Blog Posts

FAA’s new administrator for the past 70 days, Randy Babbitt, last week spoke about regional airline safety centered around fallout from the crash of Colgan 3407. The audience in Washington was receptive, helped in part by the fact that they we…

Qualified professionals to operate the world’s fleet of new, high-technology aircraft are more necessary than ever before, despite a growing proliferation of UAVs. Unfortunately, airline management and their pilots are not always on the same …

Ensuring aviation’s future by encouraging more people to fly has been attempted by many programs in the past. Despite their good intentions, their collective results are ultimately measured by the ever shrinking pilot population. But several e…

EAA AirVenture Oshkosh showcases every facet of aviation, making it an excellent indicator of aviation’s emotional and economic health. As a whole the industry has weathered a number of ups and downs since I first started wandering through its…

Trekking west from EAA AirVenture’s AeroShell Square, past the Nature Center and around KidVenture, my destination was the new Founder’s Wing at the EAA AirVenture Museum. Savoring the cool quiet and subdued light, a line of exquisite 1…

Broadcasting from high atop the massive MyTransponder mobile HQ the other night on the grounds at AirVenture 2009, I managed to add my two cents to a pretty nice Episode 58 of the Airplane Geeks podcast that I now co-host with Max Flight and Dan We…

Nestled in a corner of homebuilt parking across from the EAA AirVenture forums campus is the small Replica Fighters Association compound. It’s where I annually visit with friends Dick and Sharon Starks of the Kansas City Dawn Patrol. As usual…

EAA AirVenture Oshkosh is an overdose of aviation happiness. To avoid the pain (sunburn, swollen feet, and locked-up brain caused by information overload) of trying to do and see it all, a week before I make plans, keeping track of everything in Out…

I was a teenager in the 60’s which for me translates into a few key trigger points etched in my mind. The day President Kennedy was shot I was in shop class. When Martin Luther King was assassinated, I was off on active duty with the U.S. Air …

My thanks to AvWeek’s Benet Wilson for allowing me a little space on her blog while she was out on vacation. I’ll try and coax her to write something for Jetwhine. Rob GUEST POST: Business Aviation Is Still a Secret Posted by Bene…

Several days ago a JetWhine reader, James, emailed this question: How much does recreational flight school cost in Michigan?  What things should I be considering before going ahead? No matter where you live, calculating the cost of learning t…

Some folks really believe that the hit of this month’s AirVenture is going to be the arrival of the Airbus A380 at AeroShell Square. And no, the big deal this year is not going to be EAA’s director of public relations Dick Knapinski danc…

Living in the land of beer and cheese, I  expect Wisconsin to be up there on the list of states with the most obese populations. After hearing reports on TV and in the papers about a new report from Trust for America’s Health,    F as in Fat 2…

For reasons unimportant here, I look at a lot of airport websites because they are a primary communication channel for anyone who uses or is interested in learning more about them. So I’m on the Airport Information page of the Centennial Airp…

One thing you never want to do is give me a book to review. I read them quickly, but often take forever to getting around to telling people what I thought of the experience, which pretty much defeats the purpose of the review … at least from t…

The politician is an amazing form of life, a shining example that the only reliable human constant is inconsistency–especially when it comes to aviation, specifically smaller airplanes and their airports. Some, like those from Nebraska, get it…

Having just traveled to Paris on an Air France A330 a week before the crash of Flight 447, I took a rather personal interest in the crisis wondering whether it might have been the same aircraft I’d flown on the week before for starters and a h…

Catching up on my reading, the annual report of the Sporty’s Foundation had worked its way to the top of the pile. As I was flipping through the pages I was not really thinking about the good works presented in words and pictures. I was think…

One of Jetwhine’s earliest supporters – Matt Thurber – sent us this piece, one that I’m happy to publish. Matt is an old friend and a senior editor at Aviation International News, where I’m also a long-time contributor…

On June 4 the Des Moines Register published an article whose headline said “Tiny Iowa Airports Take Off With Millions in FAA Grants.” To be honest, it’s what you’d expect from a newspaper and reporter whose aviation experienc…

I had the good fortune recently to be invited to ferry a Dassault Falcon 2000LX back to the U.S. – Teterboro in fact – from the factory in Bordeaux France. It was my first Atlantic crossing and certainly gave me new respect for the work …

For as long as I can remember, Southwest Airlines, now the largest U.S. domestic airline, created in the 1970s by Herb Kelleher and Rollin King, has been the low-cost airline others most want to emulate. The need to copy isn’t just about mone…

No one in aviation has escaped the recession, but it seems that some companies are better set up to deal with it because they pursue an old fashioned business model: listen to your customers, do everything in your power to meet their needs, and grow…

I was privileged to have been invited to fly the Airbus A380 in Toulouse last week. I think it took about 4 seconds for me to decide when I was asked if I wanted the job of flying, evaluating and then writing up my findings on a few new pieces of on…