AVweb Insider

By Gianfranco Ghiringhelli As the potential Chief Pilot and Director of Operations of what would have become the first commercial airship operation in the U.S.—outside of Goodyear—I don’t see a broad application for commercial viability, which in a way is a bit sad. I think airships will always have a niche market and maintain a […]

At the end of his legendary career, famed aviation pioneer Jimmy Doolittle titled his autobiography, “I Could Never Be So Lucky Again.” From down here in the flatlands of 21st century general aviation, Doolittle’s Olympian perch is a smudge on the horizon, but I nonetheless have mustered the unmitigated temerity to steal his idea and […]

Time can make all the difference. Sometimes it’s 30 seconds, or two weeks, or the 623 long days it took NASA to put Apollo back on track after a deadly fire. For my purposes here, it’s three years and a few months. That’s the time that passed between Cirrus just being one of those aviation […]

Sound. It’s what lured some of us unsuspecting into aviation. As a kid I reacted to the sound of an airplane engine ticking unseen among cicadas ghost-riding in the sky above my Wonder Bread and mayonnaise New Jersey neighborhood. The sound made me look up to glimpse what shining messenger called and prompted a nun […]

Last week, a friend texted me with a question: He had found a nice restored Cub, but like so many J-3s, it didn’t have an electrical system. It had a C-85 upgrade with the accessory case that can’t be converted to electric start. So hand propping would be the only option. “What do you think […]

Don’t take counsel of your fears, goes the phrase, variously described as of religious or military origin. Its meaning is don’t be captive of that which frightens you and it is, if nothing else, a double-bladed axe. Fear can be both a healthy thing or a numbing source of paralysis or maybe something between. This […]

Last spring, Richard McSpadden talked me off a ledge of sorts. Now, following his death in a crash on Sunday, I wonder if I’m not back out on it. I had called him to discuss some analytical work I was doing on comparing outcomes in emergency landings, but the conversation soon drifted to what I […]

  While I was researching this week’s video on aviation’s role in greenhouse gas emissions—and especially SAF—one phrase kept recurring in my overstimulated brain: window dressing, albeit sincere window dressing. On the light side of general aviation, the attitude is that the warming planet thing doesn’t really exist, so let’s not even talk about it. […]

Back in August, as I was plodding away on that universal symbol of the futility of modern life, the treadmill, I was simultaneously enriching my brain by listening to a podcast. It was some New York Times columnist prattling about how amazing artificial intelligence has become, specifically ChatGPT. She assigned it the task of writing […]

Two controversial physics notions: 1) It’s alleged that a rolling stone gathers no moss, but Keith Richards blunts that theory, and B) in aviation an open hangar door creates a low-pressure zone into which anything loose on the airfield flows with shameless disregard for adult principles. I know; I was sucked into my hangar 40 […]