Podcast Posts

I wonder if you remember what you were doing back in November 2006? Here’s a quick refresher of some of the top stories. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes were getting hitched. The first hearings were taking place on The Hill to find a replacement for Se…

Listen to this show Between a Rock and a Hard Spot: Demands on air traffic controllers I’ve lost track of how many government shutdowns I’ve experienced during my life. Some under Democrat presidents, others under Republicans. During a shutdown, a s…

The Airplane Geeks are off this week for the Labor Day holiday here in the States, but we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled show of news and zaniness next week. At least, I hope we will. But since Max Flite asked us all to try and produce …

In Episode #355 of Aviation News Talk, Max Trescott and I discussed pilot decision-making behind the wrong runway landing of an American Eagle Embraer 170 at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport (ORD) in late September. A few extenuat…

Click above to Listen – Run time 4:27 (Podcast Text) I think it was Mark Twain who cynically spoke about “Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics” to explain how easily lists of numbers can be manipulated to tell some pretty extraordinary…

Like one of Chicago’s other major aerospace companies, Boeing, the town’s hometown airline has had more than its own share of problems, in addition to those gnawing customer service problems that plague the airline. Certainly, many of t…

Funny how another person can make you think differently about something you thought you already understood. For me it’s my time in the military, the U.S. Air Force in the 1960s to be precise. When Jetwhine contributor Micah Engber mentioned a …

An Aviation Minute Editorial by Rob Mark Years ago when I was still flying for a living, I remember seeing a cool little yellow sticker slapped on the side of another pilot’s Jepp bag. “If it ain’t Boeing, we’re not going.&#…

Md Nor Yusof, chairman of Malaysian Airline System Bhd., right, told reporters on March 25, 2014 that Flight 370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean with no survivors. The search for wreckage was suspended. (Photographer: Goh Seng Chong/Bloomberg © 2…

Fathers, Sons and Airplanes, by Micah Engber The New Year comes twice a year for me. Of course there’s this time of year, the first day of January for the year we all know. But there’s also first day of Tishrei, the Jewish New Year calle…

By Micah Engber Recently there has been much discussion about windowless passenger aircraft becoming the wave of the future. Based on the direction society is now moving I’m sure it’ll become a reality at some point. I also suspect that …

A Unique Around-the-World Journey Heads East As you read this story, Mason Andrews should be winging his way eastward out of Italy toward Croatia while sitting in the left seat of his dad’s Piper Lance (a link to the full podcast is at the bot…

By Micah Engber Al Bean. I just liked saying the name when I was a kid. It was a cool name, sounded like he would be a cool guy, what a neat name for an astronaut, for the fourth person to ever set foot on the moon. If it weren’t for that coo…

Favorite Flights I Never Flew, by Micah Engber, contributor The mid to late 1980’s were the heyday of Frequent Flyer Programs. Since deregulation, the advent of low-cost airlines a-la People Express and Southwest, the mainline carriers were se…

The DC-3, a C-47 “Gooney Bird” when it’s dressed up for the military, conjures intense memories for me, like when my parents bought me an airline ticket to fly back from school in Champaign IL to Chicago one Thanksgiving. That Ozar…

Bruce McCandless, the Astronaut In the Iconic Photo, by Micah Engber Listen to the episode or read it below When you think about the first space walk maybe you think about Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov who in March 1965 was the first man to ever leave th…

Veterans Day as a Time to Reflect Funny how another person can make you think differently about something you thought you already understood. For me it’s my time in the military, the U.S. Air Force in the 1960s to be precise. When Jetwhine con…

Micah (R) with his pop Father’s Day is special to me for a couple of reasons. My own dad is gone, but of course I’m a father myself so it seems like the idea’s certainly living on in our family. But my talented buddy Micah &…

I was really starting to like the FAA the past few years, what with the Part 23 rewrite and passage if 3rd Class Medical reform. I saw them as more of a kinder, gentler agency … more let’s all work together for the greater good and that …

An Airplane Geek for All Seasons I’ve always found keeping up with the demands of social media to be work, quite a bit of it actually. But I think Scott and I also see the work as a necessary effort. Who else is going to dig between the cracks…

Malaysian Boeing 777 – @jetwhine There’s no small amount of irony in today’s announcement that the search for MH370 has officially been called off nearly three years after that Boeing 777 disappeared on a flight from Kuala Lampur t…

Eastwood Got It Right With Sully Complete NTSB Accident Report: US Airway 1549  (click here) Most pilots tend to take airplane movies with a grain of salt because they’re usually riddled with mistakes or enough exaggerations to quickly make us…

Ed. Note: While this article was originally written back in 2008 and while many of the names of the top folks at the organizations have changed, the issues by and large have not. That said, I believe this is worth a few minutes of your time to think…

Over the last 20 years, we all listened to one United CEO after another talk about how much they value their customers. Enough talk. United’s new CEO Oscar Munoz needs to stop the talking and start showing customers if the carrier ever really …