Blog Posts

I’ve been really touched by how many regular readers noticed that Jetwhine just turned one.A year ago I had dinner with a buddy in Wichita who seriously questioned why I was trying to blend a little new media talk with the rest of the aviatio…

There’s pilot shortage brewing. It’s began churning on the regional airline side of the industry as pilots bail out of flying little airplanes – sorry, RJs are still big to me – headed for the majors who – so …

I heard an interesting interview on NPR last week with Richard Hurd from Cornell University. He said the use of labor strikes across the U.S. has declined by 90 percent since the 1970s.When Hurd began to focus on the Reagan Era, I expected to hear …

If I had to list things I would never have expected to see on Google Earth – the snappy video mapping software service run by the online giant – a flight simulator would probably be pretty high on the list.As you’ll read about at …

An airline pilot career has a few more thorns sticking out of it these days. Pay scales are down, duty days are longer, schedules stink and passengers are easily riled. But even with all that said, I still think it makes for a pretty incredible care…

News last week from the White House that even George Bush has finally run out of excuses to avoid admitting the U.S. aviation system is in need of serious reform should actually not come as much of a shock.The Business Travel Coalition’s chai…

Despite the private e-mail tongue lashing I took for my comments a few weeks back about the need to retire the Shuttle, I’m pretty fond of the concept of space flight. Even at my advanced age, I’d be at the Kennedy Space Center in a hear…

I gave a talk this week about airports at the NBAA Convention in Atlanta and I used Chicago Meigs Field as an example of how people can rally to save an endangered field the way Steve Whitney and the Friends of Meigs did to save the “Coolest L…

If you click on this link, you’ll find yourself sitting smack dab in front of a FlightAware screen all tuned up to Day Jet’s online identity. This gives you the tools to follow all DayJet trips in near real time.Personally, I hope these…

I wrote something here a few months back about the Air Line Pilots Association’s (ALPA) plan to start squeezing tighter on airline management as payback for the concessions pilots have delivered and how many airlines have failed to now re…

Those Aviation Alliance Across America folks are at it again.They seem to think that industry types will take time out of their valuable day just to pick up the phone and punch in 866-908-5898 and be automatically connected to their members of Cong…

Just before FAA administrator turned off the lights to her office at 800 Independence Avenue last week, USA Today ran a story about a possible conflict of interest between Blakey, the FAA and the fat $1.8 billion contract awarded AIA member com…

One of the really annoying problems inherent in writing books like my recently published McGraw Hill volume – a Professional Pilot Career Guide – designed to answer every imaginable question about landing the best flying job since I knew…

Most people counted PATCO out years ago. PATCO was the union that represented air traffic controllers during the infamous 1981 strike that cost 12,000 PATCO members their jobs.But PATCO never really disappeared. It just shrank to become a tiny inde…

I’ve just returned from the first international aviation blogger conference held in a luxurious downtown Chicago hotel overlooking Lake Michigan, not far from where Mayor Daley destroyed Meigs Field (CGX) just a few years ago.Conference atten…

I was thinking about blogging as I tend to do these days with the first anniversary of Jetwhine approaching. What makes blogging valuable to those of us in the aviation industry is the direct link we offer between the writer and the reader, somethin…

After the Koz Convention drew hundreds of political pundits to Chicago for a weekend’s blogging about the U.S. political climate last month, the Daily Koz, Markos Moulitsas’ blog of political intrigue and corruption, ran a piece about ou…

Today is Labor Day here in the states, a national holiday devoted to the men and women on the front lines, people responsible for building the industrial infrastructure of the U.S. economy.                                                           L…

Today’s an anniversary of sorts.It was just over 30 years ago today that I told a student named Jeff something that kept him from becoming an accident statistic. It didn’t seem like such a big deal then, but it does now.Looking back on…

I was reading a flyer that the editors at Professional Pilot magazine sent out recently asking reader opinions about the qualities needed to succeed as a professional pilot. Now the battle begins … stick and rudder skills, versus more practic…

Was it Karma that Bob Richards called me yesterday right after I happen to catch a rerun of John Cusack’s excellent portrayal of an air traffic controller in “Pushing Tin?” Maybe. He called to see if I’d read his new book, wh…

America’s first reusable spacecraft is almost 30 years old and it is time to put these tired old machines where they belong … in a museum.Despite my love of that bright golden plume of fire behind every orbiter at takeoff, and a thunde…

Now that American Airlines announced they’ll be testing an on-board Wi-Fi Internet service with AirCell beginning next year, can on-board cell phone usage be far behind? Imagine the fun as we all get to listen in on one more person who thinks …

The lesson Northwest Airlines management seems to have just re-learned is that no carrier can staff enough pilots to cope with flight-canceling job actions when cockpit crews think they’ve been wronged. Crew shortages at Northwest have forced …