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It’s another one of those nights when I’ve stayed here in the Pilot’s Lounge after everyone has gone home. Tonight it is because I am still seething. I don’t want to get into my car because the level of anger I have over a case I settled this afternoon is still building. I have no […]

If aviation has one unforgivable sin, it’s running out of gas. But every year, a surprising number of pilots do just that. What’s truly amazing is the number of flights that make it to within two miles of the end of the runway before theengine quits. Just two miles. In the bright light of hindsight, […]

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At 12:26 PM on the 18th day of February 1943, the fortunes of the B-29program disastrously hit rock bottom. At that instant, Boeing research testpilot Eddie Allen, his crew and the heavily instrumented #2 XB-29 were destroyedin a crash. That story is told in “Eddie Allen and the B-29.” This is the story about the […]

The Twentieth Air Force and the B-29s it used to bomb Japan shortened the warby months, perhaps years, and saved, it has been estimated, a million or more U.S. casualties by ending the war before a planned invasion of the heavilydefended Japanese homeland was undertaken — an invasion that was scheduled tobegin November 1, 1945, […]

Robert M. Robbins was born May 15,1916, in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. He learned how to fly during the summer beforecollege, earned a bachelors degree in aeronautical engineering from MIT in 1938,and went to work for Pan Am as a flight engineer on Boeing 314s. Three yearslater, with only 361 hours as PIC in single-engine aircraft, a […]

Maybe it would be easier to just bury our heads in the sand and ignore the coming aviation-gasoline crisis. This is what I believe most of us in aviation are doing. I am referring to the possibility of the demise of both the aviation and auto gasoline that we currently use in our aircraft. The […]

I‘m often asked to sum up an airplane in one word. The problem is that most airplanes resist such a simple label. As a result, my responses usually trend toward “neat,” “cool” and “fast,” to “impressive,” “heavy” and “demanding” or to “slick,” “nimble” and “comfy.” Of course, these choices explain next to nothing about the […]

A bit over 25 years ago, the FAA selected a General Aviation Operations Inspector in each of two District Offices (Detroit and Grand Rapids, Mich.), designated them Accident Prevention Specialists, and charged them with the responsibility of establishing a safety program on a test basis. Each of these two inspectors selected several flight instructors in […]

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