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Hello, hello, hello! This week’s Cockpit Chronicles are tales from flying my 1956 Cessna 172, N5140A. It was the spring of 2002, and I was shopping for a Cessna 172. I flew to Dallas, Texas, to visit my friend Rocky and see what I could find. Rocky had a friend named Hank who kept a 172 in a barn beside the grass runway at his North Texas home. Hank was an octogenarian and quite a character. We flew from Rocky’s grass runway to what could loosely be called Hank’s “airport.” H

Now, for this week’s flying stories… ✈️ One nice morning, I was taxiing a DC-9 out for takeoff in Grand Rapids for a 20-minute hop over to Detroit Metro. A family of ducks was crossing the taxiway in front of me. The mother duck was leading ten ducklings, all in a row. She had her head on a swivel—looking ahead, looking back at her brood, and I swear, looking directly at me. I stopped the plane and set the parking brake. I picked up the microphone to explain to our passengers

Hello, My Friends, Northwest Airlines had a tug driver at New York’s LaGuardia Airport who looked exactly like Rod Stewart. Same hair. Same chiseled facial features. Same stature. Same demeanor. It was always amusing to be pushed back from the gate and see “Rod Stewart” driving the tug. One day, a mechanic came up to the cockpit, and I asked him about the tug driver. The mechanic shuddered. “Oh, yeah—Joe. Don’t say anything to Joe about looking like Rod Stewart. He doesn’t li

I started flying when I was 15 years old, performing odd jobs at a local airport in exchange for an occasional airplane ride. At 16, I got a job and saved every penny I earned. During the summer between my junior and senior years of high school, at age 17, I earned my private pilot’s license in west Texas. I spent my twenties in the Dallas, Texas area, earning my wings and building flight time in pursuit of a flying career. At the time, I worked for a telephone company that o

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen, In February 2019, I underwent open-heart surgery. As I was preparing to return to flying for Delta, COVID arrived and everything stopped. My last flight before surgery was to London in December 2018. I had no idea it would be my last, Amanda wasn't with me, and I was copilot— that is not the way to end a flying career. Last November, after years of jumping through hoops, the FAA finally restored my First Class Medical. When I submitted my fr

If you have not read "An interesting experience from a pilot " please go back and read that blog before this one! My first flight trip on the DC-8 was a day trip through South America. I was a brand-new Flight Engineer operating under the watchful eye of a 75-year-old Flight Engineer instructor. The first leg, from Miami to Lima, Peru, was an exhilarating five-hour flight over Cuba, the Caribbean Sea, and the mountainous jungles of Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. I still remembe

The DC-8 was originally built in 1958 by the Douglas Aircraft Company. It was Mr. Douglas's first jet transport; its predecessor, the DC-7, was a piston-powered airliner. The DC-8 is a large airplane. The stretched versions could carry up to 18 cargo containers (4.5 tractor-trailer loads) or, in passenger service, as many as 259 passengers. Early jet engines were loud, smoky, and thirsty. I remember standing on the ramp in Trinidad watching friends depart in a DC-8. The groun

Have you ever wondered where our 1940 Boeing Stearman has been… and whose hands have guided it over the past 86 years? This week I took a deep dive into our Stearman’s history, and what I uncovered was far more fascinating than I ever expected. 📜 Among the aircraft records is the original Bill of Sale showing that Kenneth L. Bemis of Brawley, California purchased our Stearman in 1952—for the princely sum of $10.00. 💵 Yes… ten dollars. Forty-two years later, in 1994, Mr. Bem