Blogging Posts

I had a ringside seat last week to many of the inner workings at Southwest Airlines when I was invited – along with a bunch of other journalists – to the airline’s media day. No matter how many times I interact with Southwest employees, they continu…

When I traveled recently to rural eastern Kansas to write and shoot a profile for Aviation for Women, the magazine of Women In Aviation International, holding the last surviving part of a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 was the last thing I expected to do. But h…

Like most pilots, I dreamed of one day owning an airplane. With the cost of groceries and gas, one son in college and his brother  starting next year, I’d put the dream to bed. Given all the costs, I couldn’t justify it to myself, because I fly for …

If my homebuilding buddies are a typical sample of the amateur-built airplane community, there’s a lot of confusion about what led to the new policy the FAA has proposed. (See Homebuilt Aircraft: How Much is More than Half?) My friends are solid, h…

To most pilots who fly over it, Liberty Landing Airport (4MO4) isn’t anything special. On the sectional chart it’s just another private airport, an empty circle around an R that stands for restricted about 20 nm east, southeast of Kansas City Intern…

It’s always bugged me that I need two sectional charts–Green Bay and Chicago–to get from my home in OSH to my family growing-up grounds west of the commercial Class B airspace plug stuck in the ground at ORD. It’s more than the cost: $8.60 each. In…

During the late 1990s I participated in the FAA Pilot Proficiency Award Program. Each year, in return for attending one safety seminar and logging three hours with an instructor (one each for airwork, patternwork, and hoodwork) I met the biennial fl…

If time is short, never ask Dick and Sharon Starks what they’ve been up to lately. Both pilots, these retired schoolteachers have a full flying life that any pilot would envy.  Anxious to see Sharon’s new airplane, a Morane Model L parasol, I learn…

I remember the morning of August 3, 1981 vividly as I turned on the TV to find news stories of air traffic controller members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization-PATCO-marching with picket signs at the base of the tower at Chica…

It seems fitting that my fourth decade of EAA AirVenture attendance starts like the first, meeting those who made the history I read about as a kid. On my first trip to Oshkosh in 1978 I met Pappy Boyington and George Gay (see EAA AirVenture Forums…

From AirVenture 2008 – Van’s Aircraft is a small company that’s put a big smile on faces who’ve taken to the sky in the company’s line of RVs. The handful of employees also wear big smiles, even after standing in the hot Oshkosh sun all day, because…

From AirVenture 2008 – As promised in a recent post (Backyard Flying: Fun & Cheap), I ambled down to the lightplane area at the south end of the EAA AirVenture site to try on Valley Engineering’s Backyard Flyer. It fit! To most people that may not …

From AirVenture 2008 – If I say that most CFIs make lousy business people, I’m unlikely to offend too many people … some for sure, just not too many I’ll wager. The reason is simple. Most CFIs do make lousy business people because teaching is often …

From AirVenture 2008 – Five minutes before the blog session began at AirVenture yesterday, I was wondering if the whole thing had been such a good idea. There were five people in the room. Maybe it was too soon to talk social media. Then, as the clo…

From AirVenture 2008 – There’s nothing quite like meeting up with a bunch of pilot buddies on a Saturday morning for a great breakfast. The social aspect of flying, in fact, is one of the best ways for newer pilots to learn from more experienced avi…

Six months out of the Navy I attended my first trip to Oshkosh in 1978. I went for the airplanes. Not one of them now stands out in memory. Not so with the people I met. Sitting in side-by-side booths in the old exhibit shed were Pappy Boyington of…

Anyone who follows the happenings of the FAA and air traffic control knows John Carr. He spent more than a couple of years at the helm of NATCA, the controller’s union, and was Pat Forrey’s predecessor. I had the pleasure of interviewing John just a…

And just when you think almost no one notices anything you write comes a great article like this one from FlightGlobal’s Runway Girl, Mary Kirby. She interviewed me a few days ago when she realized she wouldn’t be able to make it to Oshkosh for t…

It doesn’t seem possible that it’s been nearly a year in the making, but it has. When I suggested a get together for aviation bloggers last fall I never thought I’d see much interest. But was I wrong. By Thanksgiving I’d had messages from nearly two…

You have to love this one. And this has nothing to do with FAA! London’s Times Online and Plane Stupid are spreading the story about how the BAA apparently supported its case for a third runway at London’s Heathrow Airport – the busiest airport in …

Am I the last airman in America to totally ignore the free and invaluable gift that is FAAST, the FAA Safety Team at www.FAASafety.gov? Sometime during the past two years I gave the FAA my email address. When and how doesn’t matter. What’s importa…

Every so often Jetwhine is lucky enough to unexpectedly receive an important work of prose from another professional mind. Today we have one from Frank Froman, a St. Louis psychologist, a man with a secret dream, but a man who also knows how to solv…

Talking to friends, flight schools, and FBOs it is clear that I’m not the only one who isn’t flying as much as I used to. With avgas going for roughly $6 a gallon or more, depending where you live, direct operating costs are climbing faster than th…

Those of us who have either flown business airplanes or have been lucky enough to travel in the back – a few of us qualify for both – are light years ahead of the people we are still trying to convince about the value of personal air travel over the…