Richard L. Collins


Richard Lawrence Collins was an American aviation author and journalist.
Collins earned his private pilot certificate in 1952 and subsequently logged over 20,000 hours in general aviation airplanes. He was the son of Leighton Collins, a well-known aviation writer, pioneering flight safety advocate and founder of Air Facts magazine. He died on April 29, 2018, aged 84.

Magazine editor and writer

The first article that Richard Collins wrote appeared in the November 1947 issue of Air Facts. In 1968, Collins began writing for Flying magazine and became Editor in Chief in 1977. He moved to AOPA Pilot magazine as Publisher and Editor in 1988. In 1993, he returned to Flying as an editor at large, where he wrote a monthly column as well as feature articles. In October 2008 Collins retired as a regular contributor to Flying magazine. At the time of retirement, Collins had been on the masthead of an aviation magazine since July 1958.
Collins was a writer for Air Facts Journal, an online journal created in 2011. He published a blog on the site and wrote articles for the journal.
Over his career, he has written over 1500 magazine articles, thirteen books and has developed an extensive library of aviation training videos.

Books

Collins authored 13 books about aviation weather and flying technique: