AOPA Pilot Magazine - Turbine Edition

There are so many airplanes out there to love—why not appreciate each one for its singular worth?

By J. Mac McClellan

We’ve all done it. Looked all over the cockpit for something to prop up in the windows to block the torturing sun at cruise altitude.

Fancy new avionics suites, swanky cabins, entertainment screens, and Wi-Fi installations may be all the rage, but it’s a turbine airplane’s bleed air system that does the grunt work. Sometimes called air management or pneumatic systems, bleed air systems perform loads of essential chores. Good thing they mainly work in the background, requiring little in the way of pilot workload. In many airplanes, all that’s needed is to confirm the proper switches (there may be as few as four) are set to the Auto positions—and that there are no system warnings.

Maybe you co-own your aircraft, or you lease it to others. Many aircraft are used by multiple individuals or companies—it certainly helps with cost efficiency and expands access to aircraft for those who want to fly more. But what happens if there is an accident when you are not in actual possession or operational control of your aircraft and someone else is?

Is buying a used turboprop a good idea? The advantages of buying a used turboprop aircraft include, first and foremost, the depreciation factor. Similar to automobiles, when you buy a new aircraft, much of the depreciation happens at the onset. Usually, the depreciation curve is the steepest in the first five years. Therefore, buying a used turbine aircraft will save on the initial costs.

Imagine you’ve taken the leap to learn to fly and challenged yourself even further by signing up for your lessons in Alaska. You’re all in, and you’ll be doing this as quickly as humanly possible, but you’d like to enjoy yourself and maybe even share the experience with a friend or fellow student.

Few inventions have changed the ways flying is taught or how the experience is conveyed more than action cameras. These small, lightweight, extremely capable, mass-market products have become pervasive in aircraft cockpits during the past decade, and pilots have enthusiastically adopted them—with both commendable and regrettable results.