Upon his retirement as a non-routine flight operations captain from a fractional operator in 2015, Dr. Veillette had accumulated more than 20,000 hours of flight experience in 240 types of aircraft—including balloons, rotorcraft, sea plans, glides, war birds, supersonic jets and large commercial transports. He is an adjunct professor at Utah Valley University. In June 2023, he won the prestigious Bill Gunston Technology Writer of the Year Award.
Officials from the helicopter industry and FAA will meet in Washington, D.C., Feb. 11-12, 2016, to discuss improving weather information availability, heliport standardization and IFR infrastructure. Despite some welcome new elements, gaping holes remain in the country’s weather information “grid.” There are many Non-Federal AWOSs that need to be added to the weather collection and information dissemination system.
Before launching into the IFR system, pilots need to familiarize themselves with the instrument requirements for their particular helicopter. Within the same make, model and series of helicopters, variations in the installed avionics may change the equipment needed or the level of augmentation for a particular operation. The complexity of the automatic flight control system (AFCS), autopilot and flight director in some helicopters requires formal pilot training to understand the unit’s operation, limitations, failure indications and reversionary modes.
The low-drag design of modern business jets makes managing aircraft energy while descending from altitude a challenge. These aircraft tend to build up speed rapidly in a descent and don’t “go down and slow down” well. Such characteristics are especially problematic when ATC issues a late descent combined with an altitude or airspeed constraint.
