John Young worked for NASA for 42 years as an astronaut and served in other vital roles with a focus on engineering, operations and safety. In his book, Young discusses NASA's successes and failures, particularly the losses of the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia, lessons that can apply to all pilots.

The holidays are nearing an end, and a new flying year is upon us. What are your flying goals in 2019? A new rating? Perhaps an instrument or commercial rating? How about mountain flying training to experience and learn about aircraft performance in density altitude situations?

November marks our one-year anniversary! In the past 12 months, we've released 12 updates to Flight Chain App in our continued effort to improve the app and give you convenient, easy access to NTSB aviation accident reports for your iPhone and iPad. In our latest release, we've added some hidden easter eggs.

Reading accident reports can tell you how accidents happen and teach you what not to do. That's one reason we created Flight Chain App. But we kept wondering -- how can we reach more pilots with safety information, have more impact when we reach them, and help improve decision-making skills?

As the saying goes, a good pilot is always learning. Steven Daun, the National Chief Pilot for American Flyers, recently wrote an article suggesting ways every pilot can learn something new. Here are three aviation books that can help you keep learning and fly safe on every flight.

"Houston, we've had a problem." The Apollo 13 mission to the Moon in 1970 was a successful failure -- in that the crew returned safely to Earth but never made it to the Moon. But the explosion that jeopardized the crew's survival could have been avoided had it not been for two decisions early on.

One of the most recognized aviation podcasts in the world is Jason Miller's The Finer Points. Earlier this year, Miller recorded an interesting podcast in which he discusses an accident where three top engineers from Tesla Motors died when they attempted to take off in 0/0 conditions.

As a flight instructor once told me, your private pilot certificate isn't just your license to fly. It is your license to learn. One way you can continue your education as a private pilot, and log some extra flight time while you're at it, is by flying as a safety pilot for an instrument rated pilot.

Fighter pilots are some of the most skilled aviators in the world. But just because you're not a fighter pilot doesn't mean you can't borrow from their tool set. Whether you're a 100-hour general aviation pilot or a 10,000-hour commercial pilot, it behooves you to think like a fighter pilot in some key areas.

In the early days of manned spaceflight, America and the Soviet Union were racing to be the first to launch a man into space. NASA had just been established in July 1958 as America's response to Sputnik, the first man-made satellite in space, courtesy of the Soviet Union.

I once sat inside the cockpit of a Cessna L-19, a two-seater with a big engine and a climb rate more than double that of a Cessna 172. The Cessna's flight ended prematurely, however, going down vertically into gradually rising terrain, fatally injuring the pilot and passenger onboard. But I survived the two-seater's crash.

Neil Armstrong once said: "You've got to expect things are going to go wrong. And we always need to prepare ourselves for handling the unexpected." That mindset applies to everything in life, from the extreme of exploring the Moon to the mundane of driving to and from work each day.

"It's clear that we're on the front end of something much larger than any of us can imagine." While astronaut Ed Gibson of Skylab 4 was speaking of space flight when he made that statement, his quote could be applicable to any new endeavor in life. Learning to fly is no exception.