Land and Hold Short: on flying small planes.

In spring 1976, I failed grade 7 French.

It was my delinquent year — I was almost two years younger than the other kids, starting the school year in 1975 still aged 10, and as hormones pulled my slightly-older friends in new directions, I found a different outlet, testing how many rules I could break without getting caught. Despite my failure, I joined the grade 8 French class the next year, paid attention, didn’t cheat, and ended up second in the class with 89% (my hormones had kicked in, and girls became more interesting than acting up).

In spring 2009, I failed my biennial IFR flight test.

In Canada, unlike the U.S., we have to redo the complete IFR flight test every two years to maintain our ratings. I passed in 2003, 2005, and 2007, but failed yesterday due to altitude deviations. I now need to be signed off by an instructor, then take the full flight test again. That may put an end to any hope of family trips or Hope Air flights this summer: without an instrument rating, it’s not really practical to fly on long trips around northeastern North America, unless you’re willing to wait 2 or 3 days for weather to clear at each stop.

Because of work, I haven’t flown much in the last year and a half. The hood/foggles don’t bother me, and I’m still good with the radio work, IFR procedures, heading control, and needle tracking, but I need to get back up and regain my altitude control. The Transport Canada test standard is +100 feet/-0 feet for IFR, and I dipped 50 feet below four times in my two approaches. Next time, I’ll remember to target 50 feet above minimum altitude as well, to give myself some wiggle room.

Aftermath

Obviously, as a 700-hour pilot with nearly 100 hours actual IMC, I was shocked and disappointed at the result, but I also recognize that it is my responsibility to fix the problem rather than looking for excuses. It’s important not to fall into bad habits, no matter how long you’ve flown, and it’s probably time for some recurrent training anyway. When I arrived back at my home airport, I went straight in and booked a two-hour lesson for next Tuesday with an IFR instructor. I’ll have him evaluate my flying, then we’ll put together a plan to get my altitude control back to test standards (as well as anything else that might have slipped).

The examiner (a very nice man, and a talented, 20,000+ hour pilot) felt terrible about failing me — he said I obviously know what I’m doing, had 4/4 on much of the test, probably just needed to go up once to get a sign off from an instructor so that I could redo the exam. I’m prepared, though, to work at this all summer if I need to.

Failing once in a while is good for the soul — if you never fail at anything, then you’re not really trying in life — but I don’t want to fail this particular test again, and with my confidence badly shaken, I’m afraid of messing things up next time that I took for granted this time (like holds and NDB approaches) even if I do fix my altitude control. I need not only to brush up my skills, but to get my confidence back.

A good day, all the same

Despite all this, it was a good day yesterday. First, I realized that I really do still care about flying — my first reaction wasn’t to give up, but to book some lessons and get back on the horse. Second, the Red Sox came back from a 1-3 deficit at the bottom of the 8th to beat the Yankees again, for 8 straight this season. And most importantly, I celebrated 21 years married to my best friend, and that easily trumps any flight test results.

When I was up practicing holds today, I realized something important: it’s not concentration, but lack of concentration that makes a good pilot.

Sure, on the ground concentration can be a good thing: you check weather and NOTAMs, plan your flight, preflight the plane, etc. giving your full concentration to each task, one after the other. But once you’re in the air, concentration is the last thing you want.

Hollywood wants us to think of pilots as alpha-wolf masters of concentration, flying the plane by sheer will power, but that doesn’t have much to do with being in a real cockpit during a real flight. Remember that wierd kid in your elementary school choir who could never focus on the song or conductor, but was always glancing up at the ceiling, down at the floor, at the kids beside him/her, at the door, out the window, etc.? That’s a future pilot.

The thing is, when you’re flying, there are lots of things happening at once, and every one seems to need your attention all the time. You simply can’t focus on a single task and finish it. Concentrating on tuning the radio? Guess what, your altitude just changed by 200 ft. Trying to get the gyro compass set correctly? Looks like you just blew through your next checkpoint. Trying to figure out where you are on the map? Maybe you should recover from this incipient spiral, first. It’s like driving a car, but with more speed, (sometimes) nothing visible out the window, and an extra dimension and two extra axes of rotation thrown in.

