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The flight was delayed but not enough to cause us any difficulty so my son and I were pretty receptive to the pleasant surprise that lay at the end of the bridge at the new gate. We and about 150 slightly inconvenienced fellow passengers were put on an A330 instead of the A320 we were […]

Not a big fan of Best-Of lists. They rank number eight on my Top 10 Least Favorite Things list, right below raindrops on roses. Recently, AOPA published survey results of a Top 15 list of “classic” airplanes. The Waco F-series caught my eye. These are the stoutly gorgeous open-cockpit biplanes from the 1930s and 40s, […]

For the 50th anniversary of Apollo 8 last month, the PBS NOVA series did a nice documentary on the flight that’s worth finding and watching. Among many, the producers interviewed one of the most cerebral of the astronauts, Michael Collins. He was the command module pilot on Apollo 11 and also a Capcom on Apollo […]

Herbert D. “Herb” Kelleher, the maverick and much beloved co-founder and Chairman Emeritus of Southwest Airlines, passed away on Thursday, Jan. 3. He was 87. Herb was a young lawyer recently relocated from the East Coast to Texas when a client, Rollin King, approached him about helping him start a low-fare intra-Texas airline. The eventual […]

The looming pilot shortage has been discussed ad nauseum. It’s here. Some airlines have cancelled flights for lack of qualified pilots. Airlines are offering programs to enable young people to go from zero hours to the right seat. Many solutions have been proposed including salary increases, lowering the number of hours required and so on, […]

On the slushy morning of Dec. 16, 1960, six residents of the Park Slope neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, suffered the irreversible consequences of turbines overtaking the propeller age, when one of the first jetliners, a United DC-8, collided with a piston TWA Super Connie over Staten Island, eight miles away. In total, 134 lives […]

When, in 1927, it was decided to erect a monument to commemorate the first controlled powered flight of an airplane at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the place was considered so remote that Congress figured no one would ever deliberately visit such a fly- and mosquito-infested sand spit. So isolated was Kitty Hawk, that the planners […]

Whatever your persuasion regarding the holiday season, one universally agreed-on aspect is that it’s a good time for doing good. It’s the end of the year, maybe you got a bonus or have a little cash left over after paying all the bills, and some spirit from Dickens or elsewhere is whispering in your ear […]

Nothing like a loud bang at 35,000 feet (FL350) westbound over the North Atlantic in late November to make the sleepiest coach passenger snap both eyes wide. Subsequent bangs from the American Airlines Boeing 777-200’s right engine quickly had the cabin crew’s attention, and even though the explosions were somewhat muffled forward of the cockpit […]

For today’s preposterous aviation idea, think of something an aircraft salesman would never, ever say: “We’re sorry, although we would like to sell you one of our airplanes, we just don’t think you’re qualified to fly it.” OK, maybe a sales force somewhere, somehow has actually said that to a would-be customer, but I’ll bet […]