AVweb Insider

There is a movement in Washington to reform the FAA and Rep. Bill Shuster, the chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure made it pretty clear that the government is looking north for ideas during his speech at the National Business Aviation Association convention in Orlando on Tuesday. Canada has had privatized air […]

We get a steady trickle of press releases from the mash-up of companies that now comprise Textron Aviation-Cessna, Beechcraft and Hawker. The other day, we noticed something: the press releases are coming through not with the Textron Aviation moniker but the badges of the individual companies. At the static display on Monday, I noticed the […]

Bored as I sometimes am with Aviation Hall of Fame nominees and Lifetime Achievement Awards, to amuse myself, I’m inventing a new category: Best filming of a gear-up landing. I’m calling it the Oh-S&^t Award and hope to announce it every year about this time. I won’t lack for examples because there are (a) a […]

Last month, I spent a solid week on the phone talking to flight schools about their operations, their marketing and, especially AOPA’s idea to refurbish older Cessna150s and 152s and feed them into the training and flying club market. While they were intrigued by the idea, almost all of the schools were put off by […]

It’s not enough that the airlines want to reduce the distance between seats to the width of a human hair, now the flight attendants want to take away our phones again. It’s been barely a year since the airlines and the FAA relented, tossing the downtrodden traveling masses the leanest bone of being able to […]

Based on my data sources, since August 1, 2014, we have not administered a single ATP knowledge test that would allow a pilot to then go on to take the ATP multi-engine practical test and become ATP qualified for service in an airline. Yup. None. For two whole months and I expect this trend to […]

I’ve been doing some instrument instruction with a young pilot who’s set on working his way through the ratings to an eventual professional flying career, probably in the airlines. I’m occasionally asked what’s the best way to do this, but if I’m honest, I have to admit the real question I weigh is whether to […]

There are some big changes coming in the way U.S. pilots fly and they’re not far off. By 2020 anyone flying in controlled airspace will have to have at least ADS-B Out in their airplanes and hardly any have added the necessary gear. To its credit, the FAA sees the potential challenges of adding the […]

After watching FAA administrator Michael Huerta interviewed on network news last night, I felt so much better. For all the administrators I’ve covered in some way, and that’s about nine, he is absolutely the most skilled at giving polished, content-free answers and he doles these out not just to us ink-stained wretches in the GA […]

Last week, when I was being shown around Embraer’s new U.S.-assembled A-29 Super Tucano with a group of journalists, the first thing that caught my eye was a big covered something sticking out of each wing. In an age of remote control drones and smart bombs, that couldn’t possibly be a machine gun, could it? […]