AVweb Insider

I have this recurring fantasy that Id like to work for the FAA for a couple of days just to give someone a break. If I could pick the days, it would have been the ones where the FAA was reviewing Yves Rossys plans to fly a routine in the airshow at AirVenture this week. […]

Were usually so busy covering AirVenture that we rarely have time to give the afternoon airshow more than a passing glance. But this year, Ive spent a couple of hours shooting around show center and I have to admit, EAA has outdone itself with both the acts and the pace of the show. When we […]

Almost every year during AirVenture, the FAA administrator makes the obligatory slog to Wittman Field in N1, does a dog and pony and flies back to the Washington puzzle palace. In years past, this has been a bit of a love fest. In 2010, I was amused-or was it shocked?-when then-EAA president Tom Poberezny protected […]

If there’s any overused word at an AirVenture press conference, it’s “excited.” The second most overused word to the point of cliche is “game changer.” Considering that the last real game changer in aviation was, I dunno, the invention of the turbojet engine maybe, a clever new app with drop shadow shading and redesigned pulldown […]

When we gear up for AVwebs coverage of AirVenture every year, we never know quite what to expect-a dead show thats a news desert or a manic Monday where theres so much news and so many new products that we cant hope to keep up with it all. As of Sunday night, its looking more […]

Continentals purchase this week of the assets of Thielert Aircraft Engine GmbH didnt exactly come out of left field. Continental already declared its interest in diesel in 2010, when it announced the TD300 diesel. And that was before China-based AVIC International came into the picture with a necessarily global view, but not one that Continental […]

While it might be true that fear is just fear, the kind that comes in knowing youre running out of gas has a particular texture that seems uniquely capable of turning your brain to mush. I know this because like many pilots, Ive had the experience of nearly running an engine on air. I could […]

On a swing through Continental Motors factory in Mobile this week, I spent a couple of hours touring the companys new Zulu Flight Training center in nearby Spanish Fort, Alabama. We first reported on Zulu a year ago and my visit coincided with its one-year anniversary. Zulu, you may recall, juxtaposes an intimate little flight […]

I have spent a lifetime fooling around in high-risk sports-flying, skydiving, motorcycles. It follows that I have a lot of friends who do the same and a few weeks ago, I lost one of them. In any high-risk activity, there are always people who rise to the top and stand apart from the rest and […]

I do it. You do it. We all do it. As pilots, in the wake of an accident like Asiana 214 last Saturday in San Francisco, we crank up our piety and discipline and decline public comment until the investigators are done. But amongst ourselves, theres no such restraint and theres not much in the […]