AVweb Insider

Over the weekend, I spent some time reviewing our poll last week asking, in a time of budget cutbacks, whether EAA should be expected to cover the FAA’s costs of staffing the tower and arrivals during AirVenture this year. A strong majority, almost 60 percent, think the FAA should shoulder the bill, while 22 percent […]

When I was at Aero in Germany in April, one of the head-turner airplanes there was a scale P-51 Mustang LSA proposed by FK Lightplanes. See a video about it here. The reaction to this was interesting to watch and once again demonstrates how pilots love to complain about lack of innovation and then bitch […]

This is supposed to be a blog about FAA customer service, but allow me to digress for a moment. At the tragically young age of six, I was diagnosed with FFPS-form fill-out psychosis syndrome. This manifested itself in the nuns sending notes home to my parents commenting on little Paul’s art and coloring projects being […]

For a number of months now, I’ve been reporting on the November 2009 Norfolk Island ditching of a Westwind jet.The Australian Transportation Safety Board’s investigation of this accident has been widely regarded as a mess, criticized equally by the Australian pilot community, the press and lately, by the country’s Senate. As we reported over the […]

A couple of news stories this week about Virgin Galactic’s progress in putting tourists into space raises the perennial question: Can it made safe? Flying in space will never be truly safe, but then again, flying in the atmosphere is not completely safe, either. There are risks involved any time you accelerate a person to […]

It’s been clear for a long time that the pilot population is in decline, but the reasons why and the ways to change the trajectory seem to be somewhat less clear. Plenty of theories and proposals have been floated, and various advocacy groups have taken aim at the issue, but so far nothing seems to […]

I’m lucky to be here, I’ll tell ya that. The other day, I just about fell out of the open door of the Cub, a mile south of the airport. For months, I’ve been fooling around trying to get a portable radio to work suitable for pattern communications, without success. I’ve been through two Icom […]

Although it should be no surprise to me, Amazon found my number about three years ago and now knows that I read a lot of history, especially World War II history. So it pesters me with e-mails to buy books it knows I might like. And I do. Being an amateur student of the history […]

Whenever there’s an airliner accident, there’s almost always a story the next day about the guy who was stuck in traffic or something like that and missed the flight and I always wondered what must be going through their heads.I never expected to be standing on the taxiway of a small airport being confronted by […]

I was born in Texas and even by the tender age of 10, I knew what the oil-patch aphorism “big hat, no cattle” meant. If it was true in the 1950s, it’s just as true now. I thought of it when our news columns lit up this week with yet another artist’s conception of a […]