Blog Posts

On a journey from Chicago, Illinois, to Santa Monica, California, that followed the historic route of what was US Route 66, I kept my promise to heed the little green signs I passed that pointed toward small town airports. Riding down the curving dr…

The EAA AirVenture grounds on the Wittman Regional Airport cover a vast area. It is a hike and a half to reach its back corners, but it is worth it because it is where the interesting airplanes seems to be. Take this skeletal Cub-like airplane made …

When Mother Nature cooperates, Wednesday is traditionally the day that those who arrived at EAA AirVenture last weekend leave town, and those who will go home this coming weekend arrive. That sort of happened today, but Mom’s rainy tantrum dem…

Since 1970, when EAA moved its annual convention to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, it has tried starting the event on different days of the week. But finding a day that suits everyone’s schedules is an impossible task because there are really three diffe…

Want to Fly at Airventure?Is there anything sadder than a bunch of pilots standing around watching a handful of other aviators fly past looking like they’re having all the fun? Ho hum.But it happens to all of us at AirVenture … every s…

Coming face-to-face with a truly rare airplane is one of aviation’s singular rewards. And to actually see it fly, oh, be still my fluttering aviation geek heart. The Martin Mars is coming to EAA AirVenture Oshkosh, and for the first time since…

I’d like to interrupt your afternoon for just a minute before you head out the door for the weekend. Congress is expected to vote next week on another FAA funding extension – H.R. 636 – and the industry’s hoping it’s al…

Employing social media, airports across Wisconsin have taken the $100 hamburger flight to the next level with the Wisconsin Flying Hamburger Social. They divided the state in to eight regions or “branches,” with an airport in each of the…

In the English language, there must be a word that summarizes the emotional conflation of the self-satisfaction that comes from a distinctive personal accomplishment and the whispers from a subconscious troll holding up that same achievement as prim…

One of the tried and true tropes of aviation is that, in general, the successful completion of a checkride marks the peak currency and proficiency of a pilot’s knowledge and skills. For those rarely exercised after that point, it is all downhi…

Interactive exhibits aside, the unifying prohibition at most museums is “Do Not Touch!” A look at the shiny noses on bronze busts of notable figures tactilely demonstrates the long-term wear that would damage more fragile artifacts of hi…

Egyptair A-320 – Jetwhine.comEgyptair 804 Plus Aviation’s Dumb and DumberIt’s an old ATC trick … using the word “appears” that is.Whenever a pilot would ask us tower guys to give their landing gear the once ove…

Pinned against the hangar wall by a floor-filling mass of airplanes from a B-25 to a Pietenpol, The Mid-Atlantic Air Museum’s P-61 Black Widow restoration project seems unchanged from my last visit in 2014. Wearing its cowled but propless Prat…

Jumping from any elevation, even a knee-high footstool, has never been something I have eagerly anticipated, which makes my lifelong fascination with parachutes hard to explain.It all started in the early 1960s, I think, with my godparents, who fed…

Economically, Piper Aircraft’s recent announcement that that it has gone totally made-to-order, makes sense. Unsold aircraft, commonly called “white tails” (a term that first described unsold airliners, identified by vertical stabi…

Forget the Cost of Learning to Fly, Think ValueYou’ve obviously thought of learning to fly or you wouldn’t be here right now. Spend a little time reading Richard Bach’s classic Jonathan Livingston Seagull and I guarantee you’…

After reading almost every word written about the National Air & Space Museum “s Stephen F. Udvar-Hazy Center, the last emotion I expected when walking through the door was overwhelming surprise. But taking in the second-floor panorama of …

If the recently released Part 23 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking survives the comment and review period and makes it to a final rule, old, new, and prospective pilots will have to learn a new airplane lexicon. But don’t hyperventilate, like the …

MH370 Two Years Later: Has the Industry Changed?It’s anniversary time, but March 8 won’t be a happy day to reminisce.Two years ago, Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 (MH370), a Boeing 777, disappeared from the night skies over the South C…

The U.S. Air Force opened the doors on its new, and as yet unnamed, long-range strike bomber, the B-21. The contract pasted in the cockpit window said each bomber would cost $500 million and the total program cost for a fleet of 100 B-21s would be $…

Publisher Note: I’ve known Jim Lara for some time since we work together on the NBAA Single Pilot Working Group trying to tackle the challenge of reducing the accident rate for people who fly business airplanes alone. Like me, Jim believes tha…

Maybe it’s a pilot thing, but I find the insides of airplanes just as interesting, and often more interesting, than their outsides. Cockpits and crew stations is where humans interface with the machine that carries them aloft, and I’m al…

If you care about the aviation industry and the veterans, whose honorable service earned them GI Bill benefits that lead to the degrees leading to careers in it, you need to be aware of HR 3016. You may wonder what the VA Provider Equity Act, which …

Call it what you like, privatizing, corporatizing, or commercializing the FAA air traffic control system will ruin the foundation of the world’s largest, safest, and most diverse and complex national airspace system. Oh, and unless we stand up…