Upwind Wine & Cheese Party - Mar 14 (Fri) 6:30pm

The Upwind Foundation invites you to a fundraising Wine and Cheese Party on Friday, March 14th, hosted by San Carlos Flight Center. All are welcome. Wine starts pouring at 6:30 pm, with bidding on a variety of silent auction items immediately to follow. Be sure to arrive early as the auctions close at 7:30 pm and you don't want to miss out on this year's interesting items and fun flight opportunities.

As a special treat, everyone present will be introduced to the Upwind Class of 2025 - the recent high school students who have been awarded a summer of flight training entirely paid for by donors to the non-profit Upwind Foundation. Join us to meet the winners and celebrate with their families.

Be prepared to bid hard to win great auction items such as training time with your favorite CFI, lifetime membership to SCFC, unique flight experiences and much more! Check out all the online auction items at Bidding Owl.



Everyone is welcome. Please RSVP here so we can plan for enough food and drink!

Learn how Global Flight Operations Work

Join United Airlines Captain and SCFC Senior Instructor Daniel Stellini for a peek behind the curtain into how the airlines plan and execute long haul international flights in a safety seminar on Saturday, March 8th.

How are the flights planned? What is ETOPS? What if something goes wrong half way across the ocean? Where do the pilots sleep during their rest break? How do you say “cleared to land” in Chinese and French and Tagalog? This presentation will wipe away some of the mystery of what international pilots experience when crossing borders. This will be a fascinating discussion for all pilots and for anyone who flies internationally on commercial airliners.

To join us, come by the Flight Center on Saturday March 8 at 12pm in the SCFC classroom. Bring all your questions. To sign up to attend, click here.

SCFC Welcomes New Flight Instructors

The Flight Center is always looking for passionate and effective flight instructors to help our members reach their dreams of flight. We typically hire three times a year, with each new class going through a tough hiring process and a thorough CFI onboarding program. SCFC is pleased to announced our four newest instructors.

Amelia Vaith grew up in Mount Vernon, Washington, near the San Juan Islands, where she discovered her passion for aviation after completing a discovery flight in eighth grade during a spring break aviation camp. That flight led to her private pilot certificate before continuing her training at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida.

While she has flown in various regions, from Florida’s coastline to the mountain ranges of the Pacific Northwest, she finds nothing more rewarding than flying over the Puget Sound in the summer months to get lunch at Friday Harbor. As a flight instructor, she finds the greatest fulfillment in seeing her students progress, especially when they finally master a difficult skill they’ve been working hard to perfect.

Anna Higginbotham is originally from Virginia and moved to the West Coast in 2020. Her love of aviation came from her grandfather, who was a Pan Am first officer. She got her bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and psychology, and worked in accounting before deciding to pursue aviation professionally.

She earned her Private Pilot Certificate in Napa, CA in 2022, before getting the rest of her licenses in Redmond, OR in 2023. She is very passionate about teaching and hopes to inspire her students to be safe, smart, excellent pilots. She would love to help anyone realize their aviation dreams.

Nico Figueroa wasborn and raised in San Mateo with an early passion for aviation. He spent countless hours at the Hiller Aviation platform in San Carlos, watching planes soar overhead, and attending Hiller Aviation summer camp as a kid, and earned his private pilot certificate while still in high school.

Nico went on to earn an engineering degree from Santa Clara University and continued onto commercial training in Bozeman, Montana, where mountain flying and rapidly changing weather enhanced his piloting skills and adaptability. As an instructor, Nico is committed to making every lesson informative, engaging, and safe—while always keeping it fun.

JR Refuerzo was also born and raised in the Bay Area and enjoyed traveling and aviation from a young age as both his parents are flight attendants. He earned a degree in Economics and Geography from UCLA in 2019 and began flight training soon after graduating, obtaining his Private, Instrument, and Commercial Pilot Certificates tat the Flight Center.

JR really enjoyed his experience learning how to fly at SCFC and hopes to continue that legacy with new aspiring aviators. In his free time, JR enjoys reading, exploring new countries, and performing at local concerts with his friends.

