Flight Maneuver Spotlight: Turns Around a Point

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Welcome to the latest edition of the Flight Maneuver Spotlight series. Here we’ll highlight the various maneuvers you’ll practice during your flight training and be expected to demonstrate during your checkride.

Flight Maneuver Spotlight: Traffic Pattern Entry Procedures

Standard traffic patterns are established at nontowered airports to provide a smooth flow of traffic from the arrival phase of flight through approach and landing. Here are the steps to follow to safely and efficiently join the pattern and get established on the final approach leg for landing.

S-Turns Across a Road—Sporty’s Flight Maneuver Spotlight

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An S-Turn across a road is a flight training maneuver where a pilot flies their aircraft across a straight road, performing a series of coordinated turns in opposite directions, effectively drawing an "S" pattern on the ground, demonstrating their ability to manage wind drift and adjust bank angles while maintaining a consistent ground track.

Lazy Eights—Sporty’s Flight Maneuver Spotlight

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The Lazy Eight maneuver is part of Sporty’s 2025 Commercial Pilot Training Course and includes a narrated video animation, along with step-by-step instructions that include performance standards and common errors. Study them while on the ground or print them for quick reference in

Steep Turns – Sporty’s HD Flight Maneuver Spotlight

Welcome to Sporty's Flight Maneuver Spotlight series. This week we're going to fly steep turns, a maneuver that will help both improve your flight control skills at a steeper bank angle and show the importance of keeping your eyes moving between inside and outside the cockpit.

Chandelles – Flight Maneuver Spotlight

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The Chandelle is a Commercial pilot maneuver in which the pilot combines a 180° turn with a climb. This segment is from Sporty’s 2024 Commercial Pilot Training Course and includes a narrated video animation, along with step-by-step instructions that include performance standards and common errors. 

Accelerated Stalls: Sporty’s Flight Maneuver Spotlight

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An accelerated stall is a stall that occurs at a higher airspeed than a 1G stall and can be caused by an aircraft making abrupt control inputs such as too much back pressure during a banked turn. As you may recall a stall can occur at any airspeed or attitude, as long as the wing's critical angle of attack is exceeded and the accelerated stall demonstrats this fact.

Eights on Pylons: Sporty’s Commercial Flight Maneuver Spotlight

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There are several new flight maneuvers to learn during Commercial Pilot Training. One of the new ground reference maneuvers is called Eights on Pylons, which involves flying a figure 8 pattern over the ground while varying the aircraft’s altitude in order to maintain a defined visual reference to preselected reference points, called pivot points, or pylons.

Flying with Flight Simulator – Flight Maneuver Spotlight

Welcome to the latest edition of the Flight Maneuver Spotlight series. Here we’ll highlight the various maneuvers you’ll practice during your flight training and be expected to demonstrate during your private pilot checkride. This one is a little different—we're sharing a flight simulator maneuver that you can fly on your own.

Emergency Approach and Landing – Flight Maneuver Spotlight

You need to react thoughtfully and quickly in the event the engine quits or you experience an unexpected loss of power. This week's tip covers a series of memory items to complete to try to restart the engine, and then what to do if a forced landing becomes necessary.