When a plane has two pilots, I imagine that they can divide up the work to some extent so that one can concentrate on something while the other flies, and certainly, an autopilot can help a lot, but I imagine that even on the flight deck of the most sophisticated airliner pilots have to keep their focus moving, all the time.

When you go to the other end of the spectrum — say, a private pilot (like me) flying single-pilot IFR in turbulence with no autopilot — it’s all about lack of concentration. Need to retune the radio? I can’t just look at the dial and keep turning until the right frequency, or the turbulence will have knocked me 20 degrees off course. Instead, I turn it two or three numbers, then back to the AI, ASI, AI, HI, TC, ALT, AI, turn it two or three numbers then back to the AI, ASI, AI, HI, TC, ALT, AI, check the oil pressure and temperature then back to the AI, ASI, AI, HI, TC, ALT, AI, turn the radio dial two or three numbers then back to the AI, ASI, AI, HI, TC, ALT, AI — that’s not necessarily the exact order of my scan, but you get the picture. If I have to look up an approach plate or a frequency in the CFS, it’s the same thing: two or three page turns at once, then back to the scan, then two or three more page turns, etc.

I once did 9 hours of that in a single day in IMC for a Hope Air flight, and I wanted to sleep for a week afterwards. I don’t know how commercial pilots like Aviatrix can do it day after day (I know she often flies without an autopilot, too).

Update: pix at the Rain Aviation Blog (via Dave Rooney’s comment).

My home airport, Ottawa Rockcliffe, was hit by severe winds yesterday: I’ve heard from 18-24 airplanes damaged, at least 10 of which are write-offs.

After supper today my spouse and I drove to the airport to check the damage. On the way there, driving along the Rockcliffe Parkway (past the fields where the RCMP Musical Ride horses graze), we could see a zig-zag line of mature trees snapped in half, while trees only metres away had not a twig disturbed.

Volunteers had spent the day clearing up at the airport, but the damage was still apparent: some planes with bent wings, others on their backs, and one smashed up against a fence and flattened so that you could barely tell it had been a plane. Most of the damaged planes were high-wings, which makes sense (if you’ve ever tried to taxi a high-wing plane in strong winds, you know what I’m talking about), but there was also a Cherokee Six on its back, having bent the vertical stab of the Cessna beside it on the way over.

Most planes, however, looked untouched. There were two badly damaged planes within 100 metres of my tie-down spot, but not only did my plane look OK through the fence (except rotated 5-10 degrees in its spot), but a big snow scoop that had been leaning against the box behind my plane hadn’t even tipped over. When I can get into the airport, I’ll check the control surfaces more closely for damage.

Given how specific the damage was — one plane might be totalled, while its neighbour was untouched — I suspect a tornado, though I haven’t seen official confirmation yet. Tornadoes aren’t incredibly common here in Ottawa, but they do happen. My brother, who lives a few kilometres from the airport, lost a window and a few screens to heavy winds. Someone my daughter knows in our neighbourhood had a roof ripped off a house. In my yard, one lawn chair blew over, and … er … that’s it. No branches down from the trees, no garbage cans blown around. Parts of the city lost power. My spouse and I were watching TV in the basement, and never even noticed the storm.

Here’s how some recent tweets describe flying:

LizaBelle30: Flying is like throwing yourself at the ground and missing

elysiancoffee: flying is like preparing oneself for a big performance in which I only become an instrument

johnnyo312: flying is so horrible now, the food is worst than McDonalds, service is very bad. Flying is like riding the greyhound bus.

Janellematthew: Flying is like driving at 40,000 feet

softserve: Flying is like being tattooed - it doesn’t get real excruciating until the three hour mark.

(Idea stolen from “Google is Like…“, which in turn was stolen from “CSS is like…“.)

Yesterday, I asked what WWII plane you would have chosen to fly. I thought my answer was not so obvious — I expected to see a lot of Spitfires, Mustangs, ME-109s, Zeros, B-29s, etc. — but two other people have already mentioned it in the comments to that posting. Oh, well.

The plane I’d have chosen first is the de Havilland Mosquito.

