As they saying goes: it only takes two things to fly – airspeed and money. However, while it is usually better not to think too hard about the money you spend on flying, it is a great thing to know your airspeed.
Recently, I found out what it takes to fly without knowing your airspeed. After take-off, the airspeed seemed to come alive very late and be stuck at about 60 knots. By the time I decided that something is wrong with my airspeed indicator, I was already airborne and not enough runway left to abort the take off. I figured it is safer to fly as planned and use power, attitude, ground speed and eyeballs to fly at a safe speed. It turned out to be rather easy to achieve a straight and level flight without airspeed. After all, what speed can you possibly fly at with a 70% power setting without climbing or descending? The real question was, how would I achieve a reasonable approach speed and probably for the first time in my flying career I actually listened to ATC telling me wind speed and direction in their landing clearance.
Fly in Asia 