This week…

Speaker at FAPA, AOPA CFI Survey, Mike Melvill’s Passing, and more….

This is a busy month for me! But no complaints! I roll with it. 

On March 17 I was the speaker at the Fullerton Airport Pilots Association’s monthly meeting. There was a good turnout, more than 40 people in attendance. My topic; ‘SOPS’, aka Standard Operating Procedures, which typically applies to IFR flying, but VFR pilots can also benefit from these. It was well received. I’ve given this presentation before. I generally attend these monthly meetings, because they usually have good programs and I always learn something! And it’s a friendly group of people.    

Then on March 18, I was one of a very small group, only 8 of us, from around the country, all CFI’s, among the many AOPA members who are instructors and who had received an email from a research firm hired by AOPA, asking if we were interested in participating in a 2-hour panel-discussion. I replied in the affirmative. To my surprised, I was notified a few days later that I had been selected!

The goal was to conduct a survey of a small group of members who are also instructors. We were paid an honorarium for our participation. The survey touched on various topics of interest in a moderated round table discussion conducted via the Zoom platform, that included current events, the future of flight training, and other pertinent things at AOPA. It was hosted by Collab Research. I found it to be quite interesting. Will this result in any changes at AOPA? Time will tell. 

Then on March 19, 2026, famed aviator Mike Melvill, a South African native, ‘flew west’ as we say in the flying business, and passed away. He is perhaps most well-known for his role as a test pilot on Burt Rutan’s one-of-a-kind design, the SpaceShipOone, an experimental air-launched rocket-powered ‘spaceplane’ capable of sub-orbital space flight, capable of speeds of 2,000 mph, that was developed by Burt’s company, Scaled Composites. 

Burt’s designs are very unconventional! But they all fly very well! I have had the opportunity to fly one of them, a Long-EZ as it’s called, with a friend who owns one. I had the good fortune to actually meet Burt, his brother Dick and Mike Melvill, once, years ago in October 2015 at the California Aviation Hall of Fame dinner, at the Santa Monica Museum of Flying, on Santa Monica Airport. It was a formal, Black-Tie event. The occasion was to induct some very accomplished people into this aviation Hall of Fame. 

But as I walked around slowly taking in the event, seeing who all was there, I suddenly found myself standing near these three gentlemen, each a famous and accomplished aviation personality, so I stopped and politely listened to them for several minutes, thinking to myself, this is an amazing opportunity! I never in my wildest dreams thought I’d have a chance encounter like this! I was thinking, what can I possibly ask them? 

It was an excellent week-long course, and under the tutelage of an excellent aerobatic instructor, I learned a TON about aerobatics, including spins, loops, 8-point rolls, inverted flight, simulated jammed flight controls, extreme unusual attitude recoveries and more! Fun and challenging! And even though we were pulling several “G’s, I did not ‘toss lunch’ aka get airsick! Nope. 

Burt is a brilliant and innovative, a visionary, and an aeronautical engineer by training, having graduated from California Poly-Tech State University, in San Lius Obispo. So, I was finally able to think of a good question, and finally asked respectfully, “Mr. Rutan, where do you get the ideas for your designs?”, expecting possibly an in-depth aeronautical engineering type answer, way over my head.  But nope! Not at all. Instead, to my surprise, he laughed and turned around and reaching back with his hand towards his rear end, and then forward again, in a sweeping motion, and said, “I pull ‘em out of my ass!” and we all laughed!! That was great! 

I was there to hopefully meet another famous and accomplished aviatrix, the late Iris Critchell, whom I did finally get to meet after it ended. 

On a different topic, more sobering, on March 23, 2026, the crash at KLGA. A reginal jet on its landing rollout at New York’s LaGuardia struck an airport fire truck, which was crossing the same runway, responding to an emergency on the other side of LaGuardia. It turns out the fire truck was not equipped with a transponder, so it was not seen by the air traffic controllers ADSE surface radar. The results were tragic, with both the pilots on the CRJ being killed in the collision when the RJ struck the fire truck. 

And on Saturday, March 28, as a member of the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) Squadron 40 at Fullerton Airport, I will be participating in what is called a SAREX, or search and rescue exercise, that is being conducted at Riverside Airport. Like anything else, we have to practice these ‘missions’ so that we are ready when there is an actual ‘search and rescue. It will be my first time in years participating. 

And, then yesterday, among the many aviation e newsletters that I subscribe to, trying to keep up with what’s happening in the aviation world, I saw this in the March 26 issue of General Aviation News email. There is an article by a colleague, Rich Stowll, who is well known in the industry as ‘the spin doctor’. “Elegant Conciseness: How Power-Push-Pull Simplifies In-Flight Crises.” Check it out.  

Rich’s career as a CFI is unique in that he has specialized in stalls, spins, and upset recovery training, aka UPRT. By his own count, Rich has done more than 35,000 spins! I took Rich’s course back in 1994, yep, 32 years ago now, at Santa Paula Airport, in Santa Paula, Southern California. 

It greatly expanded my own ‘comfort zone’ as a pilot, and I learned how to better handle this area of the airplanes’ performance envelope, in what is called ‘the utility category’. And doing these maneuvers in the airplane , is so different  that doing them in a full-motion Level C or D simulator like I later did when I was at FlightSafety and doing these during my own training, because there are no ‘G’ forces in a simulator. I highly recommend this course or one like it if possible, to improve your piloting skills!  

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Finally, here’s a really basic safety tip for you…regardless of the kind of flying that you do; always ask yourself, what’s next? What are the next 2 things?  Stay ahead of the airplane, don’t get behind it!! Seriously. Regardless of the increase in amount of automation found in modern cockpits, and what you are flying. Some pilots just get complacent. There’s no place for that in flying. Stay mentally ahead of the airplane! 

Finally, IF you are in need of an experienced instructor to work with you, in YOUR AIRPLANE (I only work with aircraft owners, not renters) to improve ‘rusty’ IFR or VFR piloting skills, provide avionics training, add or finish your instrument rating, or anything else, I AM available! I WILL travel to YOUR location. Contact me for more information  

Fly safely! 

John