Doing more with less

I like the Mosquito because it exemplifies the best of engineering practices — stripping away features instead of adding them. The Mosquito design started as a medium bomber with two engines, three gun turrets and a six-man crew. Performance sucked. Their first impulse was to add two more engines. Any techie reading this will instantly recognize the first step in a f**ked project: two more engines make the plane even heavier, and it will have to carry more fuel, so it will fly slower, so it will probably need more guns to defend it, etc. etc.

But then something went right. Some suggested removing one of the gun turrets. Hey! The bomber’s a bit faster. Let’s try removing another turret. Hey, it’s so fast, why have guns at all? Take out the weight of the guns and ammo, and the four crew members to fire the guns, and the Mosquito was flying like nobody’s business. But that wasn’t the end. If it’s that fast, why carry lots of heavy metal armour? In fact, why not build the airframe out of wood?

Virtuous circle

As usually happens with successful projects, unexpected benefits began to appear. England was full of furniture factories that couldn’t contribute much to the war effort. However, their high-quality, low-fault-tolerance woodworking skills were exactly what was needed to build the Mosquito. (The English were good at that kind of improvisation: they also trained workers in bicycle factories to repair heavily damaged Spitfires, freeing the Supermarine factory to concentrate on building new ones.)

The light bomber version of the Mosquito could fly at almost 350 knots, comparable to the fastest (pre-jet) fighters in World War II, and comparable even to some modern light jets. It was so fast that it also saw uses as a fighter-bomber, a pathfinder plane, and even as a pure night fighter with radar equipment installed. The Wikipedia article quotes Hermann Göring’s opinion of the Mosquito in 1943, after a Mosquito squadron attacked a Berlin radio station, knocking him off the air:

In 1940 I could at least fly as far as Glasgow in most of my aircraft, but not now! It makes me furious when I see the Mosquito. I turn green and yellow with envy.

The British, who can afford aluminium better than we can, knock together a beautiful wooden aircraft that every piano factory over there is building, and they give it a speed which they have now increased yet again. What do you make of that?

What, indeed? Less is more, worse is better, the simplest thing that can possibly work, KISS — whatever you call it, stripping away features and striving for simplicity is the heart of great engineering.

Note: the Mosquito also has great geek cred, since it’s the plane that was used to evacuate quantum physicist Niels Bohr out of Stockholm (in the bomb bay, no less).

Runners-up

My #2 choice was the Douglas Dakota, known as the C-47 to the Americans, or the DC-3 in civilian life. It was the workhorse of the allied transportation effort, and the from all accounts, a great plane to fly.

My #3 choice is a little more unusual: the L4 Grasshopper. I’m not providing a link for that, but those of you familiar with that plane can provide more info in comments, if you’d like.

Here’s a question for the aviation bloggers reading this posting: if this were World War II, and you could have a two-year mission to fly any military aircraft you chose (from any country), what would it be? To make it easier, I’m going to wave my cyber-wand and make two things happen:

1. You can be any age, gender, or physical condition. Even if you’re a 55-year-old, overweight, bald female with an astigmatism, for the sake of this exercise you can be a 21-year-old male track star with a baby face, a mop of hair, and lightning-fast reflexes.

2. You won’t hurt anyone but yourself. If you choose a bomber, I guarantee that all your bombs will fall on unoccupied factories of no historical significance. If you choose a fighter, the crew of any plane you shoot down will bail out safely. etc. (too bad that didn’t work in real life).

So what’s your favorite WWII plane, and why? If you want, list your 2nd and 3rd choices as well. Mine is coming up in my next posting (hint: it’s not obvious).

Four and a half years ago I complained about a Temporary Flight Restriction (TFR) for President Bush’s visit to Ottawa. I like President Obama a lot better than I liked President Bush — and I’m very excited that he’s making his first foreign visit as president to my city — but out of fairness, I still have to complain about the TFR.

You see, a TFR isn’t a very Canadian thing. It’s not that we don’t know what fear and terrorism are — around 1970, bombs were going off in Montreal, and a provincial cabinet minister was kidnapped and murdered; even more recently, the Iranian embassy here in Ottawa was bombed; 24 of the 9/11 victims were Canadian; and the police in Toronto recently arrested a bunch of bozos who were talking big about doing terrorist stuff, though it’s unlikely they were smart or motivated enough to pull anything off. It’s just that, like the British with their IRA crisis, at least some of us have learned that heavy-handed security doesn’t actually solve problems; instead, it makes people more scared, and when people are scared, the world becomes more dangerous for everyone.

