Blog Posts

After running this blog for three years or so I can honestly say I’ve seen and heard quite a few really interesting stories about the aviation industry. I’m headed to AOPA Summit in Tampa next week because I want to hear a few more. The…

Ag flying has always interested me because it is one of the last bastions of professional stick and rudder flying. Sure, technology has infiltrated the cockpit, but here it replaces the flagman (human or otherwise) who helps the pilot apply even cov…

Just like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, unraveling the real story behind the Northwest/Delta Airlines crew who forgot to land at MSP just keeps getting curiouser and curiouser. Brings to mind the gap in the Nixon Watergate tapes. If that does…

So, you wanna be a professional pilot, huh? Despite the economy, there will be a good number of vacant cockpit seats in the next decade or so as the last of the baby boomer bulge reaches 65, the airline pilot retirement age. If you are a Wall Stree…

Most of you probably know that a few months back I was abducted at propeller point and forced to assume co-host duties at the Airplane Geeks. About that same time, I met Dan Webb, my other co-host, a truly brilliant young man who continues to impre…

In the grand scheme of American aviation, at least as the FAA sees it, amateur-built aircraft aren’t even on the radar sweeping through regulated skies. Created in home workshops and comparatively unfettered by the bureaucracy, these flying m…

My pal Rod Rakic – better  known as Mr. My Transponder – and I were chatting today about his upcoming vacation to Florida, not too far from the Kennedy Space Center and almost in time for the next Shuttle launch. I would do almost a…

When I learned to fly back in the mid 1970s, the airspace over the LA Basin was pretty crowded. Because of the smog that then reduced the visibility to some degree every day, most aviators were usually quite serious about seeing and avoiding each o…

Owning and operating an airport was never one of Ted Vander Wielen’s life goals. But in 1995, Ted says, he learned that Bill Brennand was retiring and selling the airport he built 10 miles north of Oshkosh in 1968. The only party interested in…

Even for me, this whole business aviation as the bad guy thing is becoming pretty tiresome. How much longer can most of our industry sit back and take it before we evaporate?In last week’s USA Today article about Aviation Trust Fund dollars …

After reading last week’s post, NPRM Points to Flight Training’s Future, Jason Blair, the executive director of the National Association of Flight Instructors (NAFI), called early the morning it arrived in his email box. He was off to DC…

The fact that the FAA and it’s cadre of air traffic controllers will be working with a new leader who will be announced later today is only the beginning of the story of how this union fits into the overall plan of our nation’s airspace …

In the August 31, 2009 Federal Register, the FAA published Notice of Proposed Rulemaking 09-08, Pilot in Command Proficiency Check and Other Changes to the Pilot and Pilot School Certification Rules. Its seemingly disparate proposals regarding fli…

Yes, it does happen … a time when I simply don’t know what to say. Or perhaps it is my age showing and I realize that there are times it is better to say nothing than to manufacture prose that comes off feeling contrived. Today, Septembe…

Unveiling the projects gestating in the Sonex R&D department, the Hornet’s Nest, during EAA AirVenture Oshkosh, the SubSonex jet and E-Flight Power System (covered last week in Jet & ESA Fly From Sonex Hornet’s Nest) got all the …

It’s Labor Day again and some fresh thinking is long past due. Everyone knows the American labor movement has fallen off the edge of a cliff the past few decades and even a blue president isn’t going to be able to fix it all. The big qu…

For some time, I have stood firmly on the side of the people who believe a law is needed to keep airline passengers from ending up trapped on the ramp inside an airplane for hours at a time. But I think I’m starting to be swayed. Part of my am…

At EAA AirVenture Oshkosh, Sonex Aircraft pulled back the curtain on its research and development department, called the Hornet’s Nest, and unveiled three projects it’s been working on for the past handful of years. One of them the E-Fl…

In situations of information overload it’s easy to overlook or forget important things as the mind struggles to focus and make sense of it all. In the air, pilots rely on checklists and standardized procedures, and on the ground, as a reporte…

In situations of information overload it’s easy to overlook or forget important things as the mind struggles to focus and make sense of it all. In the air, pilots rely on checklists and standardized procedures, and on the ground, as a reporte…

In life, everyone makes mistakes.Most of the time, that’s really a good thing though because it offers us a unique path to become better at what we do. Being human though, admitting we screwed something up is not always easy, it’s downr…

Every industry effort to increase the pilot population, from Learn-to-Fly and Be-A-Pilot to the upcoming International Learn to Fly Day, has the same weak link that keeps a program from reaching its full potential: the flight schools, and their inst…

Although the people at Fox News have always been very nice to me when they call and ask for my technical expertise on aviation matters, I must admit I do sometimes dread their calls. That’s because their phone calls usually means something bad…

In aviation journalism one never knows with any certainty what topics will capture — and keep — the readers’ attention. During EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2008 I wrote about Powerplant Development’s Gemini diesel engine (Gemini Di…