Chuck Yeager made his historic flight to break the sound barrier in 1947 flying the Bell X-1, an aircraft designed by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and the US military to conduct research on supersonic travel. From that moment forward, aviation has been focused on harnessing that energy for practical application. The United States government would go on to commission an aircraft that operated faster than the speed of sound and higher than radar detectability in order to perform various cold war missions at a critical phase of history- one of the most notorious aircraft to come out of this supersonic fever was the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. In the last century, most research on supersonic speed has been conducted in a military setting, with some notable successes in civil operations, such as the Concorde, the Tupolev Tu-144, and more recently with the development of the Boom Overture aircraft. The engineering that went into the creation of the Blackbird provided groundbreaking innovation throughout the designing and testing process that set it apart from other aircraft of its kind and continues to inspire aerospace engineers working on the high-speed travel of our future.

There are significantly higher rates of pilot error events during surface operations at night than during the day. Events include incidents, accidents, wrong surface takeoffs and landings, hitting objects, turning on the wrong taxiway, departing the runway surface, among others. There is evidence to suggest that these events are linked to situational awareness. Improvements to situational awareness can be accomplished through training to instruct pilots to increase attention outside of the cockpit while taxiing at night. However, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) night time requirements are relatively low to obtain a private pilot certification. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of flight training experience on conducting safe and incident-free surface operations at night, collect pilot opinions on night training requirements and resources, and analyze the need for night time on flight reviews. A survey was distributed to general aviation pilots and 239 responses were collected to be analyzed. The responses indicated a higher observed incident rate at night than during the day, however there were no significant effects of night training hours or type of training received (Part 61, Part 141/142, or both) on incident rate. Additionally, higher total night hours improved pilot confidence at night and decreased incident rate. The overall opinions indicated that FAA resources on night flying were effective in providing support, but overall pilots were not in support of or against adding night time requirements to flight reviews and found night training requirements to be somewhat effective.

Checklists have become a vital aspect of aviation, regardless of skill level. From general aviation pilots going through flight training to commercial airline pilots responsible for hundreds of lives every day, checklists are used from the moment you step into the cockpit until the last light that is turned off at the end of the flight. Checklists are such a significant part of aviation, and several different ways to run a checklist have been created (such as the challenge-response and do-and-tell methods). Despite these variations in checklist usage and procedures, all methods are restricted in terms of user involvement; in other words, pilots are not easily engaged or invested in the checklists that they use in day to day operations. Theorized through exposure to this issue as a student and as a Certified Flight Instructor, Know Go™ has been created as a long term tool to replace conventional checklists with a resourceful one that acts as both a normal checklist for daily use and a learning tool for long term retention. The purpose of this text is to introduce the capabilities of the application, as well as discuss the theories behind the effectiveness of the application. The developmental processes and the challenges associated with application production will also be analyzed.