‘By Barry Schiff’ turns 60

It was his first flight—banished to New Jersey for the summer by his parents in hopes that he would get away from the crowd of ne’er-do-wells he had been hanging with near home in Los Angeles. After saying hi to grandma and grandpa when he got off the airplane at LaGuardia, he was off to the library to learn all he could about aerodynamics.

Seven decades later he’s still on that quest, and all of general aviation has benefitted from it.

Back home in Los Angeles, Schiff soloed on his sixteenth birthday and earned his private pilot certificate on his seventeenth birthday. He went on to an amazing career as an airline pilot for TWA, using the time aloft to contemplate things aeronautic. Those ideas soon emerged as occasional and then regular magazine articles for what was then known as The AOPA Pilot magazine. His first such offering was about celestial navigation and titled, “Why Not Really Learn to Navigate?” Appearing in the June 1963 edition of the magazine, the article included black and white photos of young Schiff demonstrating how to use a sextant in an era when pilots navigated by such modern means as “omni and radar, ADF homers, and DME.” This marks the sixtieth anniversary of that first article. Hundreds more followed, including nearly 400 monthly “Proficient Pilot” columns and hundreds of “Test Pilot” quizzes with more than 3,000 questions and answers, from the obvious to the esoteric.

A compilation of those Q&As became a book called, Test Pilot: 1001 Things You Thought You Knew About Aviation. In all, Schiff has written 13 books, including co-authoring two novels. He’s appeared in dozens of aviation videos and was a regular on the Wide World of Flying video magazine series in the 1980s—later called Wonderful World of Flying.

While he’s flown and written about 363 models of airplanes—everything from simple Aeroncas to the U–2 spyplane, the stories closest to his heart are those featuring his family. His favorite: a trip to Hawaii as a passenger with son Brian as the captain. Barry’s retirement flight was with Brian as his co-pilot. More recently, Schiff proudly wrote about how Brian taught his son, Jonathan, to fly, bringing a third generation of Schiffs into aviation.

When he turned 80, Schiff found the original Aeronca 7AC Champion he had soloed in back in 1954, and flew it solo again. His first passenger after solo was his then girlfriend, Diane Phillips. She too showed up at the airport that day 64 years later and he once again flew her around the patch, documenting the festive experience in a feature article in the October 2018 issue of AOPA Pilot called, “Full Circle.”

Now, at age 85, he’s not slowed down at all. He still writes features, columns, and “Test Pilot” quizzes (although, he says, coming up with thought-provoking questions is ever-more challenging), and he’s chair of the AOPA Foundation Legacy Society. Last year, his newest book An Illustrated Guide to Flying was published by ASA. While most of his work over the decades has been educating and entertaining pilots, the new book—a 15-year effort—is meant for those who are simply curious about aviation and aerodynamics, perhaps some 13-year-old peering out the window and wondering just how that wing is holding up that big airplane.

Thank you, Barry, for 60 years of work and all you have done for aviation. We look forward to many more. And, oh, by the way, your next month’s column is late—again.