So we don’t shut down hundreds of square miles of airspace for our amusement parks, our Prime Minister, or even our Queen. In fact, our Prime Minister sometimes walks his kids to school. Before 9/11, you could essentially fly right past the windows of Parliament; now, you have to fly 1,000 ft AGL over Parliament, or 0.5 nm away, but you can still fly pretty close (and even those restrictions don’t apply if you’re landing or taking off IFR under ATC control).

‘Nuff said. Here’s the TFR for the president’s visit next week:

CYOW DESIGNATED AIRSPACE HANDBOOK IS AMENDED AS FOLLOWS:
1) CYR537, PARLIAMENT HILL ON, REVISED TO READ: CLASS F
RESTRICTED AIRSPACE IS ESTABLISHED WITHIN THE AREA BOUNDED
BY 12 NM RADIUS OF 452529N 754159W (PARLIAMENT HILL),
SFC TO 12,500 FT MSL. NO PERSON SHALL OPR AN ACFT WITHIN THE
AREA EXC FOR STATE ACFT, MIL, POLICE OPS, REGULARLY SKED
COMMERCIAL PASSENGER AND CARGO CARRIERS, EMERG OR HUMANITARIAN
FLT AUTH BY ATC.  FOR AUTH ACFT OPR WITHIN CYR537,
THE OPR RULES FOR EXISTING AIRSPACE APPLY.
DLA MAY BE ANTICIPATED.
0902191600/0902192030.
2) CYR539, OTTAWA ON, CLASS F RESTRICTED AIRSPACE IS ESTABLISHED
WITHIN THE AREA BOUNDED BY 10 NM RADIUS OF 451921N 754009W
(OTTAWA/MACDONALD-CARTIER INTL), SFC TO 12,500 FT MSL. NO PERSON
SHALL OPR AN ACFT WITHIN THE AREA DESCRIBED EXC FOR STATE ACFT,
MIL, POLICE OPS, EMERG OR HUMANITARIAN FLT AUTH BY RCMP AT
1-888-420-7958.  FOR AUTH ACFT OPR WITHIN CYR539, THE OPR RULES
FOR EXISTING AIRSPACE APPLY.
0902191515/0902191545 AND 0902192210/0902192255.
3) CYR540, OTTAWA ON, CLASS F RESTRICTED AIRSPACE IS ESTABLISHED
WITHIN THE AREA BOUNDED BY 30 NM RADIUS OF 451921N 754009W
(OTTAWA/MACDONALD-CARTIER INTL) EXCLUDING CYR537 AND CYR539.
SFC TO 12,500 FT MSL. NO PERSON SHALL OPR AN ACFT WITHIN THE AREA
DESCRIBED EXC FOR STATE ACFT, MIL AND POLICE OPS, REGULARLY SKED
COMMERCIAL PASSENGER, CARGO CARRIERS, EMERG OR HUMANITARIAN FLT.
FOR MIL AND POLICE ACFT OPR WITHIN CYR540, THE OPR RULES FOR
CLASS G AIRSPACE APPLY. FOR OTHER ACFT LISTED ABV, OPR WITHIN
CYR540, THE RULES FOR EXISTING AIRSPACE APPLY.
OPR PROC FOR ALL OTHER ACFT ENTERING, EXITING OR TRANSITING
THROUGH CYR540 AUTH BY ATC SHALL:
-PRIOR TO FLT PLANNING INTO CYR540, HAVE AN AUTH NUMBER OBTAINED
FM THE RCMP 613-949-1737, 18 FEB 1300 TO 2100,
OR 1-888-420-7958, 19 FEB 1200 TO 2300. THE REQUEST WILL INCLUDE
THE NAMES AND BIRTHDAYS OF ALL PERSONS ONBOARD.
-HAVE FLT PLAN WITH AUTH NUMBER IN THE REMARKS SECTION IN ORDER
TO OBTAIN CLEARANCE TO OPR WITHIN CYR540.
-BE ON AN ACTIVE IFR OR VFR FLT PLAN WITH A DISCRETE CODE
ASSIGNED BY ATC 1-866-WXBRIEF AND SQUAWK THE DISCRETE CODE PRIOR
TO DEP AND AT ALL TIMES WHILE OPR WITHIN CYR540.
-REMAIN IN TWO-WAY RDO COM AT ALL TIMES WITH ATC.
-ACFT DEP FM AN AD WITHIN CYR540, MUST ESTABLISH AND MAINTAIN,
AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, TWO WAY RDO COM WITH ATC.
-PRIOR TO ENTERING CYR540, ACFT MUST ESTABLISH AND MAINTAIN TWO
WAY RDO COM WITH OTTAWA TML 127.7.
-ACFT ARR OR DEP LOCAL AD WITHIN CYR540 AND AUTH ACFT TRANSITING
THROUGH CYR540, REQUIRE AUTH FM OTTAWA TML FRQ 127.7.
DLA MAY BE ANTICIPATED.
0902191500 TIL 0902192300