Safety

The Next Step: Consider Instrument Training

Pilots flying in the Bay Area are blessed with some of the best weather in the country. However, there are plenty of days when VFR flying isn’t an option, as we saw last month. An instrument rating can help keep you flying while also sharpening your skills. Here are some reasons you may want to consider earning your instrument rating this year.

Ability to fly when it’s not VFR: Bay Area natives know that the coastal fog is persistent year-round, and many pilots will need to cancel a flight due to it at some point. The good news is that flying IFR allows you to safely navigate the clouds, allowing you the opportunity to continue on your trip without significant delays. 

Improves your flying: Flying on instruments causes the pilot to become more situationally aware of their surroundings while also making your flying more precise. You’ll become an expert in VORs, demonstrate mastery with stable approaches, and be able to plan descents like the airline pilots do. 

Become a mini-meteorologist: If you thought you needed to be an expert at weather for your private pilot training, think again. Instrument pilots need to dive deeper into weather theory. When flying under IFR, you’ll learn how to make a confident go/no-go decision and understand what various weather products and imagery are telling you. 

SCFC’s New Instrument Training Materials: Starting with our in-person IFR ground school, we’ve now expanded our instrument training materials to include a workbook and syllabus just like our private pilot curriculum. These new tools make it easier to study and track your progress, while also highlighting the important information you need to know for your instrument rating.

Curious about the process and want to learn more? Reach out to our Front Desk and get connected to a CFII.

Operating in SQL Traffic Pattern: Update

Occasionally the San Carlos tower manager contacts us with feedback to help improve pilot/controller operations. These are often because of some misunderstanding between pilot and controller. The feedback is meant to help educate pilots. A recent situation is where a pilot made a 270 degree turn after crossing midfield as a maneuver to provide spacing from an airplane that they were following.

AIM 4-3-5 covers the basis for many of these cases. AIM 4-3-5, “Unexpected Maneuvers in the Airport Traffic Pattern”, states that pilots can maneuver to maintain separation from other traffic in the pattern. Controllers anticipate minor maneuvering such as shallow “S” turns. The controller cannot, however, anticipate a major maneuver such as a 360-degree turn.

The tower manager shared that this maneuver causes a conflict with airplanes in the crosswind that will be turning downwind. He suggested that a better option is to continue flying toward a wider downwind. The best thing is to communicate with the tower your iintentions so they are aware.

SCFC Member Profile: Alexander Cohen

SCFC: Private Pilots must acquire solid flight control skills, develop good aeronautical decision making, and take in a large amount of aeronautical knowledge. How easy was each dimension of pilot training for you?

AC: My day job involves a lot of studying and research and learning new information, so while I wouldn’t say the aeronautical knowledge piece was easy for me, it was much more familiar to what I do day to day. Flight control skills did take a bit of time to get used to, especially rudder coordination in turns and trying to unlearn habits from driving a car while taxiing.

ADM and owning being PIC is a skill that has been hardest and I’m definitely still practicing and developing. It’s easy to get comfortable believing that, since I have a CFI with me, I don’t have to prepare as much before a flight or be as active in decision making once the engine starts, but then before you know it, you’re on a solo XC alone in the cockpit, so flexing that muscle early in training was something I had to actively work on. 

SCFC: You’re so close to finishing, just waiting for a checkride date. After you pass your checkride, what do you think your flying life will be life?

AC: After (hopefully…fingers crossed) passing my checkride, I’m hoping to keep up flying fairly consistently (at least a few times per month) and have two main goals. One is to spend some time flying “just for fun” with friends and family – things like taking trips up to the wine country, going down towards central and Southern California, doing a Bay Tour or two, and trying to share a view of the Bay Area with them from a few thousand feet in the air. 

The other is to continue my own training, with things like a mountain checkout so I can safely take trips up to Tahoe, and then moving into working on my instrument rating. Given how quickly the weather can change in the Bay, having that extra training and knowledge needed to keep flying safely if the weather turns for the worse is invaluable for my own sense of confidence and security as PIC.

SCFC: What do you do when you’re not focused on passing the checkride?

AC: In flight training, right now I’m really focused on exploring new airports and building up more XC skills and hours. I don’t have a checkride on the calendar yet so right now my time is spent really getting comfortable in the plane and making sure I know how everything works and am equipped for potentially unusual situations before refreshing my maneuver skills once I have a checkride on the calendar. 

