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Boldmethod Flight Training
Company blog · boldmethod.comother
Boldmethod Flight Training is the company blog at boldmethod.com. Since 2014, 24 different Hacker News readers have linked it 27 times, most often “The aerodynamics of a turn: How an airplane turns”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-02, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (21) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Boldmethod's aviation explainers, mainly on aerodynamic stability, autopilot, and flight-control topics, as a reference when discussing crashes and aviation news.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 21 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Daily flight training blog, online training courses and free CFI tools
Most-linked posts?
- /learn-to-fly/aerodynamics/3-types-of-static-and-dynamic-stability-in-aircraft/3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2019-03-28
- The aerodynamics of a turn: How an airplane turns2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-11-10
What Hacker News says?
The generally accepted worldwide rule is that airspace is owned by the country under it. You actually pay overflight fees for use of a countries airspace and are subject to its air traffic control. The corporate response will always be "don't get shot down." In the US and most everywhere else, when you willfully ignore ATC they scramble fighter jets. Every pilot is trained in what this looks like and how to respond,…
Comment linking /learn-to-fly/regulations/inflight-interception-procedures-for-pilots/
on “Belarus 'diverts Ryanair flight to arrest journalist', opposition says”Submitted The aerodynamics of a turn: How an airplane turns as a story · 8 points
HN discussion> Hence the various governments refusal to allow them into specific airspace so they’d run out of fuel and be forced to stop without being ordered to? > It would be illegal for the pilots to ignore such an order while inside a country's airspace. The pilots could report that they are having technical difficulties and are unable to override the current route programmed into the autopilot. They are also have issues di…
Comment linking /blog/lists/2021/01/10-times-you-should-say-unable-to-atc/
on “Belarus 'diverts Ryanair flight to arrest journalist', opposition says”Submitted Watch Bob Hoover Pour Tea While Doing a Barrel Roll as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> It would be illegal for the pilots to ignore such an order while inside a country's airspace. The pilots could report that they are having technical difficulties and are unable to override the current route programmed into the autopilot. They are also have issues disengaging the autopilot. So they are "forced" to continue their flight on their pre-filed flight plan. Any direction from ATC would be replied with "Un…
Comment linking /blog/lists/2021/01/10-times-you-should-say-unable-to-atc/
on “Belarus 'diverts Ryanair flight to arrest journalist', opposition says”Submitted Erratic ILS Signal Causes a Missed Approach as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI presume GP was referring to the other article linked above, not Sully's. https://www.boldmethod.com/learn-to-fly/aerodynamics/3-types...
Comment linking /learn-to-fly/aerodynamics/3-types-of-static-and-dynamic-stability-in-aircraft/
on “My Letter to the Editor of New York Times Magazine”Submitted Garmin, Cirrus, and Piper Release Emergency Autoland System for Passengers as a story · 1 points
HN discussionMy father-in-law is the former chief test pilot for the RAF. And he was Head of Flight Test and Evaluation for large parts of the Eurofighter programme (now retired). He has decades of pilot, engineering and aircraft design experience. We have had numerous discussions on this topic and any pilot with an understanding of the definition of the term will tell you that the 737 Max is inherently stable. My comments parro…
Comment linking /learn-to-fly/aerodynamics/3-types-of-static-and-dynamic-stability-in-aircraft/
on “My Letter to the Editor of New York Times Magazine”Submitted 7 Navigation Systems You're Glad You Don't Have to Use on Your Checkride as a story · 1 points
HN discussion> marketing an inherently unstable aircraft The 737 Max is not an inherently unstable aircraft and to say so grossly misunderstands the term and what MCAS was doing. MCAS existed to make an inherently stable aircraft handle in the same was as previous 737 generations. Design changes had forced the addition of this system in order to retain the same type rating because those design changes caused the aircraft to hand…
Comment linking /learn-to-fly/aerodynamics/3-types-of-static-and-dynamic-stability-in-aircraft/
on “My Letter to the Editor of New York Times Magazine”Submitted Boeing 777 Infographic – By The Numbers as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI believe warning of wake turbulence is very common after take off of any large and heavy aircraft. Wingtip vorticies can sit over a runway (or even drift over to parallel runways) for minutes after a takeoff. They are very dangerous to smaller aircrafts. The key to avoiding vorticies is to take off at a point earlier than the previous aircraft and to climb at a steeper angle (vorticies travel behind and downwards f…
Comment linking /images/learn-to-fly/aerodynamics/avoid-wake-turbulence-during-takeoff-and-landing/takeoff-profile.jpg
on “Enroute Airbus A380 wake flips Challenger business jet upside down”afaik unstable airframes are the norm for some military/experimental planes (fighter jets for example) to allow more manoeuvrability. It's definitely not something you want (or need) on a commercial airplane, it adds a ton of complexity and you're not going to do a high G turn or a cobra manoeuvre with a 737. https://www.boldmethod.com/learn-to-fly/aerodynamics/3-types...
Comment linking /learn-to-fly/aerodynamics/3-types-of-static-and-dynamic-stability-in-aircraft/
on “Software Won’t Fix Boeing’s ‘Faulty’ Airframe”Fighter jets are also unstable, by design. Commercial aircraft are required to be stable, as they don't need to change direction quickly, but rather be as safe as possible. https://www.boldmethod.com/learn-to-fly/aerodynamics/3-types...
