You may ask yourself why write about myths, misconceptions, misunderstandings, and falsehoods. Does it matter? Yes, absolutely. The significance and importance of the truth is the foundation of science.

A CFI (Certificated Flight Instructor) recently asked why it mattered if people learned the wrong stuff. Bernoulli, Magnus, etc. are irrelevant from an operational standpoint. The truth is important for several reasons:

• Educational integrity requires one to tell the truth and not lie. Why teach people the wrong information when the truth is available? Additionally, the truth is often easier to understand and more powerful than convoluted and contradicting myths.
• Context-accurate knowledge of any system provides a person with a greater resource from which to understand and effectively work with the big picture, e.g., when troubleshooting an issue.
• Believing a plausible falsehood isn’t knowledge. It can easily mislead people to believe in and take misguided actions.
• Embracing a falsehood is worse than ignorance of the subject.

Addressing cherished, widely held, and published myths has obstacles. People believe that these myths are “The Truth” but they’re not. Many aviation-related myths are in official FAA publications, e.g., The Pilot’s Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge, making them the official correct answers to FAA tests. Commercial book publishers and course designers follow suit and repeat these myths. The result is that tens of thousands of flight instructors believe and teach these myths, leading to decades of pilots believing and repeating them. The vast corps of pilots can be quite defensive when these myths are challenged. But challenge we shall.

If after studying this website’s content, you continue to believe in your understanding and dispute what we’ve presented, write a civil response based on physics and send it to us via our Contact Page. We look forward to hearing from you.

So, enjoy exploring the articles and learning the truth.