would you think of an instructor who did this to your aircraft before a flight test? Saving your life, or pissing you off?

Doing a proper pre-flight is a crash/don’t crash decision you make every time you fly. Here Jim Davis tells four stories of disaster, or near disaster, caused by pilots failing to check various tiny orifices.

WHAT CAN WE LEARN: Gut reaction gets lucky

A Beech B95 Travel Air.

Aiming to make safer pilots of us, here veteran instructor Jim Davis looks at extracts from official CAA Accident Reports from his own homeland of South Africa and analyses why things went wrong and how we may all avoid making similar mistakes.

WHAT CAN WE LEARN: Pussy-foot piloting

A Cessna 182J.

Aiming to make safer pilots of us, here veteran instructor Jim Davis looks at extracts from official CAA Accident Reports from his own homeland of South Africa and analyses why things went wrong and how we may all avoid making similar mistakes.

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my story »

The importance of maintaining situational awareness

(Bill Wardle)

A private pilot explains, by way of a hair-raising first-hand account of a near-miss, the importance of maintaining situational awareness.