AVweb Classics

Iris Cummings Critchell, an aviation pioneer and the last known surviving U.S. Olympic swimmer from the 1936 Berlin Games, passed away at age 104 last week. According to the New York Times, after competing in the games where she finished fourth in her 100m breaststroke heat in Berlin, Critchell turned her attention to another passion—aviation. […]

The runway lights were just coming on when I met Kary and Karver in the pilot’s lounge at the virtual airport. Kary is a longtime CFI and volunteer pilot with the Civil Air Patrol and I admire her judgment on safety matters. Karver is a young man who recently completed his instrument and commercial ratings […]

It’s been unusually quiet in the pilot’s lounge at the virtual airport. We lost Old Hack last week. No, he wasn’t missing. I’m getting the words all wrong. We knew right where he was—in the long-term care facility where he’d been the last year or so—the place that he rudely referred to as the “feebs […]

It was a foggy mid-week morning when I stopped into the pilot’s lounge at the virtual airport. I was doing some research for an article in our sister publication Aviation Consumer and I needed Wi-Fi access, so I figured I’d tap into the flight school’s system. Karver, recently instrument rated and Kary, a long-time pilot […]

Now that I could see the airplane, I was pretty sure that It was an Aviat Husky. The down-to-your-shoelaces fog that I’d driven through to the airport was beginning to lose its battle with the sun. When I got out of my car 20 minutes ago, the fog had been the absolute master of the […]

I’d stepped into the pilot’s lounge at the virtual airport after finishing up with my last student of the day. I didn’t think anyone was still in the building and I wanted to make sure the coffee maker was off—it has a tendency to create enough smoke to fog the room by morning if left […]

Spring brings new things to life. Little Canadian Geese hatch and grow into big geese so they can clog inlet guide vanes and fill big city rivers with Air Busses. Flowers bloom, little green turtles open their eyes to a brand new pond and our airline rolls-out a new passenger boarding system. The old method […]

The quiet home I expected to find when I returned from my last trip was not as serene as I might have hoped. My nephew Kermit was there and was going to stay for at least a few days while his parents vacationed in Vegas.The first indication I had that he was in the building […]

There is no cockpit seat in our airline more uncomfortable and embarrassing than the jumpseat on the MD-88.First, it isn’t really a seat so much as a giant, Chiclet-shaped, folded cushion that is hung in the cockpit by the most secure and opening-proof, metallic click-lock ever invented in this or any other universe. To release […]

It seems strange to feel cold while flying in the middle of summer but I was chilled to the bone. Long legs in high-altitude transports always result in a cold-soak, and the low temps work their way though the cockpit wall and over to your seat.On the Boeing 727, it was just something we had […]