The Buzz Posts

Hasn’t this just been an awful month or so, I mean what with the roller coaster ride of the economy, thousands of people loosing their jobs, not to mention the stress of trying to figure out who will lead the United States for the next four ye…

It only took the agency a couple of years – actually about 10 I believe – but FAA has finally taken action on the problem of too many airplanes and two few air traffic controllers to keep them all apart. And before you ask, yes, the down…

Lame ducks they call them … those federal employees who wander aimlessly between jobs every four years. The FAA’s Bobby Sturgell is a prime example – as of course is George W. Bush – although honestly no one expected to see S…

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 emplo…

A buddy of mine – Mal Gormley – sent this over today and I just had to pass it on. Here’s a shot of the largest aircraft in the USAF fleet, the C-5 Galaxy. And don’t ask if it’s an “A” or a “B” m…

Do you know this guy? He’s Jeff Beck, a contract pilot of some renown. Contract pilots essentially lead a vagabond life from airplane to airplane until they’re no longer needed with no single place to really call home. They wait only fo…

There used to be an area south of the control tower at O’Hare International Airport that acted as a catch basin of sorts when the rains came. They used to call it Lake O’Hare as a matter of fact.Weekend before last, the same weekend tha…

I’m not an economist so perhaps I tend to oversimplify some things, but I find the concept of supply and demand a bit puzzling, especially when it comes to parts of our own industry that claim to focus on the need to constantly improve custome…

Well, Spirit Airlines has finally gone and done it. They’ve taken what used to be a really nice product – I flew them often between ORD and TPA until they dropped the service – and turned it into the closest thing to a city bus po…

This is the seventh anniversary of the terror attacks in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington that included the hijacking of four airliners eventually used as suicide bombs, the first time we all learned that sitting back and hoping for the best as…

I picked up this video of an F-16 making a dead-stick landing into Elizabeth City NC from my friend Patrick at, not surprisingly, Patrick’s Video site. I don’t know where he finds all this cool stuff.If you EVER wondered what an emergen…

As another part of our Labor Day coverage the other day, I took part in recording a new podcast with the Aviation Geeks, Max Flight and Courtney Miller. We hit quite a few topics related to labor that made for a great show. Give it a listen. …

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 …

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…

Finally, a topic I know almost nothing about … flying a blimp, or as it is more commonly known in FAA language, an airship. This well-produced short video tour and introductory flying lesson of the newest of the MetLife airships, the Snoopy 3…

Before you all begin sending shipping the uglygrams, let me tell you that neither the title of today’s editorial, nor the concept behind it originated with me. The idea that air traffic controllers are working less traffic these days – …

At first glance the Gemini 100 looks like a compact water-cooled aircraft engine with four opposing cylinders. Narrow and not very tall or deep, it’s roughly the same size as a Continental O-200 and has the same output, 100 hp. That’s w…

To most people, owning a web site address with their name is something to truly covet. What better way to tell the world through a good blog what we think about everything that’s wrong or right with the world.But what happens when someone els…

The post John Carr put up yesterday about the U.S. DOT’s proposed new guidelines for administering drug tests to some aviation employees would be absolutely hilarious if it wasn’t so sick. John posted comments from the general counsel fo…

Fresh on the heels of Sunday’s post about the flavor of labor relations that led PATCO controllers to call a strike against the FAA in 1981, I added a question I asked acting FAA administrator Bobby Sturgell about employee morale during the &#…

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 ho…

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 peop…