Dreams of Aviation Ever since I was just a youngster I have always had a fascination with airplanes. When I took my first trip on an airplane I was really uneasy about it. Then they brought me into the cockpit and let me see all the instruments and we talked about how planes worked. My fears al...

What I Knew On the Saturday morning of my first flight, I woke up with anticipation of what was to come. During the previous night, I had been dreaming of my recent activities. The week before, I had talked to an Air Force recruiter. During the conversation, I told him of my desire to join t...

Arming Airline Pilots: A Good Solution to a Bad Problem Following September 11th, the nation began questioning the safety of the crew and passengers aboard it's airlines flights. Many solutions were proposed, including the very controversial issue of arming cockpit crews with firearms. C...

Fifty years ago, in 1947, it was common knowledge that there was a "Wall of Air" at the speed of sound. As an airplane neared this critical point, shock waves would pound its wings and tail. The pilot would lose control, a condition then called "compressibility." Often, the airplane would shatter in...

Man's dream of flying has been apparent almost as long as mankind himself. However, the concept of an aircraft has only been around for approximately two hundred years. Before this time, man tried to fulfill this dream by mimicking the birds. They first built machines called ornithopters to u...

Commercial airline accidents are often very catastrophic and can be attributed to human error in over 60% of all cases (Salas, Burke, Bowers, & Wilson 2001). One of the largest sources of human error is a lack of teamwork amongst the flight crew. The tasks involved in safely flying an aircraft are v...