Basically, unless you’re security, an airline, or medevac, don’t fly within 30nm of the Ottawa Airport from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm next Thursday below 12,500 ft MSL, period. That’s actually harsher than the typical presidential TFR in the U.S.

Update: removed Le Bourget.

ICAO Class A (”class alfa”) airspace is the strictest of all, allowing only IFR operations (without special permission). In the U.S. and southern Canada, most airspace between FL180 and FL600 is class A (the floor is higher as you get further north in Canada).

Even the busiest airports rarely designate their control zones as class A: the U.S., for example, contains 15 of the world’s 30 busiest airports by passenger traffic, but they are designated only Class B (”class bravo”), so routine controlled VFR operations are still permitted (I’ve flown my warrior into some of them, IFR and VFR).

Around the world, however, there exists a tiny handful of Class A airports. Here are the Class A airports I know about so far:

• Ben Gurion International Airport, Tel Aviv, Israel
• Charles de Gaulle International Airport, Paris, France
• El Dorado International Airport, Bogatá, Columbia
• Gibraltar Airport, Gibraltar
• Heathrow Airport, London, UK
• Le Bourget Airport, Paris, France
• Orly Airport, Paris, France

There appears to be no single reason for the designation — it’s certainly not due to traffic alone. Tel Aviv is probably Class A for security reasons, being so near hostile soil, and Bogatá’s designation may have something to do with drug smuggling. Heathrow is busy (though not as busy as some U.S. airports), but it also operates in very confined airspace. Gibraltar has about three scheduled flights a day — go figure. (It’s near the Spanish border, but many major airports operate very close to international borders; many busy airports also operate near high terrain). Le Bourget has no scheduled flights at all, but Parisians are Parisians, and zut alors! if London has one Class A airport, Paris will show them by having three two.

Reagan National Airport in Washington DC has additional restrictions that make it similar to Class A, but is still designated Class B. Does anyone know of any other Class A airports that I’ve missed?

Rumour says that Microsoft layed off most or all of the Flight Simulator development team this morning (Gamasutra, Gizmodo). Microsoft (originally, Sublogic) flight simulator has been around for 29 years — I first tried it in ‘82 or ‘83.

If the stories are true, why not sell it, instead of shutting it down? Lots of other software companies would be thrilled to have such a popular and prestigious title, and it wouldn’t compete against anything else at Microsoft.

In any case, whether you’re an aluminum-and-15w50 pilot practicing approaches, or a gamer who does all your flying on a computer screen, there are still choices. Here are the two best candidates:

• FlightGear — an Open Source flight simulator that runs on most computer platforms. The scenery is a bit rough around the edges, but it’s solid and usable.
• X-Plane — a commercial product that already gets some retail distribution. It has a very devoted following, though I’ve never liked the demos I’ve tried as much as I’ve liked FlightGear and MSFS.

I’m looking forward to hearing more news. The huge MSFS developer community must be in shock (as well as the many small companies devoted entirely to producing MSFS add-ons).

While we don’t have all the details yet, it sounds like amazing work from a US Airways crew, ditching a jetliner (a 737?) into the Hudson River today (story) right after takeoff from La Guardia Airport. According to witnesses, the landing was smooth, the plane stayed upright and afloat, and all 148 passengers and crew were able to be evacuated off the wings to nearby boats.

