AVweb Insider

Contradictions are a part of every aspect of life but rarely are they as ironic as those that appeared at NBAA’s annual gathering, this year in that somewhat sad symbol of excess, Las Vegas. The location is kind of an apt metaphor for the struggle of identity that wages mercilessly in business aviation. Millionaire superstars […]

I was riding my bicycle home from the gym Saturday morning, listening to a podcast on my iPhone about…Steve Jobs’ famous introduction of the device in 2007. Just as it got to the part where Jobs was pulling the curtain, after explaining how the iPhone would keep us in constant touch with everything and everyone, […]

Does NASA’s $1.35 million prize for Pipistrel’s ultra-efficient electric airplane signal a new chapter in aviation, or is it just a sideshow? I tend to think it’s the first step down a long and bumpy road that could take general aviation in new directions.For people who fly for fun — presuming there are many of […]

Anybody who has dealt with a large bureaucracy of any kind understands that it’s an eternal thing, like a gigantic ship steered with a rudder the size of a canoe paddle. You might be able to nudge it in one direction or another, but forget about stopping it, much less making it disappear.With that image […]

My petition (FAA 2009-0481) proposes replacing the third class medical for private-use aircraft under 6,000 lbs with a driver’s license. No commerce is involved (remember that interstate commerce clause), and pilots of small family airplanes cannot be any more of a threat to themselves, their passengers, or people on the ground, than driving any SUV […]

Barely a few hours after the tragic crash of Jimmy Leeward’s P-51 racer at the Reno air race, I got an e-mail from a colleague posing this question: “What’s an 80-year-old pilot doing flying an unlimited in this race?” Notwithstanding the fact that Leeward’s age was repeatedly mis-reported in the breaking hours of this story-he […]

Why do we organize and watch airshows? Ostensibly, because we like to watch airplanes fly, but also to promote aviation to people who don’t know much about it in the hopes that some may become pilots. But what happens when an airshow audience witnesses a bad crash? Are they indelibly scarred? Does aviation suffer a […]

While I was taking notes at the FAA’s avgas replacement committee briefing at AOPA Summit on Thursday, I thought of something famed Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee once said. Journalists shouldn’t waste much effort on writing stories about governmental processes-how this bill went from one committee to the next or how some obscure federal agency […]

Between Memorial Day and Labor Day this year, 158 pilots and passengers died in 94 general aviation accidents. Those are the preliminary numbers from the NTSB, posted online last week. That rate has been pretty much the same over the last few years, the NTSB says. Earl Weener, a pilot who serves on the safety […]

So the weekend turned out to be uniformly grim for aviation, first with the horrific crash in Reno and 24 hours later, an airshow crash in Martinsburg, West Virginia. Depending on what fills the news cycle for the next couple of days, the hand wringing over public safety and the need to reel in these […]