AVweb Insider

I arrived at Sport Aviation Expo in Sebring, Florida last week, I didnt know quite what to expect. Given the seemingly unending river of discouraging economic news, all of us were concerned that the show would take a serious hit. It may have suffered some but, as with Oshkosh last July, I cant say I […]

I suppose we can forgive the mainstream press for having, within the space of a single news cycle, elevated Chesley B. Sullenberger to the rank of sainthood. On the other hand, by any standard, Captain Sullenberger and his FO pulled off a hell of a piece of airmanship on Thursday. We should all hope to […]

Something that has always made aviation a unique vocation and interest is that regardless of your place within it, there are bonds between you and other aviators that function on so many levels that there is common ground on almost every topic imaginable. Once you’ve intentionally put distance between yourself and terra firma, you’ve joined […]

It’s been more than two years since the shot-in-a-million collision over Brazil of a GOL 737 and an Embraer Legacy 600 that killed all 154 people aboard the Boeing. The Legacy was damaged, but the crew landed it with no injuries to any of its occupants. Immediately after the accident, Brazil outraged the aviation world […]

For owners of Diamond’s innovative DA42 Twin Star, a summer of discontent is dragging into a winter of … less discontent, if not a nesting of the Bluebird of Happiness. The 10-second history is that Thielert’s bankruptcy and subsequent supply-chain cratering of last April defines the phrase hell of a mess. Under Germany’s somewhat bizarre […]

I suppose it should come as no surprise to anyone that as part of the auto industry bailout bill this week, Congress will require the Big Three to sell off their corporate jet fleet. This is, of course, payback for the stunning arrogance the CEOs of GM, Chrysler and Ford showed two weeks ago when […]

I’ve never figured out whether would-be airplane buyers just have short memories or if they something in their psyche predisposes them to accept the most outlandish claims at face value while simultaneously dismissing the grim truth. I am referring here to the quaint industry practice of “buying positions” for new aircraft. This subject comes up […]

We’ve all heard the song … The sight of a drill will give me a thrill,I thrill at the skill of everything military.I love a parade, a handful of vets,A line of cadets or any brigade,For I love a parade. But to really appreciate the sentiment, you have to not just watch a parade, but […]

Eclipse Aviation’s bankruptcy has been a foregone conclusion for so long that when it actually occurred it was anticlimactic. A few things make it better than average as bankruptcy stories go, and one is current CEO Roel Pieper’s apparently clever (we’ll see) attempt to secure his own approximately $100 million investment and take over the […]

As our blog stream muses on the issue of the Detroit Big Three’s use of corporate aircraft, I’m reminded of a short commercial flight I took couple of years ago. It was a flight from Portland, Maine to JFK in New York-I think it was on Jet Blue. Stowing my bag above seat 15A I […]