AVweb Insider

My idea of a good time is to recline on the couch and a watch a news report (with video) depicting thousands of hapless holiday air travelers stuck in some major airport because a freak snow storm hammered half the continent. I can then smugly congratulate myself on having the foresight to avoid holiday travel. […]

There’s a tremendous amount of effort going into encouraging new pilot starts as GA looks down the barrel of a gun that points to a much different world for the industry if more people don’t get, or act on, the flying bug.Various theories have been advanced, and AOPA and EAA are addressing them separately and […]

….This week – on Tuesday – the FAA’s AeroNav charting division will try to untangle the PR mess it has made of possible plans to charge vendors for access to digital charting products. We’ve reported and blogged on this previously.We’ve since learned a bit more, albeit with no help from the FAA. First, here’s the […]

Russ Niles phoned me a while ago and said, “You oughta blog on the Babbitt thing.” To which I replied: I am uncharacteristically speechless. Why people do these things escapes my pea-brained ability to understand.I like Babbitt. He’s been a good administrator. I hope he survives. Since I am unequal to the task of saying […]

As I’m writing this, the views are still piling up on a grainy webcam video of a Turbo Commander plowing into an Arizona hillside at night. It was a tragic crash that killed two experienced pilots, a mechanic and three young children. From the video, it looks like classic controlled flight into terrain; you watch […]

With his long oilskin coat and weather beaten wide-brimmed hat, he didn’t look like the average sleep-deprived business type or nervously excited tourist. If I had to guess, I’d say he was a ranch hand, maybe a foreman on one of the massive cattle outfits that still dot western North America. As such, a horse, […]

Cessna’s decision to raise the price of its Skycatcher light sport aircraft by $35,000 is likely to have some ripple effects in the market. For one, in a single leap, Cessna goes from being middle of the pack pricewise, to very near the top, at least on base price. For another, its competitors, worried about […]

Don’t see a video screen?Try disabling ad blockers and refreshing this page.If that doesn’t work, click here to download the video directly. // –>I can’t clearly recall where I was or what I was doing when D.B. Cooper’s astonishing hijacking of a Northwest Airlines 727 on a rainy, November night in 1971 was headline news. […]

In last week’s blog, I asked for some inside airline information on what passengers should reasonably expect with regard to DOT’s three-hour ramp stranding rule. And brother did I get it, via e-mail from pilots not wanting to post in the blog’s forum response. I also heard from pilots and crews with direct knowledge of […]

I need a little help here from our airline brethren, of whom there are many reading AVweb. I’ve been parsing news stories about this week’s $900,000 fine against American Eagle for keeping passengers shut in airplanes on the ramp for more than three hours. DOT wanted to get the airlines’ attention and it sure did.Unfortunately, […]