Outside of flying, I do have a day job as a data scientist where I’m busy during the working week, and then enjoy spending time with family (my parents and my brother all live in the Bay Area as well) and friends, exploring new neighborhoods and towns around the Bay, and am a big sports fan so love going to Giants, Warriors, Earthquakes, and Sharks games when I get the chance.

SCFC: Adult learning is different than how children are forced to learn in groups in school. You have a lot more control of the process. How did you configure your training to fit your learning style and your life?

JC: For me, one thing that I found particularly helpful was to go through and complete my written exam and get my medical in hand prior to actually getting in the plane. I attended SCFC ground school on the weekends and then was able to do my homework and studying during the week around my work schedule and other obligations. This meant that I was really only committed timewise to a single block per week, and then could fit in the other pieces of my learning and studying around everything else I had going on in my life. Plus, having that ground knowledge solidified meant I could really focus on the flying once I got in the plane (and made things come a bit easier in my opinion).

From there, my CFI Khizar Shabbir has been great about finding times where we’re both available, so that’s made things easy to fit into my day-to-day and around work, usually flying one weekend and one day after work every week.

SCFC: What called you to the sky? What aspect of flying and being a pilot pulled you into this life adventure?

JC: Honestly it is kind of random that I took up such an interest in flying – nobody in my family has an aviation background or showed a particular affinity for flying, however it was something that even as a little kid I was always curious about. I never pursued it when younger, despite being gifted a demo flight for my birthday as a teenager that I was never able to do. After coming back to the Bay Area a few years ago, one weekend when we didn’t have much planned I just decided to book myself a demo flight to give it a try after all those years, and here we are about 90 flight hours and a nearly completed PPL later. 

I think many of my reasons for enjoying flying are shared by everyone else that has sat in that cockpit – the freedom, the views, and the sense of accomplishment. But for me, one aspect that I’ve come to really love and appreciate is just how well all these different moving pieces come together to create something totally organized that’s almost invisible unless you know to look for it. Seeing how all the different airspaces, towers, radio frequencies, approaches, route planning, and airports come together to create a single safe flight is something I didn’t think I would appreciate as much when I started training.

FOG Spring/Summer Flying Trips Lineup

2025 is shaping up to be one of the biggest years ever for our FlyOutGroup (FOG) program! We’re building an impressive slate of trips for the first half of the year, and are excited to highlight them below.

Santa Maria Wine Tasting (March 28-30): Fly down to the Santa Ynez Valley for a three-day trip to sample some of the best wines California has to offer. We’ll meet Friday evening for a group dinner, and spend all day Saturday at award-winning wineries. On Sunday, enjoy a leisurely flight home up to Central Coast. This is a fantastic trip to bring your friends or significant other on. To learn more, visit the event page.

SoCal Airshow at March Air Force Base (April 11-13): The hottest trip of 2023 is back again this year! Get a chance to navigate Los Angeles airspace before meeting up at the San Bernardino airport for a group dinner. The next day, we’ll get the rare opportunity to venture onto an active Air Force Base to tour the Flight Line, get up close to military aircraft, and watch the stunning aerial displays in the skies above. On our way home on Sunday, we’ll stop by an aircraft boneyard for an exclusive tour to see old 747s and MD10s. 

This event does have a few spots left, so call the Front Desk to book your aircraft. You can learn more here.

Scenic Arizona Trip (April 25-29): Springtime in Arizona is regarded as one of the best times to visit the state, and what better way to explore it than from the air! Join FOG to fly down to some of the natural wonders of the area, including the Grand Canyon and Sedona. We’ll also plan time to stop at various museums too, including the Pima Air and Space Museum and a Titan Missile silo. This is also a great trip to learn about desert and mountain flying.

If you’re craving a warmer destination this winter, or just want to check flying over the Grand Canyon off your bucket list, check out the event page.

Upcoming Events: Sign up on our event page and save the date on the following, and stay tuned for more details!

• Catalina Island (May 30-31)
• 2-Day California Mountain Flying (June 7-8)
• Seattle and British Columbia (July 17 - 20)