AVweb Insider

For the 40-odd years we’ve been trying to eliminate tetraethyl lead from avgas, general aviation has been a target of opportunity for dirty-little-secret headlines. The industry’s amazing persistence in preserving this problem has cost me at least several pairs of shoes trooping to press conferences where the various “stakeholders” offered progress reports we were all […]

If paranoia and hysteria aren’t brother and sister, they’re at least first cousins. A whiff of the former isn’t a bad thing in aviation, but during the past two weeks or so, we seem to have overdosed on both. And now, in attempting the unlikely feat of tying runway incursions to Chinese spy balloons, I’m […]

Accident investigation, by its very nature, requires second guessing. In fact, it’s defined by second guessing based on disclosed factual information. Sometimes the findings are as black and white as these things can get—say a fuel exhaustion accident, a stall spin incident or landing gear up. The nut behind the wheel catches the blame because […]

George Santos told me during an oxygen break at the 23,612-foot elevation on our free-climb ascent of Kilimanjaro, or Fujiyama (Fugaku to gamers), I forget which, “It’s not the lie that gets you,” he then saved a koala from falling into a crevasse before adding, while lighting up a Lucky Strike (our corporate sponsor), “It’s […]

By predilection and profession, I force myself to be open-minded about everything. I try to imagine I’ve inoculated myself against the groupthink that seems to shape attitudes in the modern world, turbocharged by social media. This occasionally leads to the precipice of the rabbit hole as it did when I was alerted to look into […]

The 19th Century poet Herman Wordless Longfellow once tweeted, “Between the dark and the daylight comes a pause in the day’s occupations that’s known as the pilots’ hour.” His cousin, Henry, ripped it off, changing “pilots’” to “children’s” and made a killing on Disney movie rights. Being a pilot, Herman never saw a dime and […]

No sooner had my trickle of Southwest Airlines memes dried up then a whole new batch flooded in like a digital version of an atmospheric river from the sodden Pacific. This time, it was the failure of the NOTAMs system. Shocked was I to learn that (a) so many people didn’t know that it’s now […]

Seriously, aircraft engines should be hard to start. Personally, I find the start—quick and easy, or filled with frustration—is an indicator of how the flight is going to go. It’s also a visceral experience of animating what had been, only moments before, a lifeless hunk of metal. Think about it. You’re walking out to the […]

Viral joke of the week: Why is COVID-19 better than Southwest Airlines? At least it’s airborne. If you’ve been following the epic meltdown of Southwest Airlines this week—and how could you not?—there’s a grim truth in the joke. It will be particularly stinging for Southwest employees, who don’t deserve it, and a nasty rebuke of […]

Recent prog charts resembled a Picasso fantasy as bulging lines of barbed cold fronts swept across the contiguous United States, riding curvaceous isobars, compressed like muscles ready to unleash the Weather Channel’s doomsday chorus to the latest Bomb Cyclone: “O’ Weather Bomb, O’ Weather Bomb How lowly are thy millibars….” Those who’d fly or work […]