AVweb Insider

Is the FAA about to go all-in and all but remove the weight restriction on light sport aircraft? Here, key the ecclesiastical music, insert the visual of the clouds parting and Jack Pelton descending the mount with the stone tablets, or at least a USB drive announcing something intriguing. But let’s tap the brakes and […]

Around 20 years ago, a cold snap in the mid-southeast U.S. brought temperatures to well below freezing. The following day, my employee and I headed to the airport in midafternoon. We planned to fly our borrowed twin Commander to Milwaukee, returning it to its owner. We walked directly to the airplane, which had not been […]

It’s been hard to miss that things are changing in our industry and that pilot training is much a part of that shift. I escaped my office long enough to attend the University Aviation Association’s (UAA) 71st annual Collegiate Aviation Conference last week and talking with representatives from schools both large and small helped verify […]

Once upon a time in a world thought to be a fantasyland, but that actually existed, if you did something stupid in an airplane that didn’t kill you, this would happen: An avuncular man with pattern baldness wearing a short-sleeve white shirt, a narrow black tie and a blue FAA nametag, would put his arm […]

A recent video about the famed Cornfield Bomber brought back some fond memories of that airplane for me. As a freshly minted Air Force pilot, I was lucky enough to get assigned to the 49th Fighter Interceptor Squadron at Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome, New York, then its home. Tail number 58-0787 is sometimes […]

From the curious headline file: Crash Pilot Had Certificate Revoked. We published that last week atop a story describing the fatal crash of a Cessna 335 in which it was revealed that the owner/pilot had apparently been flying without a pilot certificate for 21 years, having lost it by revocation. A curious headline generated an […]

I was thinking about taking a pass on my FAA Third Class medical, which was expiring at the end of May. I always dread this process (the paperwork, the physical), as do most pilots who have lived longer than five or six decades. But I decided to take the chance once more, and postpone a […]

How about a wager? Which comes first, the FAA’s vaunted NextGen collapses in scandal and budget overruns or someone—anyone—actually launches a space tourist without turning him or her into a cosmic cinder? Although there’s a Voodoo doll with my name on it at 800 Independence Ave. and restraint has never been a long suit of […]

With its Certified SkyView HDX line, Dynon is seeking to effectively upend the established way of doing business in the world of avionics upgrades. Rather than only building dealer relationships with avionics shops who act as sales agents, Dynon will push the idea of any shop with a qualified A&P/IA installing this equipment. Some readers […]

We all may still be waiting for our flying cars and jetpacks, but there’s no question the future has arrived, in ways more subtle but irrefutable. There was the live video of two SpaceX rockets landing on their tails in Florida earlier this year. There’s the imminent first flight of the giant Stratolaunch space plane. […]