AVweb Insider

I have a love/hate relationship with the month of October. I love the even-year Octobers because those are the ones I don’t have to drudge through a Flight Instructor Refresher Course—the dreaded FIRC. But this is an odd year, so I’ve just completed an online eFIRC and I’m feeling, once again, that I’ve expended a […]

Be suspicious of articles beginning with, “This is a true story.” Except, this is true: In 1925, Rose Budine, 21, wanted to fly. Like an opening scene from one of my forgotten novels, barnstormer Fred Kane arrived in Kansas City, KS, for a skydiving demonstration. When his regular jumper, Fallon Sashweight, quit, Rose stepped from […]

Presidential speechwriters have a term called “reaching for the marble.” When you understand that it refers to the pithy text on the friezes of the nation’s iconic monuments, the connotation is so clear that I needn’t waste pixels listing the qualifying words. This being an aviation blog, I’ll segue straight into the aviation version of […]

“Inflation” is the mot du jour spitteling from non-aviation lips to scare impressionable children into believing it’s a real threat lurking in Binkley’s closet of anxieties. It’s not. I lived the 1970’s real inflation, not Weimar real but pot prices just went up again, real. Tough times. Aviation commentators are giving inflation a snooze because […]

One staple of 1990s aviation journalism—a dubious one, I might add—is that used airplanes were appreciating so fast that if you bought one, the gains realized when you sold it would pay for it. In other words, if we tired of flogging the runway turnback argument, we could always rustle up some numbers to show […]

Veterans Day comes on Thursday, so I am early with my remembrance of this day and what it means. For me, it will be just another work day and one that’s out of the office covering an aviation event. That suits me because with each passing year, I have more difficulty corralling my sentiments about […]

Without apologizing for being an old muser, I wonder how many passengers wheeling luggage through New York’s JFK could identify the airport’s namesake. Those unable to decode the initials shouldn’t be allowed to board anything but a tram to LaGuardia (LGA). I can understand not knowing Fiorello LaGuardia, the Colossus whose name languishes athwart one […]

Although we often complain that aviation doesn’t get the attention it deserves in Washington, I have a feeling that’s about to change. From what I can read into the somewhat alarming news first broken by The Wall Street Journal, the FAA is about to engage in a test of wills with the equally powerful and influential […]

If ever a horse was reduced to molecular pulp post-mortem, that would be the runway turnback maneuver. Somewhere during this endless rehashing, it has become known as “the impossible turn.” Why this is so is somewhat baffling given that any number of authors, instructors and illustrious experts have proved that it’s anything but impossible. But […]

For me, the biggest and quietest news at last week’s NBAA-BACE convention in Las Vegas came from Honeywell, introducing its clean-sheet, cloud-connected Anthem integrated flight deck. I might have overlooked the announcement hadn’t my colleague Kate O’Connor asked for my camera hand to help capture this Anthem video. It was worth the effort. A tip […]