139. When the Magenta Line Disappears

What happens when your avionics panel suddenly doesn’t believe your destination exists

In Episode 139 of I Learned About Flying From That, host Carl Valeri sits down with flight instructor and CSIP TJ Shembekar to discuss an unforgettable flight heading north toward Churchill, Canada. While descending through solid IMC into Winnipeg to clear customs, TJ encountered an unexpected crisis: although his iPad and ForeFlight subscriptions were fully current, the aircraft’s onboard Garmin database had not been updated for Canadian airspace

Without warning, the magenta line vanished. The GPS didn’t recognize Winnipeg Airport, forcing TJ to fall back on skills many modern glass-cockpit pilots rarely practice: tuning raw-data VORs, centering green needles, and hand-flying an ILS approach down to minimums. To make matters worse, as they neared the runway, the panel triggered a startling alert—"TERRAIN! PULL UP!"—because the system believed the aircraft was descending into open terrain rather than an active runway

In this episode, TJ unpacks:

• The critical difference between having current charts on an EFB and maintaining current aircraft panel databases.

• Overcoming automation dependency and managing the cognitive friction of switching back to conventional navigation under pressure.

• Nuances of Garmin avionics, including CDI course selection, synthetic vision terrain alerts, and advisory glidepaths (+V).

• Why every instrument pilot should incorporate raw-data, green-needle tracking and non-precision VOR work into recurrent training and IPCs.

Sponsored by AVEMCO Insurance. Have an aviation story or lesson of your own to share? Contact Carl at [email protected].