That’s a non-trivial accomplishment at any time, but especially with an apparent engine failure right after takeoff — a very busy time on the flight deck — when the crew had no time to prepare mentally for the ditching. Expect “double engine failure immediately after takeoff over water” to be a popular simulator exercise for airline pilots for the next while.

The British Government has approved adding a third runway to Heathrow Airport (CBC News story). There has been huge opposition to this, mainly from environmentalists. I believe (a) that the environmentalists’ reasoning is completely misguided, and (b) that they’re right, anyway.

A few days ago, a woman went into labour and gave birth on a scheduled airline flight from Amsterdam to Boston [story]. At the time of the birth, the airliner was in Canadian airspace. The flight crew had considered diverting, but the doctors who were assisting (passengers called in to help) said there was no point, because the labour was happening so quickly. When the flight landed in Boston, U.S. immigration admitted the mother as a Ugandan citizen, but the baby as a Canadian citizen. Now the Government of Canada has agreed, and granted Baby Sasha Canadian citizenship [story].

Canadian soil

Anyone born on Canadian soil (other than a child of diplomats) is automatically a Canadian citizen, but what about someone born in Canadian airspace?

Here’s the problem: there are no customs requirements for entering Canadian or American airspace, when the final destination is not in that country — the pilot only has to be in contact with an air traffic control unit. Sometimes the controllers aren’t even from the same country: Canadian controllers in Toronto, for example, handle some U.S. airspace in Upper Michigan, while American controllers handle some Canadian airspace around Windsor, ON.

A new business opportunity?

That means that I could take off from the U.S. in a medevac-equipped Cessna Caravan with a woman about to give birth, get permission from American controllers to enter Canadian airspace, then circle over Windsor until the baby is born. Voilà! A new Canadian citizen!

To be honest, that sounds a little far-fetched as an immigration scam or as a grey-marked business model: it would be easier for the pregnant woman just to come into Canada as a tourist and give birth more comfortably on the ground. Besides, I’m hugely pro-immigration — I think Canada’s new immigrant communities are among its greatest strengths, and I welcome Baby Sasha as a fellow citizen.

Whose laws?

Still, it’s an interesting precedent that someone who was never vetted by immigration officials can still be considered to be “in Canada”. My concern is that it might lead to both Canada and the U.S. imposing new restrictions on foreign planes using their airspace.

In 10 years, will Canadian G.A. pilots still be able to take the shortcut across Maine to Nova Scotia, for example, just by making a quick radio call to Boston Center and getting a squawk code, or will we have to file paperwork five days in advance and wait for approval from Washington? Does that mean that Canadian law now applies to passengers while they’re in Canadian airspace (not just aviation regulations, but other laws)? Will Saudi laws about alcohol and women’s clothing apply to passengers in an airliner while it’s passing over Saudi Arabia?

Stay tuned.

I’m late on this (sorry, other air-bloggers), but here goes …

5. Expand my horizons. This year, I pushed my southern limit a bit by flying all the way south to Dulles Airport. My other extremes flying from Ottawa are Sault Ste. Marie to the west, Baie Comeau to the north, and Port Hawkesbury (Cape Breton) to the east. Maybe this is the summer I’ll fly up to Hudson Bay, just for the hell of it.

4. Seriously consider taking on one or two partners for my Warrior. It’s a lot of work taking care of an airplane, and it could be fun to share.

3. Ace my IFR renewal and my medical. I did my last medical when I was 39, so it was good for five years. My last IFR flight test was in 2007, and was good for two years. They both come due this summer/fall, and the medical will be every two years from now on (since I’m over 40). Recurrent training will help with the first one, and exercise and healthy eating will help with the second.

2. Don’t get stressed. After around 700 hours, I still get stressed (as in can’t-eat, rush-to-the-bathroom stressed) before almost every flight, especially if I have passengers. Some time between starting the pre-flight and starting the engine, it all melts away. I’d like to enjoy the anticipation of the flight as well as the actual flying.

1. Use the blog test for all my flying decisions. Would I be comfortable blogging tomorrow about my decisions and actions today, without making any excuses, modifications, or omissions? If not, time to come up with a new plan.

