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Curiosity unsatisfied is like the itch that can’t be scratched, which is how I feel in sorting through reports on the spec ops helicopter crash during the May 2011 raid that took out Osama bin Laden. I wrote about it in this blog a few months ago.I keep seeing accounts of this event and although […]

When the government audits itself-say the GAO or an internal agency OIG-the results can be impressively self-critical or glaringly myopic. Unfortunately, with no independent data, you never know which you’re getting.I thought of that last week when reading the DOT’s internal audit that-surprise-showed that contract towers are both cheaper and safer than FAA-staffed towers. While […]

As married couples are wont to do, my wife and I got into a little disagreement last week. Nothing too serious, except that I asked her to run over to the local Hess store to buy a Powerball ticket and she neglected to do so. As it turns out of course, I had picked the […]

If you spent any time in the military, you may have heard the phrase “steadying the horses” as a euphemism for a dated procedure that makes no sense. It refers to a story, perhaps apocryphal, in which 20th century Army investigators once discovered that artillery crews couldn’t increase their rate of fire because the field […]

One thing I’ve never figured out about the iPad-or actually the people who use them in the cockpit-is how tolerant pilots are of mounting the things in suboptimal locations. Well, okay, ridiculous locations. My Oscar for most ludicrous mounting in an airplane too small for it goes to the Mooney owner who mounted his iPad […]

I’m not sure when I noticed the first air skirt on a truck trailer; maybe three years ago. Now, it seems, you don’t see many trailers that don’t have these devices. In case you’re not familiar with them, air or wind skirts are those angled blades mounted under the trailer that run most of the […]

Last week, the European Union decided to delay carbon emissions taxation on airplanes operating into the EU from outside its borders, which brought a cheer from NBAA and other aviation groups. And well it should, since the EU’s so-called Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is a toweringly bad idea. But anyone who thinks this is the […]

Colleague Mary Grady e-mailed this morning noting that she was having trouble finding Veteran’s Day-related aviation news stories. So as a veteran myself and in the name of veterans everywhere, I dashed off to the airport to actually fly an airplane for no other reason than the sheer joy of spewing a little lead and […]

Elections, goes the conventional wisdom, have consequences and in last week’s presidential contest, voters sent an ambiguous message to the body politic utterly lacking in anything certain. What does seem certain, however, is that aviation is unlikely to make it through the next four years unscathed.User fees will probably come up again, as will funding […]

To appreciate the following screed, first click on this video . It’s only 30 seconds long. I’ll wait here while you watch it.I picked this little clip off a longer World War II training film on flying the B-26 made by the famous First Motion Picture Unit, Ronald Reagan’s old outfit. The entire film is […]