AVweb Insider

There was a time in my life as a journalist that the shallow platitudes that the political class spouts almost as an autonomic function went in one ear, through the emptiness in between, and out the other. Now, they tend to bounce around, get hung up and just piss me off.Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s comments […]

As the world-or at least the Middle East-grows ever more restive in the face of burdensome governments, is the spark of resistance about to ignite at tiny Potomac Airport? It’s a reach, I’ll admit, and maybe the unseasonable Florida heat has addled my brain this evening, but such fantasies are too delicious to ignore.Potomac Airport, […]

In today’s news feed, we’re reporting a brief summary of the responses to our avgas replacement survey. More than 3000 people participated and at least 2000 of them provided written comments, most of which I have read. I consider the effort required a valuable education in what owners think about this critical issue. And they […]

Fire in flight is such a universally horrible thing to think about that most of us probably just don’t think about it much. But the tragic incident involving Kyle and Amanda Franklin over the weekend reminds us that we probably should think about it. Or more accurately, think about what we would do about it. […]

I’ve been spending the past couple of days sorting through the results of our avgas replacement survey. The response was overwhelming: more than 3100 respondents completed the survey and perhaps two thirds of them included direct comments. This one, among many, caught my eye: It is so ridiculous that in this day and age we […]

Whenever I hear about efforts to recover the wreck of an airplane, it always reminds me of the Titanic. In the years since the Titanic was found, it’s been visited numerous times, and salvagers have taken away parts of the wreckage, much to the dismay of ocean explorer Bob Ballard, who first located it. The […]

When I stopped in at Cessna’s Wichita HQ on a Midwestern swing last week, the lunch time conversation settled briefly around the AVIC acquisition of Cirrus. I asked Cessna’s VP of U.S. sales, Tim White, what he thought of the deal. He laughed and said, “I was going to ask you the same thing.” His […]

When Leland Snow died a couple of weeks ago a chapter of a great American aviation and business story closed. What makes it so great is that it isn’t the final chapter. The story continues and, with any luck, the theme will remain the same.Snow was the founder of Air Tractor. He built his first […]

I got a note from a California reader this week looking for a reality check on pattern operations at Rosamond, which is in the high desert, just west of Edwards Air Force Base. He reports that there’s quite an active homebuilt community there and a group of them have become what he described as “insular” […]

It’s almost 75 years since Amelia Earhart went missing, yet the mystery of her fate continues to fascinate aviators and the general public. One interesting thing about this fascination is that there is absolutely nothing to be gained at this point from knowing. Investigators spend years trying to figure out why a commercial airplane crashed, […]