Blog Posts

With the recent abundance of publicity questioning the FAA’s oversight role in air safety, even some of us within the industry are having trouble keeping it all straight. Imagine if you were just an interested party, like an airline passenger …

Commenting on my recent post, LSA Pilots Could Spoil a Good Thing, a JetWhine reader said operating costs were missing from the mix. While LSAs might be pricier than hoped, “they still run at far lower operating costs— making plane ownership f…

Now that Aloha Airlines has closed its doors and parked its airplanes for good, it seems like 1991 all over again to me. That’s the year the airline I worked for, Midway 1, shut down because of high fuel prices – at least they seemed hig…

Come July of this year, aviation bloggers will find it impossible not to answer the call to our Mecca for the first Aviation Blog Fest in history – I think. In addition to a chance to hang out with many other very cool aviation bloggers and r…

I had a call today from one of the major TV networks.The reporter was hoping I’d sit in front of a TV camera for a story about the grounding of hundreds of Delta and American Airlines MD-80 flights in the wake of another FAA airline maintenan…

News that a flight school now offers sport pilot training is quick to catch my eye. The March 2008 the Oklahoma Aviator reported that Oklahoma’s Chickasha Wings Inc. had added an Ercoupe 415-C to its fleet, which also includes two Cessna 150s,…

Normally, Jetwhine does not post pieces without the author’s name. This is an exception since this story is from an active line pilot. We’ve changed the author’s name to protect what is left of their career. Admittedly, this is a l…

Every so often I stumble across something very cool that speaks more about our industry than I ever could … although I certainly intend to keep trying my best. If you click on this link, you’ll be instantly snatched away from your desk …

Pilots are a contentious bunch, but if there’s one thing they agree on it is that flying is too expensive. Naturally, they blame the companies that sell them the stuff they want.Affordability was a  primary selling point of sport pilot/l…

Last week’s report from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Inspector General, at first glance at least, looks like another nail in the coffin for business aviation. The DOT report – designed to show which aviation group actual…

I’m sorry to wreck your weekend, but this joke – courtesy of the folks at AhaJokes.com – was so funny I simply had to share. John Carr at The Main Bang and I have been thinking of adding a bit of humor to some of the discussions we…

If you haven’t read Graham Warwick’s blog – the Woracle – you’re missing something spectacular. I’m always amazed at the cutting-edge topics he covers.But maybe he has more time on his hands because the English a…

Simplicity and affordable flying for fun were the driving forces that sustained the sport pilot/light-sport aircraft effort during its 10-year path to reality. In short, it was supposed to be flying unplugged — stick and rudder, look out the w…

Bob Barnes  is already looking at VLJ training from a different perspective, one way he hopes to prevent a rash of human-caused accidents once aircraft deliveries surge to low-time pilots as I mentioned a few weeks back,   And as the vol…

It really is becoming an annoying fact of my life that whenever someone mentions TV, radio and air traffic control, my friend Bob Richards seems to be in the middle. The guy is just everywhere!Bob is the author of a book – Secrets from the To…

Once the Pentagon chose the Airbus A330 over the Boeing 767 to begin replacing over 500 aging Boeing KC-135 tankers, it was a sure bet that sparks would fly. And they did, within hours of the selection.The Boeing folks of course are really upset at…

When the airlines start hiring, it doesn’t take long for flight schools large and small to start wailing about the shortage of certificated flight instructors. As FAA airmen certificate data proves, this is utter nonsense.More pilots hold cur…

I was lucky enough to win a pretty cool award a few years back … the Airbus Aerospace Journalist of the Year award for an aviation safety story I wrote. It was indeed a proud moment. But a fellow I know won something yesterday that I’d g…

Thanks to a really nice client that invited me to give a few in-person talks in New York and Fort Lauderdale, I had an opportunity recently to leave behind a truly miserable Chicago winter for a few days. Our client asked which airline I preferred a…

Believe it or not, one of the tough parts of writing a good blog is knowing when to keep your mouth shut. And yes, I know there are a few readers who can’t imagine I ever keep my mouth shut, but I really do.Case in point. I had an opportunity…

This seems like a simple question, and it is–unless you’re talking about an amateur-built experimental aircraft. Here the answer is critical because these aircraft are certificated under FAR 21.191(g), which requires “…the ma…

Bob Barnes used to fly T-38s for the Air Force so the guy’s already one of my heroes. Turns out he and I served in the USAF around the same time during another war when we were both kids.Today, Barnes focuses his love of flying on VLJs and …

In the February 1908 Scientific American, Wilbur Wright wrote in Flying as Sport that up to that time “men have taken up flying partly from scientific interest, partly from sport, and partly from business reasons….” But recreationa…

Never in my quietest moments did I imagine the conversation about FAA and its overtime policy was going to erupt into such a round of air rage of sorts. Luckily only a few of the hostile words were directed at me personally. But the passion of the r…