Comment linking /learn-to-fly/aerodynamics/3-types-of-static-and-dynamic-stability-in-aircraft
on “A naked skydive inspired a way to keep pilots oriented in flight”The VSI (vertical speed indicator) is the "freefall indicator" of which you speak. :) The problem is that when there's the pitot-static failure the VSI (generally) indicates by "sticking" wherever it was when the failure occurred. "Speed" means a different thing to a pilot than it does to a non-pilot. Groundspeed is irrelevant (aerodynamically), airspeed is everything. To sense "overspeed" you have to know airspeed.…
Comment linking /learn-to-fly/systems/airspeed-indicator/
on “Tesla Model S autonomously crashes into a parked trailer while in ‘summon’ mode”Not sure about that particular plane, but it should be. Contrary to jet fighters they are made to be aerodynamically stable. You can fly (glide) them and even land with most systems switched off, including engines and main power. https://www.boldmethod.com/learn-to-fly/aerodynamics/3-types... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_9
Comment linking /learn-to-fly/aerodynamics/3-types-of-static-and-dynamic-stability-in-aircraft/
on “Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 pilots 'could not stop nosedive'”It is called a coordinated turn and it is what one normally aspires to fly. https://www.boldmethod.com/learn-to-fly/aerodynamics/the-aer... A coordinated turn with 60 degrees bank should be achievable by any airworthy airplane (it requires pulling 2g), and the maximum bank angle for a steady-state coordinated turn depends on how many g you can pull before you run out of control authority, cause an accelerated stall,…
Comment linking /learn-to-fly/aerodynamics/the-aerodynamics-of-a-turn-in-an-airplane/
on “Engineers are exploring radical new designs for commercial planes”A 737 can be flown by hand, without hydraulics or electricity, despite weighing over 50x more than a Cessna 172, or other small manually controlled airplanes. Airplanes' control surfaces have have smaller control surfaces inside them called tabs. Just as a small movement in a control surface is amplified into the larger movement of the entire airplane, a control tab's even smaller movement is amplified into the move…
Comment linking /learn-to-fly/systems/4-types-of-trim-tabs/
on “Amelia Earhart's Reckless Final Flights”The waves of deactivations on the ground stations have already started. We're on a trajectory of GPS over-reliance. https://www.boldmethod.com/learn-to-fly/navigation/the-faa-i... https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2018/may/23/vor...
Comment linking /learn-to-fly/navigation/the-faa-is-shutting-down-308-vors/
on “FAA Fumbled Its Response to a Surge in GPS Jamming”A reasonable explanation: https://www.boldmethod.com/learn-to-fly/aircraft-systems/can...
Comment linking /learn-to-fly/aircraft-systems/canards/
on “The Wright Brothers Defeated Gravity and the Government Machine”If a plane's autopilot steers the plane into a cliff (and such cases have happened many times, 'controlled flight into terrain' is a thing and in quite a few of those cases the autopilot was involved - for example, in both cases here https://www.boldmethod.com/learn-to-fly/aeromedical-factors/... it seems it was turned on during impact), we don't consider it a fault of the autopilot, it's working as intended, as it'…
Comment linking /learn-to-fly/aeromedical-factors/controlled-flight-into-terrain/
on “"We'll call it AI to sell it, Machine Learning to Build it"”On a Monday, a little more than a year ago I lost my dad, and best friend, too. Straight up, it's the hardest thing you'll probably have to do. It'll be really fucking hard, but with luck, you'll figure it out a new ay forward. Getting through the 'waves' of emotion and disbelief will be the most frustrating part at first. At the time my dad died I was working on private pilot's license and the most comforting thing…
Comment linking /learn-to-fly/aerodynamics/3-types-of-static-and-dynamic-stability-in-aircraft/
on “Ask HN: How do you deal with the death of a loved one?”Google, what's a Dutch roll? https://www.boldmethod.com/learn-to-fly/aerodynamics/dutch-r... > Dutch roll is a series of out-of-phase turns, when the aircraft rolls in one direction and yaws in the other. Its name comes from the motion of a classic Dutch skating technique. It even has diagrams.
Comment linking /learn-to-fly/aerodynamics/dutch-roll/
on “FAA is investigating a new incident involving a Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet in midair”You are absolutely correct that things can go wrong very quickly, especially at altitude. Modern planes fly very high for reasons of efficiency, but as the air thins, the window between stall speed and overspeed becomes narrower[0]. That's why piloting always emphasises the need to be thinking ahead of what the plane is doing and not following it. For this incident, they were flying at FL350 (35,000 feet) and had a…
Comment linking /learn-to-fly/aerodynamics/coffin-corner-where-vne-and-mmo-meet/
on “Air France and Airbus found guilty of manslaughter over 2009 plane crash”Here’s a couple of articles illustrating your point - crashing a fully functional plane happens, but his video made it pretty unbelievable https://generalaviationnews.com/2015/03/16/misplaced-fuel-se... https://www.boldmethod.com/learn-to-fly/systems/dont-cause-y...
Comment linking /learn-to-fly/systems/dont-cause-your-own-fuel-starvation-accident/
on “YouTuber who staged plane crash faces up to 20 years jail”A microburst is an intense column of descending air that sometimes occurs within thunderstorms. They are incredibly hazardous, and often produce downdrafts that exceed 10,000 feet per minute - well beyond even an airliner's climb performance. See: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downburst - https://www.boldmethod.com/learn-to-fly/weather/microbursts-... There's an entire list of disasters where an airliner inadverte…
Comment linking /learn-to-fly/weather/microbursts-and-how-they-affect-your-airplane-and-performance/
on “United Flight 1722 came within 775 feet of plunging into Pacific Ocean”
