Like you perhaps, I love airplanes and I always have. After several thousand flight hours and thousands more spent reading aviation-related books and magazines I figured I pretty well knew my way around an airport.

And so one day I'm taxiing in and Unicom tells me to park it next to the BeechJet. And then it occurred to me; I wasn't really sure which of the bizjets in front of me was the Beechjet, which was the Hawker, and which was the Lear. Some quick radio back and forth cleared it up soon enough, but in my mind the message was clear; I could do better.

We all have some knowledge of aircraft types, but I think that many pilots could stand to identify aircraft better. I wrote this program not to turn you into one of those guys who sits at the ends of a runway with a pair of binoculars and can tell a DHC Dash 8-300A from a 300B by smell (indeed, in most of the program, variants within a given aircraft type are pretty much ignored). Rather, I wrote this to help the active pilot become a safer and more proficient pilot. One goal is that when ATC tells you to follow the Canadair Regional Jet down the taxiway, you don’t find yourself on the other side of the airfield behind an Emb-145. Another goal is that you can be conversant and sound credible during a checkride or airline interview.

The software is structured so that you can see aircraft side by side and learn to identify them. Use of the program is pretty straightforward—do try all the different options. With a few hours study, with this program, you should find that much of the aircraft type vagueness in your mind has cleared away.

Name That Plane can truly make you a safer and more capable aviation professional.