Blog Posts

When Pilots Back Themselves into a Corner When I was still writing for AOPA Pilot, Turbine Edition Editor Tom Horne always surprised me with his relentless interest in some of the funny and strange things I’ve experienced in my career as a professi…

As a word merchant, I’ve learned a lot by reading obituaries because the good ones succinctly review a life by sharing its telling accomplishments, whether the subject’s notoriety is universal or unknown. The really good ones interview the subject b…

Thoughts on United Airlines Latest PR Mess Seems that United Airlines, our home town airline here in Chicago, has managed again to create another PR mess for itself. When I was still teaching media and communications at NU, I could only hope for si…

Basking in the warm breezes of Wisconsin’s first coat-free day of spring, I suffered a pang of aviation desire. It would be a nice day for any general aviation pilot to go flying. But in the hemisphere that surrounds my deck the only sights and soun…

Aeronautical decision making is a key ingredient in aviation safety, but I’ve just finished an excellent book that has revealed a side to this important topic that’s little discussed. Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error by Kathryn Schulz …

In aviation “coffin corner” is where bad things come together. I learned the term long ago, reading about the U-2, in Francis Gary Power’s book, if I remember correctly. When flying at the upper edge of its envelope, a single digit separated the red…

On the road to our favorite brewpub for date night I noticed a new billboard for the U.S. Marine Corps: “We don’t accept applications. Only commitments.” The smallest member of America’s armed forces, it meets its recruitment goals by challenging vo…

Exploring the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center, I saw this blood red P-51C hanging from the ceiling, and I immediately knew that this plane had to be Paul Mantz’s Bendix air racer that finished first in 1946, and again in 1947. Get…

I was really starting to like the FAA the past few years, what with the Part 23 rewrite and passage if 3rd Class Medical reform. I saw them as more of a kinder, gentler agency … more let’s all work together for the greater good and that sort of thin…

A statement or situation that seems contradictory or absurd but may be true in fact is a paradox. “Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink!” is the paradox for mariners adrift in any ocean. For aviators, the paradox is that progress in techn…

An Airplane Geek for All Seasons I’ve always found keeping up with the demands of social media to be work, quite a bit of it actually. But I think Scott and I also see the work as a necessary effort. Who else is going to dig between the cracks of th…

Malaysian Boeing 777 – @jetwhine There’s no small amount of irony in today’s announcement that the search for MH370 has officially been called off nearly three years after that Boeing 777 disappeared on a flight from Kuala Lampur to Beijing and the …

Happy New Year! As it has been for millennia, the year ahead is a blank diary in which we will write history with our daily decisions. What direction this uncertain future will take depends on how we make those decisions, especially those with zero-…

On the cool, gray morning I parked before the terminal at the Alliance Municipal Airport (AIA) in northwestern Nebraska, I didn’t expect my airport archeology effort to be a lesson about the airport infrastructure that serves the nation today. The l…

Dear Readers: One of the high points in my life this year at Oshkosh, was meeting Jen Adams, an aviation enthusiast I’ve come to know rather well. She’s not a pilot, but rather a person who found gainful employment at an airport and realized she was…

If puzzled by present options for your descendants‘ Christmas morning surprises, might I suggest a flying model. Regardless of their age, it may instill a lasting interest in aviation and teach them how to figure things out as they mature, if you’re…

With its back to the coastal mountains of Oregon, the world’s largest free span wooden hangar sleeps like a giant on green grass under a rusty blanket of tin. Known as NAS Tillamook Hangar B, it is the sole survivor of the 17 wooden hangars the U.S…

Working my way home on US 20, about 10 miles outside of Casper, Wyoming, I approached the entrance to the Natrona County International Airport. For a moment I debated making the left turn because nearly all of the airports I’d visited in the precedi…

To keep up with the FAA, I subscribe to the news feeds for most of its branches. The other day, the Flight Standards Service (AFS) sent me notice of a draft policy document, and its subject, updated air cargo definitions and abbreviations caught my…

There is no other way to put it. The Planes of Fame Air Museum overwhelmed me. Drowning in the aviation history it showcases, and the aviation provenance of the airport in Chino, California, where it presents it, I don’t know where to start this pie…

Don’t Let Santa Monica Airport Become Another Meigs Field In the pre-dawn darkness of March 31, 2003, former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley’s wrecking crews laid siege to Meigs Field, a single 3900-foot runway airport on the western shore of Lake Mi…

The meeting room at the EAA Chapter 1158 hangar on the West Bend (Wisconsin) Municipal Airport (ETB) bubbled with eager anticipation, and a little bit of anxiety, before the briefing for its rain-postponed Navigation Challenge (see Fly-In to Challen…

Eastwood Got It Right With Sully Complete NTSB Accident Report: US Airway 1549  (click here) Most pilots tend to take airplane movies with a grain of salt because they’re usually riddled with mistakes or enough exaggerations to quickly make us nuts.…

Following the airport signs posted along the historic path of Route 66 added some welcome surprises on the journey from Chicago to Santa Monica, but several airports were predetermined destinations. One of them was Arizona’s Kingman Airport (IGM). B…