AVweb Insider

When I was learning to fly more years ago than I care to reveal, the accident rate was 18.1/100,000, more than three times what it is now. Just 10 years before that, in 1960, the rate was a whopping 36.5. Crashes occurred at the rate of more than a dozen a day. Lots of causes, […]

In yet another milepost in the galactically slow train wreck that is finding a replacement for lead-spiked avgas, the EPA has finally announced its intent to declare leaded fuel environmentally hazardous. And this time, says EPA, we’re serious so all you FAA footdraggers better pay attention. No, really. We mean it. But wait, hold up. […]

The photo hanging above the old Victrola, old even for 1960, always intrigued me. Born illiterate and having made little effort to remedy that, I couldn’t read the inscription, but being six, I decided this man in the picture, wearing a military aviator’s uniform and an I’ve-seen-some-crazy-crap smirk, was my hero. I’d walked past that […]

A few years ago, I had a friend stay overnight and when I showed him the guest bedroom, his immediate reaction: “Wow, you do a lot of sports that require helmets.” And there they were lined up on the shelf, helmets for motorcycling, bicycling and skydiving. My welding helmet was in the garage. I do […]

“You can literally learn any skill you want for free on YouTube. You can become a person of value in a matter of months.” –Elon Musk “I just assume every YouTuber is a colossal %$#@bag until they prove otherwise–it’s much easier that way.” –YouTube commenter I almost wrote that Americans love a spectacle, but what is more true […]

Occasionally an aviation event jumps up to bite the oblivious pilot on the buttocks without warning. For example—and stop me if you’ve heard this—a seemingly healthy pilot of advancing age (you decide) walks into a medical office for a flight physical only to encounter the dreaded AME phrase, “Hmmm …” Felt upbeat entering the exam […]

Big shout-out here to Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly for clarifying for me why I’m not flying on his airline. Or any other. Kelly had to walk back a statement he made last week in a congressional hearing that masks on airliners don’t add much to passenger or crew safety. To be fair, he had […]

It was one of those absolutely clear days in central Montana where the sky seems to go on forever and the blue has a uniform deepness from horizon to horizon. I think it was in 1968 and my father finished knotting his tie and adjusted his hat and headed for the car with the briefcase […]

As daylight molts inside winter’s knickers, pilots well north of the equatorial belt adjust, perhaps begrudgingly. When the recumbent sun pumps Kodachrome schmaltz across your Bellanca 260 to highlight every splattered mosquito acquired last summer, think before clicking that InstaFame shot on your phone. If the light source is behind you, the photo will resemble […]

I have a love-hate relationship with the notion that we analyze and report on aviation accidents as a means of preventing more from happening. It’s apparently not working very well because the accident rate is more or less static and pilots keep digging smoking craters for the same reasons, most of which are related to […]