Blog Posts

A friend in DC just e-mailed this update to the Jetwhine news room.From the wastelands of New Mexico comes the news – no, Eclipse is fine, for now.This is certain to become THE news story of 2007, from the same state that brought you preside…

As Friday’s Jetwhine posts proves yet again, I simply love to tweak the nose of practically every airline in the U.S. They just give us so bloggers so much ammunition. I can’t seem to help myself. It’s always been tough to say any…

Sunday, December 23, 2007The Night Before Christmas‘Twas the night before Christmas, and out on the ramp,Not an airplane was stirring, not even a Champ.The aircraft were fastened to tiedowns with care,In hopes that come morning, they al…

While Kate Hanni’s name may not ring a bell in everyone’s head immediately, it certainly should for anyone who flies aboard a commercial airliner this holiday travel season … or any other time of the year actually. Hanni was recen…

One of the huge benefits to being listed on Jetwhine’s blogroll is the personal attention we try to bring each and every member. Here’s a case in point. Today is the 85th birthday of retired US Airways Captain Brian Power-Waters. He to…

It was snowing the other night when I arrived back at Chicago Midway from Washington DC on AirTran. The cabin was about as noisy as you might expect for a 9 PM arrival, people talking, a few reading lights blazing through the darkness. I knew somet…

Now that Senator Dick Durbin (D)IL has demanded action from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Inspector General we can only hope acting FAA administrator Bobby Sturgell is listening.The problem at hand is not really a tough one and is s…

It’s been quite a busy few weeks for the webmaster at the Cessna Skycatcher blog since the Textron subsidiary announced its plan to assemble the C-162 in China. The blog has been the landing site for a number of heated comments poking hard at …

Nice lunch those AIA folks throw every year, great food and good company from all around the industry. This year there was simply no way to avoid the sheer giddiness about the sales numbers. Incoming CEO and former FAA Administrator Marion Blakey &…

The most surprising aspect of Cessna’s decision to build its new model 162 Skycatcher in China is that anyone was at all surprised by the move. Now comes word that some people are shocked, shocked enough, in fact, that they might want their d…

I hope the folks in airplane towns like Wichita, Seattle and Duluth are prepared for what looks to be quite a few sleepless nights now that the world’s first flying machine constructed totally from recyclable materials has flown. Built in a c…

It may be difficult to imagine, but the airline industry was not always the focus of the intense scorn we see today. And as I dug a bit for this story, I found that those glory days of aviation – golden might be a stretch I think – were …

The Christmas season may be a bit barren this year for the people who work for United Airlines. Not of course the management folks. Somehow their piece of the pie never seems to come out damaged when things are tight. I was thinking more of the ra…

Just when I thought I’d never again need to worry about remembering more model numbers Cessna tonight announced not only that it was the successful bidder in the Columbia bankruptcy case, but that it would rename those two new airplanes the Ce…

I love offering my two cents on everything aviation here at Jetwhine. But every so often I also like to share a few stories about some of the cool people I’ve met along the way during my career.Since today is Thanksgiving and most everyone is…

Some of you might recall a post from a few months back in which I expressed disdain that former ALPA president Duane Woerth had in a Letter to the Editor of the Washington Post, signed on to the same old tired airline/FAA line about what’s wro…

There’s an interesting union story floating around that seemed worth sharing although it honestly made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Maybe some of you can add something to it.A story made the wires last night about a carpenterR…

Southwest Airlines has again proven that running an airline – at least from a customer’s perspective – doesn’t need to simply fluctuate between chaos and more chaos.On the way back from the Blog World Expo conference in Las …

The National Transportation Safety Board met Thursday to talk about an industry epidemic … pilot fatigue. It’s about time. The Air Line Pilots Association folks were nice enough to let me write an article about fatigue in their magazine …

Jim Ott wrote an interesting article in last week’s Aviation Week and Space Technology called Surly Skies about … what else, airline travel.He said, “Any adaptation airlines make to counter the negatives of air travel seem to be u…

NASA’s administrator Michael Griffin said he made a mistake the other day and for many people that was enough. People do make mistakes and he said he was sorry.Griffin was answering demands from the public and the press about his agency’…

I have to admit I never gave this a thought before I read the story in the Times Online.Singapore Airlines, the first carrier to operate the Airbus A380, seems to have gone to great lengths to be sure that no one on board the massive aircraft is u…

I wonder how surprised the people at Bombardier actually were this weekend that SAS decided to permanently ground its fleet of 27 Q400 turboprops after a third landing gear accident in a month. The decision was announced Sunday as confidence in the …

The only thing I find surprising about the revelation that NASA has been sitting on a mountain of aviation safety data is that anyone is even remotely surprised about the way that agency operates.OK, maybe the fact that NASA sat on the data –…