Commentary

Februaryis insurance renewal time for me. I’ve been an airplane owner since 1974 when I realized adream and bought my beloved 1966 Mooney Super 21, N9324M. Since then I have owned threeother airplanes, including my current 1979 Aerostar 601P, N6069N. For the past 23 years,every February has meant calling my agent and getting quotes for […]

Whilemost of us were busy unwrapping Christmas gifts and ringing in 1998, executives atCessna’s single-engine plant in Independence, Kansas, were preoccupied with a ratherdistressing situation. They’d just learned that the Aeroquip-built mufflers installed inhundreds of brand new Cessna 172R Skyhawks and 182S Skylanes had potentially defectivewelds that could allow carbon monoxide contamination of the cabin […]

NBC’s two-hour made-for-TV movie Blackout Effect stars EricStoltz as a dedicated young NTSB investigator, and costars veteran character actor CharlesMartin Smith as an eccentric and emotional air traffic controller. The show starts out very promisingly with lots ofquick sequences intercut between airline cockpits and an ARTCC dubbed “MidwestCenter” located in Illinois. (Can you spell ZAU?) […]

If the case of “TenRomeo” proves anything, it’s that the government is not always right. A few months ago, I wrote an AVweb guest editorialadvising that the Federal Government had confiscated Dr. Millard Harmon’s Beech Bonanza36, N7710R. I owe you an update. In civil action, the United States sued Dr. Harmon, charging him with: From […]

Senator Slade Gorton Chairman — Senate Aviation Subcommittee U. S. Senate Washington, DC 20510 Dear Senator Gorton: Mid-air collision kills 185. Global flight 1025, inbound to Chicago, collides with a cargo aircraft, PDO flight 342. Both aircraft are destroyed. NTSB investigating the FAA and the Air Traffic Control system as primary cause. This is the […]

EXCELSIOR SPRINGS, Missouri — From where Dennis Fetters sits, it’s frustratingto try to deliver a low-cost, relatively simple kit helicopter only to have people getupset when problems arise, as they have been wont to do this year on the Mini-500helicopter kits his company, RevolutionHelicopter Corp., manufactures. “We work hard to put together the most-affordablehelicopter kit […]

Last year’s TWA 800 accidentgenerated an extraordinary amount of public and media interest, perhaps because,thankfully, airplanes don’t often turn into fireballs and fall out of the sky in pieces.Its aftermath has only emphasized the peculiarities of the incident and heightened ourawareness of the political nature of reaction to such tragic events. The initial responseto the […]

I recently participated in a six-state satellite based interactive video conferencethat addressed the concerns and the difficulties that Fixed Base Operators are currentlyexperiencing. The conference took place on November 12, 1997. It’s subtitle was”Survival of FBO’s: can this industry succeed or is it doomed to disappear?” Theconference was attended by Directors of State Aeronautics Organizations […]

As a pilot of 38 years experience, I have watched variousnavigation systems of varying degrees of reliability come and go. The trend in generalaviation during recent years has been for everyone to jump on the GPS bandwagon. Hundredsof millions have been spent to install GPS receivers in aircraft of all types, worldwide.It’s a great system. […]

I hadn’t heard from my friend Mil Harmon for a while. When I got his letter the otherday I understood why. For the first time in 27 years he is without “Ten Romeo,”a beautiful 1969 Beech Bonanza 36 (full registration N7710R) considered by some to be themost renowned single-engine aircraft in the world. This plane […]