Watching Jim, you learn how easy flying is, how effortless this wonderful art can be. But how do Jim Gannett and his like accomplish this simplicity? They study and practice, enthusiastically pursuing the art of flight, until knowledge gives them confidence and practice provides the skill to perform. It is there for all of us.

Reading this book you get to fly with the author, who's career at TWA spanned DC-2's to the B-747, and learn his distilled practical knowledge. Check lists, habits, emergencies, control smoothness — it is all here. People say that if you want to be successful in something, you should hang out with people who already show the qualities you desire. This book is a way to hang with a true master pilot. (And if you were wondering, the Jim he is writing about was Jim Gannett, who was Boeing’s senior test pilot.)

Get rid at the outset of the idea that the airplane is only an air-going sort of automobile. It isn’t. It may sound like one and smell like one, and it may have been interior decorated to look like one; but the difference is — it goes on wings.

Still the best way to get the fundamentals straight. In the 1930’s test pilot Wolfgang noticed that the words and the realities of piloting did not seem to agree. After careful thought, he published a series of articles for Air Facts magazine that analyzed the true actions of stick and rudder. The book was released in 1944 and has been in print ever since.

Be your own greatest critic. Accept each flight as a challenge…. Work to your maximum ability; endeavor at all times to fly clearances exactly; stay right on your heading and course and altitude; try to fly so smoothly that the passengers will never know when you’ve made a mistake. You will know when you’ve flown a good flight, and your self-satisfaction will surpass any complement that may be given you.

Where Stick and Rudder is perfect for a tailwheel student, Fly The Wing is perfect for the turboprop or B-737 student. It’s one of my most dog-eared books, as I try to read it before every simulator training session. Covers in detail all major procedures required to master handling a large airplane. Written by a master who learnt to fly with a barnstormer, earned two Distinguished Flying Crosses flying B-24’s, and retired as an airline check airman with 35,000 hours and 500 students taught.

Do not become lazy in your professional lives. The autopilot is a great comfort, so are the flight director and the approach coupler. But do not get into the position where you need these devices to complete the flight. Keep in practise in raw I.L.S.. particularly in crosswinds. Keep in practice in hand-flying the aeroplane at altitude and in making purely visual approaches.

Definative classic of big jet flying. The vast majority of the book is an “explanation of the significant difference in flying qualities between jet transport aeroplanes and piston-engined transport aeroplanes together with some other aspects of jet transport handling”. Written by the famed Chief Test Pilot of the United Kingdom Airworthiness Authority. Highly readable text aimed at flying pilots, packed full of important knowledge that defines the big jet world. Worthwhile for students moving up to jets, and experienced captains looking to understand the how’s and why’s of jet transports. Written before glass cockpits and computers, but the aerodynamics and physics havn't changed, so it’s still all applicable now.

You’ll stumble into it, but you’ll know what it is … instantly. Then you’ll become a believer! It'll push up right from the seat of your pants. Its strength will astonish you, and you will truly climb on wings. The landscape falls away, while the ceiling seems limitless. The is the power; to use it is the skill. This is what the whole thing is about.

Lift is the difference between gliding down to earth, and silently soaring upwards like a bird. If you want to experience pure flight, get rid of the engines and learn to pilot a glider. It was as a new instructor that I noticed that my German commercial students were all expert at slow-flight, stalls and landings. I eventually figured out they had started in gliders. I didn't soar without an engine till after flying jets, but it was like starting out again as a pilot.

I hadn’t given any more thought to weather than the next person. What captured me was the idea of weather as a living, breathing thing. You don’t just type in a bunch of numbers and data. You visualize it. You see waves, you see storm clouds, you see the system.

If you decide you want to be a pilot, in addition to learning about airplanes, you have just made the decision to learn about weather. It is what we fly in. An understanding of weather — the ocean of air — will improve your safety tenfold and turbo-charge your enjoyment. The first two books are both classics written by master airmen. Buck is a practical book on flying in all kinds of weather. Not theory, but insights from an airline captain who crossed the Atlantic over 2,000 times and headed a four-year bad-weather research project for the USAF. Murchie is a 400 plus page tour de force describing the world of the airman. Wind, clouds, history, birds, science, flight. The last book is almost 300 pages on just the wind. Exciting and well-written, it helps us overlearn about the pressure gradients that move us aloft, and rule our world.