Blog Posts

Last weekend I had the honor of being a guest on Airplane Geeks, thanks to my JetWhine.com co-conspirator Rob Mark, who is one of the quartet of regulars. It was my inaugural podcast (Episode 101), and I greatly enjoyed the wide ranging aviation con…

In an era when airlines report $2.7 Billion in fresh baggage-fee revenue from work they used to handle for free, is anything sacred? Probably not. In the U.S. though, Fixed Base Operators (FBO) still give away plenty for free and we all know it. Bu…

Is it karma that led NPR to broadcast a story on the dwindling number of student pilots in June? It reported an FAA estimate that this year’s number of student pilot certificates would total less than 60,000, a “10 year low.” If you remember, June 1…

Flight schools and instructors nationwide should be paying close attention to California Assembly Bill 48 (AB-48), which imposes new requirements (and fees that pay for their administration by the Bureau of Private Post-secondary Education) on those…

Pilots earn their certificates for many reasons, but it’s been my experience that they only keep flying after the checkride if they have a goal, a purpose for being airborne more satisfying and fulfilling than the empty aeronautical nourishment of t…

Reflection is an unintended consequence of a wide interest in aviation, and connecting past with present is the EAA AirVenture Oshkosh reunion of the iconic airplane that earns its keep still, even as it approaches its 75th birthday. Some call it t…

Discussion over the state of professional pilot training is continuing several weeks after we posted Pro Pilot Training Evolving to Industry Needs.  Proficiency-based training has been a central theme, as has educating pilots past the bare minimums …

OK, I might as well just come out and say it right from the start … I’m pretty miffed. But I’ve actually been angry since the NBAA convention in Florida last fall when I heard Tom Buffenbarger, president of the International Association of Machinist…

Several days ago I read a New York Times Op-Ed piece, Leading With Two Minds. In it, David Brooks described how the US Army, in five short years, had reshaped itself to fight insurgencies with something other than overwhelming force. Thirty-five y…

Despite my buddy Scott Spangler’s somewhat guarded endorsement of the international Learn-to-Fly Day scheduled for May 15th, I’m jumping on the bandwagon next Saturday at our local flying club in Chicago. Events are taking place in 147 cities across…

On October 11, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Assembly Bill 48, the California Private Postsecondary Education Act of 2009. To summarize the act’s 57 pages of tiny type, it gives students a financial parachute should the private sc…

Celebrating her birthday at our favorite brewpub, my wife was spending part of the quarter-billion dollar Powerball lottery prize just before the drawing that gave it to a Missouri convenience store worker instead of her and a pool of coworkers. S…

With tens of thousands of travelers stranded all over much of the Western Hemisphere still trying to either get to or from major European destinations last week, airline management became understandably tense at what was indeed the worst travel cri…

Recently I received a release from Sporty’s Pilot Shop about its new CD or downloadable training course, Virtual Tips & Tricks for the Manual E6B. Not a week or so later I read that Sporty’s will soon have its iPhone E-6B app ready for download, joi…

For the past week or so a number of us have been engaged in an ongoing discussion on flight training, inspired by Pro Pilot Training Evolving to Industry Needs, about the forthcoming end Danny Webster’s program. This discussion has focused on train…

For more than two decades the GA industry and the companies that make a living from it have launched a handful of programs designed to get people who look up to act on their aviation interests. When Flight Training magazine was launched in 1989, it …

The nice folks at Fox and Friends asked me to join a debate last Saturday morning about the new FAA rule allowing some pilots to fly while taking anti-depressant medications such as Prozac, Lexipro, Zoloft and Celexa, all designed to treat the symp…

Last week a number of sources, including the Nashua Telegraph, reported that Daniel Webster College was phasing out its professional pilot training program. It’s not the first flight training program to close, nor will it be the last, but that it i…

Wandering through the Sunday paper a 200-word AP news item, datelined Williston,  caught my eye: 3 Die After Planes Collide Over Florida. Three people died when a Piper and homebuilt airplane met in a clear, sunny Saturday sky over central Florida. …

OK, I have to admit that occasionally Scott and I say a few things that upset folks, but only to pilots and air traffic controllers. Almost everyone else is safe … for now. But along with the ability to lob criticism on people and topics that we bel…

Reaction to the AOPA Air Safety Foundation’s Nall Report on the safety record of amateur-built experimental aircraft, and comments about my recent post on this subject (The Internet & Homebuilt Aircraft Accidents), led to the somber reflection that …

Ed Note: My friend Marc Epner and I often discuss why people always seem so focused on how much it costs to win a private pilot certificate. Obviously, there is much more fun to be had after passing that first checkride. BTW, Marc orginally called …

Sunny and 42 degrees, the saturated blue sky is the first crack in the Wisconsin winter. Planted in the driveway like a human heliotrope I turned and opened my eyes in search of honking geese and squawking sandhill cranes, pathfinders for northbound…

When I saw the caller ID this morning with CNN’s address I figured something awful was up. Usually is. “Can you talk about the Kennedy incident,” the producer asked me? Didn’t sound like she wanted me to talk about the impending runway closure. Th…