Reader Mail

Team Tackles Unexplained Aerial Phenomena It’s about time. The other countries particularly France have led the way to open, true scientific approach to this subject. There is an excellent book by an author named Keane. If you look at this from the scientific method: the only conclusions thus far are that there are over 700 […]

Is Accident Reporting Making Us All Crazy? I learned to fly before the turn of the century. In my first year as a private pilot I subscribed to the Aviation Safety newsletter, it arrived every month and was pre-punched with holes to place in a three ring binder. Two years later I traded my Aviation […]

Low-Viz Takeoffs Just because you can doesn’t mean you should, though anyone suggesting a zero-zero makes it easy to determine whose aviation judgement I would trust my loved ones with. The crews wearing the big boy pants have thoroughly engineered/tested avionics/installations, repetitively trained/evaluated proficient multi-pilot crews, redundant equipment, rigorous SOPs and supporting field infrastructure. Even […]

Last 747 Is Off The Line End of an era indeed. Not just for one airframe but also as an exemplar of a company that used to epitomize engineering excellence and innovation. David G. I watched one taking off at JFK one evening while sitting in my Hawker on the taxiway. My comment to the […]

Why Your Performance Charts Are Wrong In my youth I once took off on a golf-lawn quality but slightly wet runway that was sufficient by book figures, only to make it over the fence and adjacent road with shaking knees and at barely enough height not to touch crossing cars. Based on that experience the […]

Diamond Rollover: Freak Accident Or A Design Flaw? Quite many years ago, I landed at a S. Fla airport with a thunderstorm rapidly approaching and very near the airport. I landed just fine and was cleared to taxi to the ramp that was approximately a mile away. I got about 1/3 of that distance when […]

A Bucketful Of Blues Flying is an endeavor that is remarkably good at reminding you that you are not quite the Sky God you secretly imagine yourself to be. What I want to know is why are those perfect landings, the ones where you can barely feel the wheels spin up, only occur when there […]

Lightspeed Releases New Safety-Focused ANR Headset The built-in CO detector and hearing loss compensation are very interesting and I applaud them for adding these features to a headset. Yes, every aircraft has a CO detector but how many times do you look at that little yellow dot during a flight? It’s one of those things […]

GAMI Unleaded Avgas Approved For GA Piston Fleet Go GAMI! (And thank you, FAA.) Absolutely the best possible news for GA. The only way that we get to keep flying in the U.S. There is *no* public support for airplanes flying around distributing lead from the skies. Peter M. Well then … if this can […]

Regarding Comments On AVweb Thank you for your message about reader comments. I agree with you. I am president of an organization representing the GA flight instructor community. Before, I was the chief instructor for a regional airline. Over the years, so much industry energy has been spent discussing topics concerning the existence of a […]