Owning and operating an airport was never one of Ted Vander Wielen’s life goals. But in 1995, Ted says, he learned that Bill Brennand was retiring and selling the airport he built 10 miles north of Oshkosh in 1968. The only party interested in buying the 22-acre Brennand Airport (79C) was a salvage operator looking [...]

Even for me, this whole business aviation as the bad guy thing is becoming pretty tiresome. How much longer can most of our industry sit back and take it before we evaporate? In last week’s USA Today article about Aviation Trust Fund dollars being rudely sucked away from big airports to keep podunk runways usable, [...]

After reading last week’s post, NPRM Points to Flight Training’s Future, Jason Blair, the executive director of the National Association of Flight Instructors (NAFI), called early the morning it arrived in his email box. He was off to DC, he said, to meet the with John Lynch, who’s been the FAAer on point for pilot [...]

The fact that the FAA and it’s cadre of air traffic controllers will be working with a new leader who will be announced later today is only the beginning of the story of how this union fits into the overall plan of our nation’s airspace system. Outside of aviation, most people didn’t even know there [...]

In the August 31, 2009 Federal Register, the FAA published Notice of Proposed Rulemaking 09-08, Pilot in Command Proficiency Check and Other Changes to the Pilot and Pilot School Certification Rules. Its seemingly disparate proposals regarding flight school classrooms and online ground schools, concurrent private pilot and instrument-rating checkrides, trading complex airplane training for advanced [...]

Yes, it does happen … a time when I simply don’t know what to say. Or perhaps it is my age showing and I realize that there are times it is better to say nothing than to manufacture prose that comes off feeling contrived. Today, September 11th felt like one of those days to me. [...]

Unveiling the projects gestating in the Sonex R&D department, the Hornet’s Nest, during EAA AirVenture Oshkosh, the SubSonex jet and E-Flight Power System (covered last week in Jet & ESA Fly From Sonex Hornet’s Nest) got all the attention, says Sonex Aircraft’s Mark Schaible, “but what we’re really excited about is the Onex, pronounced One-X.” [...]

It’s Labor Day again and some fresh thinking is long past due. Everyone knows the American labor movement has fallen off the edge of a cliff the past few decades and even a blue president isn’t going to be able to fix it all. The big question is why labor has dropped off the radar [...]

For some time, I have stood firmly on the side of the people who believe a law is needed to keep airline passengers from ending up trapped on the ramp inside an airplane for hours at a time. But I think I’m starting to be swayed. Part of my ambivalence is related to a number [...]