Blog Posts

In her opening statement at the June 19 convocation addressing General Aviation Safety—Climbing to the Next Level, NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman said “in spite of improvements to the commercial and corporate aviation safety records, the GA accident …

With  no demands or duties, I retired to the deck on Father’s Day to reflect on my life’s journey, to appreciate the good times and bad that are its waypoints. A caressing breeze ebbed and flowed from the west like wind waves on the sky’s shoreline …

Unless they are directly involved, either as a daily job or when something’s broken, maintenance isn’t a top-of-mind topic for most aviators. So it took me awhile to wonder who’s going to maintain and fix the burgeoning number of civilian unmanned a…

I’ve been dreading this summer … for the first time in my life though actually. That’s because next month the final French BEA report on the Air France 447 crash will be released. Most professional pilots have a pretty good idea what it’s going to s…

The Icon A5’s spin resistance show & tell When I hit the play button on this video, I was ready to pounce on every syllable of marketing hyperbole. Instead of half-told truths, I got a concise, comprehensive show & tell on what makes an airplane …

Thierry Dubois and I have known each other for many years although I can’t even recall how we met any longer. I just recall that we became friends years ago once we realized we were both hardcore aviation journalists. But in addition to his European…

Taking “A fresh look at the many roles General Aviation Airport play in the National Air Transportation System,” the FAA recently released the 34-page report of its in-depth, 18-month study of roughly 3,000 airports, General Aviation Airports: A Nat…

Evelyn Bryan Johnson died May 10, 2012 in her 102nd year. She was a flight instructor. She stopped counting the number of people she’d taught to fly when the number passed 3,000. A designated pilot examiner since 1952, when I met her in 1997 at her …

Last week, the middle school where I am a substitute teacher held its annual career and hobby day, where students sign up for presentations  that interest them. I was on duty as a student wrangler, not a speaker, and it was happenstance that I ended…

I was trying to explain some of the subtleties behind the word altruism to my daughter this morning at breakfast, and it made me think about the fight against aviation user fees. And yes, we have a few truly interesting family meals around our house…

On April 24, the e-mail edition of Callback arrived in my in box. It proudly announced that the NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System had processed its one millionth safety incident report on March 21, 2012. Three days later I received the NTSB rele…

I’ve been a movie geek since I was a kid. So how could I refuse Zac’s Colbert’s (relation to Stephen Colbert??) request to pontificate about which movies are his favorites during airline travel? I wonder if my friend Mary Kirby at the Airline Passen…

At the World Aviation Training Symposium, held last week in Orlando, Boeing’s chief test & evaluation pilot for new airplane development, Mike Carriker, said the industry must modernize its educational methods and technology if it hopes to prepare p…

As a Vietnam-Era veteran myself and someone who used the G.I. Bill to cover the cost of some of my early flight training, I was more than a little interested when June Olsen approached me about writing a story about today’s G.I. Bill (Actually, I’m …

For decades, individuals and organizations have focused attention and effort on rebuilding the pilot population. But for the first time in memory, AOPA is drawing attention to—and doing something about it with its Keep ’em Flying Challenge—an equall…

The PAL-V, a hot-rod trike with a fold away gyrocopter rotor and prop. The Terrafugia Transition’s appearance at the New York auto show made the news recently. Flying cars have been an interesting engineering exercise since the late 1940s, but th…

Back in the paper era I was filled with two-part dread every time the FAA’s Airman Testing Standards Branch had updated its practical test standards (PTS) and aviation training handbooks. Part I was the expense of keeping my training library up to d…

Phatic speech is what we say without thinking to start a conversation. “What’s up?” are the ones I hear most, and for the past 30-some years my answer has been the same: “Anything above eye level—it’s a relative term.” This usually stops people in t…

Should passengers ever be afraid on an airplane? Let me think on that a second. Ah … nope. I don’t think so. I know it happens  sometimes when people fly on small airplanes piloted by some dumb-fool hot-rod aviator. We all pay the price for that goo…

Last weekend the New York Times published an enlightening piece—63 Years Flying, From Glamour to Days of Gray—about Ron Akana, United Airline Flight Attendant Seniority Number 1. You read that right, he’s been flying for 63 years. Hawaiian born, he …

It’s been too many years since I was last pilot in command of an airplane, and even longer since I’ve made a cross-country flight. The AOPA Air Safety Institute must have known that flying may well be part of my life in the near future because in an…

Did you know that March is Women’s History Month, and that Women of Aviation Worldwide Week started March 5?  I didn’t, until a friend shared  an e-mail from Penny Hamilton, a pilot with a Ph.D. who’s invested a lot of time studying just about ever…

In an attempt to keep current with all aspects of aviation, I subscribe to all manner of e-mail updates. In this arena, the FAA is prolifically focused. My latest discovery is the InFO, short for Information For Operators. Produced by the FAA’s Flig…

Word of Mouth marketing (WOM) is a bit like the Superman of campaigns. Nothing can stop it. That’s because the company the campaign focuses on has little or nothing to do with the effort. It’s all customer driven. People recommending products they l…