AVweb Insider

I was kind of agnostic on whether senior government officials presiding over aviation needed to be pilots. There were always multiple complaints about whoever took the reins of the various departments and few of those complaints ever had anything to do with aviation. Overwhelmingly the job of DOT Secretary, FAA Administrator, etc., is about leadership […]

I began my flying life in the early 1970s. Saying that things were different back then would be a major understatement. Some of them seem funny to us now, like the fact that most of our airplanes had no radios or, God forbid, transponders and ELTs, while other facets of the 1970s are tragic.  To […]

We can always count on readers to remind us what we should be doing here and God knows I need it. There has been a boatload of unleaded fuel news lately, mostly to do with aromatics and their nasty attitude towards paint and maybe a few other things and man, have we gotten down in […]

It had to happen. There were just too many powerful aviation alphabet groups out in the world feeding on a dwindling number of flying enthusiasts and professionals. Something had to give. AOPA and EAA were the two superpowers who had been staring at each other, headset to headset and sunglasses to sunglasses, for years as […]

I wrote about so many accidents during my 30-plus year aviation journalism career that I can hardly stomach the feeding frenzy of “analysis” following the DCA accident on Wednesday. Least of all President Trump’s distressing press conference not even 12 hours after the accident. Still, if I learned anything during my career, it’s to keep […]

Some in the private aircraft industry are running around with their hair on fire lamenting how Trump’s 25% tariff proposal will spell the end of the U.S. aerospace industry. We’ll let them keep doing that since they’re fun to watch, but there’s a glass-half-full story to share with everyone else. For beginners, there’ll be less […]

Sunny times will return to our local grass strip, but this day was clearly not that day. Cold winds, low clouds and scurfy ice accumulations on the few hangars there indicated that not only would the groundhog see his shadow on his official day, but he would probably find himself frozen with a coating of […]

Submitted by Roger O’Neill, Overhead Intelligence. In early 2025, the FAA is anticipated to release a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for Part 108, aimed at regulating Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) drone operations. This landmark step could revolutionize drone operations in the U.S., offering greater airspace access to commercial drone operators while maintaining […]

Alan Shepard: Dear Lord, please don’t let me eff* up.Gordon Cooper: I didn’t quite copy that. Say again, please.Alan Shepard: I said everything’s A-OK.From the movie The Right Stuff (*he did not say “eff”) Aviation is one of those human endeavors that can result in getting yourself seriously killed if you do it wrong. There […]

I’m going to miss the internal combustion engine. Ease up climate change deniers. I’m not discussing that. I’m simply reporting the facts and the fact is that for all intents and purposes the technology that propelled we boomers through just about every significant moment of our lives will eventually be replaced by a soulless stator […]