Support and encouragement from my friends reading this will be very welcome.

I don’t care that it holds only one person. When can I buy one of these?

190 knots true airspeed at 17,500 feet burning 3.5 gallons per hour — very nice! He can get 50 miles to the gallon at that setting (comparable to an economy car), or 100 miles to the gallon at a more economical power setting (comparable to a motor scooter).

Seasons greetings, fellow geo-geeks! Here’s my problem. Right now, I have organized OurAirports like this:

world : continent *
continent : country *
country : region *
region : airport *

It’s the kind of neat data structure that people like me love, but that never quite works. First of all, not every country is divided into regions (provinces/states/etc.) and I don’t always know what region an airport is in, but I deal with that by adding an “Unassigned” pseudo-region to every country.

More importantly, not every country belongs to a single continent. The most obvious exceptions are Russia and Turkey, both of which span Europe and Asia, but there may be others that I haven’t thought of.

So here are my questions:

1. Are there any countries besides Russia and Turkey that span more than one continent?
2. Are there any subdivisions of the above countries that span more than one continent? For example, does Turkey have a province, or does Russia have an oblast that lies in both Asia and Europe?

I’m trying to figure out if I can link regions to continents, or if I have do have a link from every single airport.

Thanks in advance for any help.

I’ve added a map of members to OurAirports:

http://www.ourairports.com/members/

You can see where members live, and if there are any at airports near you (or near where you plan to travel to). Zoom in to see more members (there are about 750 members in total).

These are based on the home airports specified in members’ profiles. It’s nice to see lots outside North America.

This is going to be some story when we get the details:

Pair aboard downed plane from N.L. found in life-raft off Baffin Island (CBC)

A small plane ditches in the Arctic, just before the start of winter. Both occupants somehow make it into a life raft, and are rescued some time later by a fishing boat. At a very minimum, they must have been wearing survival suits, but I’m not sure even that would be any kind of guarantee. It was -25° C here in Ottawa this morning, and I shudder to think of being out in a life raft for hours and hours in the dark, and even colder temperatures.

Update: The CBC story has more info now. They landed on ice, their plane broke through and sank with their liferaft, and they spent 18 hours stranded on some ice before being picked up. It was only -13C there, quite a bit warmer than Ottawa this morning. They were wearing survival suits.

Yes, Virginia, there are more than 40,000 airports in the world! Thanks to our contributors, OurAirports now lists more than 40,000 airports, heliports, and seaplane bases around the world. That’s a milestone I’ve been watching for ever since I set up the site.

I also think it’s cool that over 5,000 of those airports have actually been visited by at least one OurAirports member — that’s 13% coverage, just from the members of one little web site.

Nearly all of the recent contributions have been for airports outside North America, where public data sources are sparse — we now list over 3,500 airports for Brazil for example (more than Canada), nearly 1,700 for Australia, and 422 for South Africa.

I know there must be lots more out there — a country as large as Russia is unlikely to have only 311 airports, and even the little Falkland Islands are supposed to have a landing strip in every settlement, so we’re missing at least 20-30 strips there.

If you have or can find information, please share. Everything you contribute to OurAirports is free for anyone to use (free as in “beer” and “speech”), and you can download daily data dumps for use in your own projects, so you’re sharing information with the whole community, not locking it up in a single site.

Teterboro Airport, March 2005: loading bags into the Warrior for the flight home, after our first family trip to New York City.

I’d been an aircraft owner for 2 1/2 years at that point. I’m still not used to it now. My girls loved all the free swag in the ladies’ room at Atlantic Aviation (it was the FBO that Oprah used to visit NYC).

See comments: Hamish made me strike one.

Via Aviatrix, the challenge is to list three things I’ve done that I don’t think any of my readers have done. If anyone has done one (let me know in the comments), then I have to strike it and add something else. I’m starting with non-aviation stuff:

1. Found myself at the centre of a (minor) cold war intrigue involving both CSIS and KGB agents.

2. Been interviewed by the Washington Post.

3. Spent a week in downtown Amsterdam without taking a curiosity tour of the red light district.

3. Given guided tours in four different languages (English, French, Spanish, and German) on the same day.

Do I have to strike any of these?