Blogging Posts

After seeing its inaugural (public) flight at EAA AirVenture 2008, I’ve been following the the development of the Martin Jetpack. Beyond the sci fi coolness of the Kiwi project, a few questions came to mind, like what happens when the engine fails? …

In the last century, fly-in were about flying. Unlike today’s events, which cater to passive participants there to shop and watch other people fly, the pilots who flew in honed their skills by competing in takeoff and landing contests, flour bombing…

Going on a backcountry safari to explore the airstrips long ago hacked out of what became the the Selway-Bitterroot and Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness Areas ranks second on my all-time list of best aviation experiences. (First was flying…

First there was fabric over wood and/or metal frameworks. Then were was metal over metal, which led to monocoque construction. Eventually,  composite materials followed suit, complete with a subcutaneous layer of acoustic foam to keep things quiet. …

Air traffic control has been under the magnifying glass of late, with most recent incident being the loss of separation between Michelle Obama’s C-40 (Boeing 737) and a C-17 cargo plane. I’m puzzled. Numerous reports, including the story in the Wash…

Mention the Next Generational Air Transportation System to pilots and the first thing that comes to mind is money and the pain resulting from complex changes. If you’re a GA flyer, add unkind words for the airlines, the primary beneficiary of the sa…

Feedback, information on what students have done correctly, where they need work, and how to make the necessary improvements, is key to any educational program. Its quality and value depends on a flight instructor’s ability to immediately measure pe…

At every level and every altitude, the world today is an unhappy place growing ever more turgid and lethal. Keeping current with local, state, national, and world events can inspire hope’s suicide. If there is a hotline holding promise of something …

The notices arrived in my in-box almost hand in hand.  Analyzing the previous year’s data, the AOPA Air Safety Institute’s Joseph T. Nall Report for 2010 gives the good and bad news about general aviation accidents. And the  2011 Safety Standdown i…

Upon reading  the National Association of Flight Instructors’ report on how a recent change in the FAA knowledge test question banks had increased the number of failures, my initial reaction sided with the FAA. Let me explain: When I was with Flight…

Using FAA data provided by the General Aviation Manufacturers Association’s annual Statistical Databook, I’ve built a spreadsheet of pilot population data back to 1964. Updating it for 2010 revealed a new highpoint in pilot certification: 96,473 act…

The General Aviation Manufacturers Association annual Statistical Databook & Industry Outlook is like a late Christmas present that puts all other gifts or lumps of coal into a broader context.  The first edition, published in 1973, ran just 22 page…

At every level, and in every corner, it seems that the world is a universally unhappy place, and has been for awhile. Citing political mandates, and mindless of immediate or future consequences, oligarchs are strenuously exercising their financial h…

Flight instructor pay and benefits are an integral component in creating a flight school faculty that reliably provides an education consistent with the investment made by the students they serve. Unfortunately, flight training is at the bitter end …

A sure indication of age is the change in status of a profession once held in high regard. Embodied by the airline pilot, I’m talking about aviators who gets paid to transport people or cargo on a regular run. Once a respected and well-paid position…

Stopping by Sonex Aircraft the morning of  January 28, Mark Schaible greeted me with the news that its single-seater, the Onex, had made its first flight the day before. It passed its FAA inspection just after noon, added Sonex Founder John Monnett,…

The FAA Safety Hotline is a no-brainer of a customer-service tool built to offer users and aviation industry employees a chance to spill the beans about issues that affect all areas of flying safety. People can leave a name and phone number or t…

Not long ago I received an e-mail from Greg Brown, one of the many friends made during my time at Flight Training magazine (and Greg, the 2000 CFI of the Year, still writes his popular “Flying Carpet” column for it.) It was a short note to let me kn…

By now, you’ve heard plenty from me on the DOT’s Future of Aviation Advisory Committee (FAAC). The FAAC was thankfully put to sleep last month. I still think it was a colossal waste of resources to bring so much talent together in one place for a ye…

Sometimes I think we have only ourselves to blame for this kind of publicity. Business aviation seems to still enjoy that low profile, even since the chaos of the Big Three auto guys denying their companies actually owned airplanes, much less used t…

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…

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…