AVweb Insider

A lot of the debate about how to handle the threat of terrorism, actual terrorism and the results of terrorism in the U.S. has been about whether it’s a military or justice issue.After apparently leaning the other way initially, President Obama now seems to think a military mindset is what is needed or, perhaps, is […]

I’ve found the reaction to last week’s kid controller fiasco nearly as interesting as the event itself. It’s kind of a popular case study in how people perceive and manage risk-not just physical risk, but the sociological kind, too.As pilots, we have a Pavlovian negative reaction when media outlets-mostly cable news-overplay a story, as they […]

Just as I think judgment in the world of aviation can’t get any more bizarre, along comes a story like the one that just trickled into my inbox. The headline on it: “Child Controls Air Traffic at Busy JFK.”The upshot of the story is that a JFK tower controller evidently brought his kid into the […]

Southwest Airlines continues to get pilloried for tossing director Kevin Smith-a self-confessed fat guy-off one of its 737s a couple of weeks ago. It has devolved into a mildly amusing public trading of insults and apologies.I would have found it a lot funnier if I hadn’t had the pleasure-maybe four or five times-of being seated […]

The degree to which the voting public will tolerate malfeasance and incompetence in government is one of the most astonishing aspects of modern life. I sometimes wonder if this tolerance is in inverse proportion to distance-we’ll suffer fools in local government more readily than we will at the state or federal level.And here in my […]

From the we-are-sometimes-our-own-worst-enemy file comes two tidbits, the stolen Cirrus story and the rise of the “informed expert source.”For some reason, when general aviation is under unfavorable scrutiny, as it certainly is this week in the wake of Austin, Texas crash, we tend to make a hash of things with a second or a third […]

As Thursday’s bizarre events in Austin were unfolding, we had a slightly urgent discussion around the office about how to spin our second-day coverage to minimize the impact on general aviation.About 10 minutes into that rumination, I asked myself: why? Our audience of pilots and aviation savvy readers knows exactly what and how to think […]

In my workshop, I have three gallons of a deadly blend of methanol, toluene and methyl ethyl ketone. It’s explosively flammable, it’s a breathing hazard and a suspected carcinogen. Why, in a society that prides itself on protecting its citizens from undue hazards, am I allowed to have this stuff?Because it’s otherwise known as lacquer […]

With one-third of the U.S. population shoveling snow this week — at least, that’s what the network anchors have been saying — it’s lucky that pilots in 2010 have a multitude of ways to pass their hangar-flying time, beyond actually hanging out in a hangar. Not only do we have books and DVDs, we have […]

I’ve been reading a book called Traffic, by Tom Vanderbilt, which is well researched and fascinating essay on how people behave in traffic–cars, motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians. He opens the book with a question: When faced with a sign announcing a lane drop ahead, is it better to merge early or merge late? I’ll get […]