AVweb Classics

It was just about the perfect day off for this airline captain. Warm breezes from a portable heater wafted over my body, which was lying in a comfortable position in my faux leather recliner. A hot cup of perfectly brewed coffee by my side, I was enjoying a Tivo’d recording of a new Simpson’s episode […]

My nephew Kermit and I rarely miss a movie that has flying in it. We’ve watched classics like “Islands in the Sun” and endured dogs like “Pearl Harbor” but we’ve always enjoyed each other’s company and popcorn at the movies.During one of my days off last week, I took Kermit to see the highly hyped […]

I don’t usually travel by boat, but I found myself crossing the rough waters of a Midwestern, middle-size lake. I was on my way to a friend and co-pilot’s 50th birthday party. It was to be held on the hallowed picnic grounds once cavorted upon by this person’s forebears and ancestors. A sort-of old-time, traditionally […]

Summer is always a cornucopia of weather delays, hot cockpits and long duty periods. If you add in the occasional terrorist scare, you can spend quite a bit of time at the airport or in the airplane.You usually smell and feel pretty good while doing this, but with yesterday’s confiscation of my crew’s deodorant, toothpaste […]

CEO of the Cockpit #61: There’s No Trying to Reason With the Terrorist Season – (Aug. 27, 2006)Do you want to see the captain of your airline flight walk through security in stocking feet with his “air marshal” government-approved gun in a clear plastic bag? AVweb’s CEO of the Cockpit just wants to keep his […]

It was so unexpected that I couldn’t help myself. I shouted out in surprise. Why in the world are you putting a navigational-beacon frequency into the ADF? “Well … uh … I thought I’d use the ADF as a back-up source of navigation during this upcoming approach,” said Laurie, my aviation major domo for the […]

You don’t land a Champ or a Luscombe in the same manner as you land a B767 or an MD-88, but the principles are the same. Both kinds of airplanes require your full attention until you have them parked, chocked and shut down.Landing a tail-dragger only begins with the touchdown. Once the tires kiss the […]

One of the advantages of flying from the Eastern Time zone to the Pacific is that when you get there it always seems early and you always have enough time for a good dinner.Our 6 p.m. arrival in SFO was really a 3 p.m. arrival by their left-coast standards, which left enough time for a […]

They found a box in the main terminal. The box didn’t seem to belong to anybody and when the Homeland Security team looked at it, it looked suspicious. Bomb or brownies?The contents of the box in question would be either a bomb in fact or simply a gut bomb, but either way it meant that […]

It had been a while since I’d had an FAA inspector in my jump seat and I was grateful that it was for a short leg from New York to Detroit. You usually don’t see FAA guys on the seat on a transcontinental leg unless they really want to get to LAX for some non-fuzz […]