AVweb Insider

When I first started on the aviation beat, about a hundred years ago, I remember looking at a report about an airliner that had to turn around and land due to “smoke in the cockpit.” I wondered for a minute or two if that was newsworthy, but a little research quickly schooled me — these […]

It appears to be happening at a glacial pace, but ever so slowly I realize that Cessna’s recent removal of the $465,000 Skyhawk JT-A from its product portfolio underscores the company’s declining relevance in general aviation training, a segment it once owned. What would happen if Cessna decided to exit the piston single market entirely? […]

It would be hard to imagine a better-prepared aircraft for the mission at hand than Ron Carlson’s TBM Avenger. The old warhorse was to take off from Phoenix for a series of relatively short fuel stop hops to Chicago where Carlson, a well-known successful architect, was going to tuck it into a snug hangar, to […]

It’s arguably the best time in history to begin a flying career. Never before could a pilot expect to become a jet first officer so rapidly. Sure, it’s a challenge to log the time needed to earn the ATP that’s now required. But demand is so great that as soon as a pilot meets that […]

I got an odd email from a reader and then Tom Wolfe died. There’s no cause and effect, but the two have a connection. All of us in aviation will remember Tom Wolfe for his iconic book about test pilots and the early space program, The Right Stuff. Except it really wasn’t about either of […]

The Citabria’s annual inspection was so close to completion I became giddy with irrational exuberance that after a month of slathering new parts on the old machine, I might fly again. But not to be. The delay was two miscreant bolts that hold the tailwheel rudder horn to the rudder. The rudder horn connects the […]

As I was putting a sharp pencil on last week’s GA production numbers from GAMA, I couldn’t decide if I was looking at a flat calm mill pond or the dead quiet before some kind of storm. So I graphed out a decade worth of production numbers and I’m going with a pond that could […]

Several readers took exception to my comment in the Vashon Ranger review advising pilots to fly these airplanes beyond the 1320-pound limit. Said one message forwarded to me: “I just don’t think it’s right for someone who does so many reviews of so many aircraft to basically wink and nod and tell people it’s OK […]

You can say a lot of things about light sport airplanes, but one of them isn’t that the sky has been darkened with 1320-pound wonders. Sales remain modest at best and a company selling 30 or 40 a year has a smash hit. Now comes new startup Vashon to reset that equation with a heretofore […]

Dick Collins didn’t know me at all in 1978 and didn’t owe me anything. But Dick did two memorable things for me, two career bookends really, that will last with me until I go West as he did this week. I was the new marcomm specialist at Collins Avionics, hired that hot summer in Cedar […]