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I’ve never really considered myself to be an essential person. Of course, in the larger sense of community, we’re all essential. But outside of my immediate family and my pets, no one has ever considered me essential. That was until a few weeks ago when the U.S. government did. I have been working for a […]

The FAA wasted little time last week in denying the Collings Foundation’s request to renew its passenger-carrying authority under the Living History Flight Exemptions program. That decision came as a result of the Oct. 2, 2019, crash of the foundation’s B-17G at Windsor Locks, Connecticut, that killed five passengers and two crew members and destroyed […]

Last week, we published an open-ended query to readers asking about flight activity and instruction as the COVID-19 pandemic burns through the U.S. at an accelerating pace. All the major schools have stood down and are temporarily closing or reverting to online instruction. I never thought I would say this, but it’s now time for […]

Some flight schools like to operate at or at least have access to airports with control towers. The operative theory is that this prepares the student for the real world of IFR and ATC. Fine as far as it goes, but what happens when the pilot who’s used to the warm bosom of approach, tower […]

The 2008 financial meltdown was a slow-motion train wreck compared to how rapidly the COVID-19 pandemic has cratered aviation, especially the airlines. Load factors have fallen off a cliff—as much as 50 percent—and revenues have taken a similarly steep dive. The bottom has dropped out of airline stocks: American plunged from a recent high of […]

Squeaking through my 1975 private pilot checkride in a Cessna 150, I suspected the examiner displayed the quality of mercy if not judgment, because my landings were pitiful. Not crash/burn/fail but hardly the stuff of pilot-lounge braggadocio. And I loved pilot lounges where my heroes dunked Pepperidge Farm Braggadocio-Milanos into EAA coffee mugs while thrilling […]

What a difference a few days makes. I pushed the button on the previous blog about the impact of COVID-19 on aviation last Friday at 3:57 p.m. At the time, there were 148 known cases in the U.S. Today, there are 1323, a number that’s likely to be underestimated because U.S. testing remains limited, cumbersome […]

Today’s cancellation of the big Aero show in Friedrichshafen, Germany, early next month is hardly the first of its ilk and I’m sure it won’t be the last. Hard as it is to accept, aviation provides one of the most powerful vectors ever in the spread of disease and the favor gets returned in the […]

For reasons that elude, this week’s video has sparked a veritable pandemic (sorry) of questions, suggestions and entreaties about shutting down the engine if a gear-up landing is unavoidable. This didn’t come up when I published the last gear-up video two years ago, but I addressed it then. Will again now. In this week’s video, […]

I stalled the Cub on a base-to-final turn the other day and it wasn’t intentional. This may be hard to fathom, but I got punked by a bird and it happens all the time. I won’t be surprised if other pilots who fly slow taildraggers have had these bird encounters, which are quite obviously intentional […]