Blog Posts

All this time I thought it was my problem for not understanding the ins and outs of the airline world that have wreaked such havoc on aviation. I never seemed to stop shaking my head every time I read the next chapter from the Northwest or Delta or …

This story would actually be funny if it weren’t such a sad reminder of miserable state of air traffic control in Brazil. When Pope Benedict left Brazil on Sunday aboard an Alitalia flight, he wanted to send one final good will message to his follow…

Being a passenger on board an airplane that barely escapes becoming a pile of twisted metal and flesh would probably be enough to drive most men’s passions for air safety, at least that’s what I’d say about Joe Sharkey. Sharkey, the writer who happe…

You just have to love the Brazilian government. After eight months of pilot and air traffic controller interviews, the Federal Police there seem to have decided the only logical reason for last fall’s midair collision over the rainforest was that th…

Being married to a psychologist gives me a never-ending look at the insights those professionals use to tell when someone’s thinking has gone off kilter.  Take being neurotic for example. That’s when someone tries attacking a problem the same way – …

Boy I love this video! Curiosity coupled to the Internet means a chance to uncover a few thousand nooks and crannies that often hide some impressive content. You Tube been a favorite in our house for some time with my 12-year old being a devoted fan…

Since it’s a beautiful spring afternoon in Chicago – sunny, temperatures in the high 70s (around 25 for you Celsius folks) it seemed like the right time to blog a bit about a piece of aviation that’s not quite as serious as the FAA, user fees or bad…

Henry Ogrodzinski thinks the FAA’s Valentine’s Day funding legislation is “a solution in search of a problem.” He’s the president and CEO of NASAO, the National Association of State Aviation Officials. We caught up with Henry O, as his friends know …

When I was asked a few months ago to run a workshop about airport marketing and new media for the Texas Aviation Conference in Corpus Christi I was pretty excited. The Texas Department of Transportation folks put on a great event and have always mad…

When the City of Chicago’s Department of Aviation destroyed Meigs Field in the middle of the night a few years ago, it transformed KCGX into a poster child for the failure of both pro and anti-airport groups to work together successfully. With the f…

Air Line Pilots Association President John Prater recently painted a bleak picture of airline travel for the upcoming tourist season, “This summer is going to be brutal,” he told Air Transport World Online. Prater believes this summer will be a mes…

I received quite a few private pieces of mail about my post on the Brazilian air traffic controller issue last week, so I thought I’d share something I learned after speaking with Marc Baumgartner, president of the International Federation of Air Tr…

Just when pilots and flight departments began to breath a little easier about flying outside the U.S. comes word that the Brazilian air traffic control is finally coming unglued, much the way many predicted after the midair collision over the rainfo…

Airlines are Pulling Out All the Stops  FAA Administrator Marion Blakey expressed surprise recently at the heat her user-fee proposal generated so far with industry professionals, but also from Congress. Blakey was shocked … shocked mind you, at hea…

Andrew H. Broom and I don’t know each other. We’ve never met and I don’t owe him any money, nor he any to me. At least none that I recall.  What we do have in common is an infatuation with an incredible airplane concept and the need to tell a good s…

Despite an edict from the City of Chicago’s Department of Aviation warning people away from O’Hare Airport on Tuesday, the A380 crew plunked it down nicely on runway 4 Right to the cheers of the limited crowds who were able to find a place to watch…

No one I know disagrees with the need to constantly upgrade the U.S. air traffic control system. We all know system demand is on the rise. We just disagree on who should pay, how much they should pay and whether of course the sky is actually falling…

It was a quiet Sunday afternoon today in Chicagoland as the city  struggled to make that final leap from Winter to Spring. I was out walking the new dog when I heard what sounded like a small airplane about to connect with some serious trouble. The …

There is nothing worse than flying into busy terminal airspace when the weather is bad and the pilots are feeling like they’re four or five minutes behind the airplane. The captain’s and first officer’s hands are moving furiously around the cockpit …

And hot off the presses is an update from my friends at FLTops.com that the numbers I quoted in the piece below about qualifying for a pilot job at American Eagle are now incorrect. Interestingly, they were correct when I printed them, but that was …

OK, uncle …uncle! You’d think that a guy who flew a regional airliner for a living would be smart enough to realize that not every regional pilot in the world would drop their lunch for a chance to fly a big jet at the majors. But I did imply that i…

I don’t play the lottery because I really think the odds of winning are about the same whether I enter or not. Since most of the people who read Jetwhine are about as plane crazy as I am though, I thought I’d pass along this chance to get up close a…

Honestly, I don’t watch a lot of television, except for a few favorites like Doctor Who, The Daily Show, 24, maybe an odd movie from time to time, or the Sunday political talk shows. Until last week, I’d say I actually never did more than react to T…

With less than a year to go before long-running Aviation Trust Fund legislation expires, FAA administrator Marion Blakey has been developing some serious rhetoric about the need to fix a funding system no one else except the airlines seems to think …