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Alan Shepard, the first American astronaut to fly in space, was once asked if he would have done a high-altitude parachute jump as part of his training. “That’s easy,” Shepard said. “Hell no. Absolutely not.” But one man, the estimable Joseph W. Kittinger, had no such reservations and made not just one, but three jumps […]

You could almost hear the sigh in the approach controller’s voice as he called the VFR Piper for the third time. “Cherokee Six Papa Kilo (not the real callsign), how do you hear?” The response, in a Georgie Tirebiter falsetto: “Was that for Six Papa Kilo?” Sigh (sotto voce). It’s been decades since I’ve issued air traffic control instructions, but whenever I’m loitering on an ATC frequency, I instinctively form an evolving 3-D image of the controller’s traffic. Radar bolsters situational awareness inside the controller’s head, […]

If there’s a single word to describe the recently released film Devotion, it would be restrained. Or perhaps understated. The writers and director resisted the urge to tart up the production with the over-the-top CGI pyrotechnics that I thought ruined Red Tails and although racial strife has a role in the story, the director admirably […]

In my typical week, I spend a fair amount of bandwidth just deflecting the overwhelming volume of pixels gushing into my inbox and news feeds. By necessity and in the interest of survival, I skip past much of it. But three things that caught my eye this week were all reports on NASA space ventures. […]

It’s never a good thing when a general aviation accident occupies the lead slot on the evening news on a Saturday night. Or when it consumes five minutes of an abbreviated newscast that aired in the market where I live. But that’s exactly what happened with dramatic coverage of collision between a B-17 and an […]

“I bombed Rome!” the gravelly voice called from a table near the Eagles Club bar. I don’t think my friend, John, appreciated his volume and thought he was whispering to a tablemate. Decades around airplane engines will do that to one’s hearing. A half-beat earlier, I had mentioned that I would be heading to Rome […]

During my forced sojourn as a hurricane refugee last month, by happenstance, I had one of the most remarkable flight experiences of a 50-year-plus flying career. Maybe not the most amazing, but certainly in the top five. And my feet never left the ground. Yeah, it was a drone. A new one from DJI called […]

This year’s NBAA-BACE, the 75th Anniversary edition, was the closest to “normal” that anyone has seen for a couple of years. But what does “normal” mean? And how has that become … abnormal … in the post-pandemic environment? Teeming crowds and lots of face-to-face interaction are normal at an NBAA-BACE (National Business Aviation Association – […]

If a thing happens, say, 1000 times a year or about three times a day, is it worth reporting as news? That’s the calculus on aviation accidents, which we report on semi-regularly here on AVweb. We’re not especially consistent about it. We don’t report on all the fatal accidents, of which there about 200 a […]

“There are no ‘storm safe’ hangers. Requiring something that does not exist is laughable.” Embodied in this comment, which appeared in last week’s poll, is the sort of low-information that bedevils credible preparation for increasingly expensive weather disasters. The uninformed may enjoy a cynical laugh, but I can assure you a couple of hundred owners […]