At every level and every altitude, the world today is an unhappy place growing ever more turgid and lethal. Keeping current with local, state, national, and world events can inspire hope’s suicide. If there is a hotline holding promise of something to celebrate, it might be  Facebook. There a friend introduced me to the SmartBird. [...]

By now, everyone knows that a controller at National Airport Tower in Washington fell asleep on duty last week during the midnight shift. The fact that this was a supervisor up there by himself always gives the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) a chance to giggle a bit. This time though, I didn’t hear [...]

The notices arrived in my in-box almost hand in hand.  Analyzing the previous year’s data, the AOPA Air Safety Institute’s Joseph T. Nall Report for 2010 gives the good and bad news about general aviation accidents. And the  2011 Safety Standdown itemizes the FAA’s new multi-medium effort to prevent them. The good news is that [...]

Let’s be serious. When we fly on the airlines, we’re a captive audience. They can do pretty much whatever they’d like to us and we have to put up with it. But most of the time we also fly on the airlines because we must … for work, even for that much needed vacation. Sure [...]

Upon reading  the National Association of Flight Instructors’ report on how a recent change in the FAA knowledge test question banks had increased the number of failures, my initial reaction sided with the FAA. Let me explain: When I was with Flight Training magazine, the banks of test questions were still public. With the release [...]

Every time I hear someone use the words general aviation and China in the same sentence, I can’t help but think back a few years ago to the early days of the Cessna 162 Skycatcher. Remember the bombshell announcement, when Cessna told the world the only way they could bring the little bird to market [...]

Using FAA data provided by the General Aviation Manufacturers Association’s annual Statistical Databook, I’ve built a spreadsheet of pilot population data back to 1964. Updating it for 2010 revealed a new highpoint in pilot certification: 96,473 active flight instructor certificates. The number of CFIs has been trending consistently upward since its 1968 nadir of 30,361. [...]

A number of Republican governors have been pegging the media’s popularity meters the past few weeks with talk of pouncing on the collective bargaining rights of public service employees, one of the last havens of solid unionism left in America, short of the aviation industry. The most well known push comes from Wisconsin governor Scott [...]