Reader Mail

National Air Tour Received your much-read article this morning (Newswire, Sept. 18). The information on the National Air Tour is a little bit in error. You may want to check the route they are taking (it will be modified a little along the way due to weather).They left Wichita on Sunday morning for Tulsa, not […]

Contract Towers Comparing “safety” at contract towers with FAA staffed towers is nigh onto impossible (Newswire, September 8). What is the unit of measure, metric? The OIG uses reported errors (systems errors and systems deviations) exclusively.And who is more likely to report that error/deviation: A manager who might be given two weeks notice by the […]

Contract Towers I’m puzzled why you would make a statement or accusation (funny as you may have intended) suggesting that the “10 times the normal participation rate” to the privatization survey was either a “technical problem or union participation,” (Question of the Week: August 20).I have been a professional pilot for 24 years — and […]

Presidential Protection Maybe it isn’t newsworthy any more, but we had two single-engine planes forced down by military fighters at our local airport, Crest Air Park (S36) in Kent, Wash., during the presidential visit to the Puget Sound area. I live inside the traffic pattern and heard, saw, and felt the F-15s as they flew […]

Prop Strike In his article (Prop Strike!) John Ruley wrote: Up through the mid-1960s, it was common practice not to open the crankcase after a simple blade strike. Instead, a dial-indicator test was performed on the crankshaft end (basically, to see if the shaft was bent). This is now considered inadequate.” Not always. A 310 […]

Commercialism at Oshkosh I note that many people responding to your QOTW think commercialism is “way out of hand at Oshkosh.” I beg to differ. Oshkosh has infinite potential — what it turns out to be for you is exactly what you make it.I camped beside a guy who was flying a Kitfox ultralight and […]

Picture of the Week What happened to the Picture of the Week? It seems to have stopped. John Crusco AVweb Responds: Didn’t you get enough photos in our AirVenture coverage from Oshkosh? Picture of the Week took a vacation while we were in Oshkosh. It’s back now. Arturo WeissNewswriter and POTW Editor Question of the […]

NASA ASRS I read Don Brown’s column on “It’s the Little Things” with great interest. Although I was aware of the ASRS, I was not aware of the publications of reports on various incidents that were available through ASRS. After downloading several of these, I was extremely enlightened by the report on Personal Electronic Devices […]

On The Fly — Flash Bulb Saves Men That flashbulb (or was it a strobe flash?) could have easily caused a fire under the conditions described in the article. Warnings against cell-phone use in auto filling stations don’t hold a candle (so-to-speak) compared to the danger involved in flash photography while the photographer is soaked […]

Why Twins Crash I very much enjoyed the recent article, and agree that maintenance on older twins must be one of the bigger safety factors. I was interested in the author’s comments about practicing asymmetric go-arounds.Here in the U.K. the CAA standard for the initial instrument rating and its annual renewal requires you, typically, to […]