Airports Posts

Ed. Note: I consider Rod Rakic as a friend responsible for a number of things that have changed my life, not all for the good my wife sometimes says. Because of our first lunch together a few years ago, Rod turned me into an iPhone and later an Appl…

As part of the conversation on the AOPA survey on why students drop out of aviation, we got an e-mail from Dr. Penny Rafferty Hamilton,  Ph.D. She had recently  completed a two-year research project that led to Teaching Women to Fly, which shares th…

When Janelle from CNN called for my opinion of the latest aviation security boondoggle, I had to admit I knew very little about the incident. The story focused on the Sacramento-based airline pilot who secretly recorded a security door in the termin…

General aviation is so rarely a supporting player in larger stories that this occurrence quickly captures your attention. Reading Dirty Coal, Clean Future in the December 2010 issue of The Atlantic, James Fallows wrote:  “When I have traveled at low…

The service delivered by some ATC facilities today is just not what it used to be in the old days before the PATCO strike. There, I said it. Having been around in the old days — like the 70s – when traffic at most towers was insane by today’s stan…

Customer service, as the AOPA student retention survey recently reaffirmed, plays an important role in the student pilot dropout rate. As anyone who has called or visited more than one flight school can attest, the quality of customer service—good, …

Introduced in Fixing Flight Training: What You Can Do Now!, the flight training individual education plan, or FT-IEP, can be initiated by students, instructors, or flight schools. It has the potential to alleviate three of the four dropout motivator…

In the overwhelming number of comments to last week’s Aviation Has the CFIs it Deserves, pilots, instructors, and flight school owners clearly confirmed the veracity of AOPA’s survey that identified the leading causes of aviation’s 80-percent dropou…

Don’t feel bad if you don’t find the acronym FAAC jumping right to the head of your aviation conversations these days. It’s not exactly front page news to anyone in the aviation industry, except perhaps the few dozen hand-picked participants of tha…

Called with the dawn of Veteran’s Day to substitute for a middle school special education teacher, I missed the online AOPA Aviation Summit presentation that conveyed the results of its survey of flight training dropouts. I haven’t found the archive…

Now that I have your attention, temper your excitement with the understanding that this cost-saving opportunity may only benefit infrequent fliers, those who feel lucky to afford 30 or 40 hours a year. As a lifetime member of this fraternity, every …

Like any pilot who’s lugged a bag heavy with thousands of pages of instrument approach procedures, SIDs, STARs, airport diagrams, and ancillary information, my aching back really likes the idea of the paperless cockpit served by an electronic flight…

That title is what we call a grabber, intended only to make you read the rest of this short post. Without this disclaimer, some might believe that I think landing at any of these airports is a piece of cake … and I surely do not. My thanks to Sophi…

Reading that AOPA has commissioned an ambitious research project to diagnose the ills that have been decimating the American pilot population for decades, a visceral first reaction was “finally!” The project’s announcement rightly said that people …

by Rob Mark — The fact that I grew up during the radical insanity of the 60’s is not going to come as any great surprise to some readers. It might actually explain quite a bit about my personality to a few in fact. But before any snap decisions, re…

US flight schools that cater to students from members of the European Union should be aware this source of students may soon dry up. The October IAOPA (Europe) e-newsletter reports that EASA is proposing that pilots will need a JAA/EASA license to …

Not long ago the FAA brought the number of fatal accidents in amateur-built experimental aircraft to the attention of the aviation community. It got more specific about the problem—and its solutions—in its Aviation Safety business plan for fiscal ye…

Subbing for the middle school gym teacher the other day, I reported for lunch duty at the conjoined cafeteria it shares with Omro High School. There I saw OHS Principal Brett Steffen, who acted on his aviation interest and earned his private pilot c…

Google Alerts is an efficient way to keep pace with the global aviation industry. But to mine prognosticative details about aviation’s future, one must read past the headlines. In a recent media release, “Boeing Projects Requirements for More than …

When it comes to the future of flight training in America, I have some good news, and some not so good news. The good news is that given the attendance at the panel discussion of this subject, held the Saturday of EAA AirVenture, flight instructors…

Like many pilots, I still haven’t gotten my head around all the details related to the Next Generation National Airspace System. EAA AirVenture Oshkosh, I figured, would be the perfect place to learn more about its components, like ADS-B, the Automa…

On many levels the 2010 Electric Aircraft World Symposium was a surprise. Sponsored by GE Aviation and held at the EAA museum on AirVenture Friday, I expected a geek fest with a small audience of a hundred or less, because that’s the space availabl…

Given the underwhelming participation at an 1130  panel discussion about the subject the Saturday of AirVenture Oshkosh, the general answer must be a big, boldfaced NO. For the discussion of  How to Grow the Pilot Population, just seven of the nearl…

An EAA AirVenture Oshkosh participant every year since 1978, I started spending the week there in 1989, when I began a decade-long tenure as Flight Training magazine’s booth boy.  I spent roughly half that time in the old exhibit buildings, now the …