AVweb Insider

Last week, I was sitting in the press room at AOPA Expo pounding away at the laptop when an acquaintance wandered by with a perfectly dazed expression. “I’m having trouble wrapping my head around this,” he said. “On the one hand, the economy is tanking, Cessna is laying off people and yet Garmin is rolling […]

photo: EAA Jerry Smith In all likelihood, you never got to meet Jerry Smith, but if you’ve ever used a Stormscope, you owe him a debt of gratitude. More on that in a moment, but first the sad news is that Jerry Smith was killed in the crash of Cessna Cardinal near Mena, Arkansas this […]

Those of us who are old enough to have either been in the Depression or had parents who went through it know that our relatives endured things that we would find unimaginable today. But they didn’t really complain.Sure, tough times are tough on everyone but that seems to be the key to surviving them.And that’s […]

As we’ve reported elsewhere on AVweb, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has proposed a rule to expand airline-style security measures to private (i.e. Part 91) operations of aircraft weighing more than 12,500 pounds. The new proposal was formally released October 30, 2008. That date also started a 60-day period during which the TSA is accepting […]

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. So it arrived with the morning batch of e-mail and it shocked the hell out of me. Here was an aerobatic plane of some kind going into what looked like a routine snap […]

If we have learned anything in more than a century of building airplanes, it’s that the business is wildly cyclical. If the mainstream economy is a road through rolling hills, the airplane economy is a neck-snapping, looping roller coaster. And usually, the airplane business is a sensitive leading indicator of a sharp economic downturn ahead. […]

If you engage a 75-ish or so retired airline pilot in conversation about the glory days of air travel, you’ll inevitably hear this: The whole affair used to be much more civilized-people actually wore their Sunday best on the airplanes and food was served on genuine china with real silverware.According to the accepted wisdom, what […]

Some of my favorite people are in aviation and I’m really lucky that my job makes me stay in touch with them. One of the best, in everyone’s book, is Kate Dougherty from Cirrus and, although we both have our hair on fire at shows, we try to make time to have a snack and […]

Earlier this week, as I was freshening the flowers in my patio shrine to Friedrich Engels, reader Will Alibrandi asked this perfectly reasonable question: If the price of oil has tumbled on the spot market, why hasn’t the price of avgas come down?The short answer is it has, you just haven’t seen it yet. Or […]

Many owners contemplate the pros and cons of upgrading to a higher horsepower engine for their airplane. Does it really make sense to do so? Do the actual gains outweigh the time and expense? What are the unforeseen costs of such an endeavor? Will you end up with a white elephant?We can tell you up […]