AVweb Insider

After a fashion, airplanes are toys. No, not all of them, because an Air Tractor earns its keep applying chemicals and Caravans haul skydivers and boxes. But if you own an old taildragger or a beater Cherokee, it’s a recreational toy. With that in mind, I’ve noticed some new developments in the toy market and […]

The other night, I was watching one of the Bond films, The Spy Who Loved Me, and, true to form, fell into my usual annoying habit of obtuseness. How do the bad guys get all the money to pay for their fabulous technological infrastructure? I mean, they’re spending millions on color-coordinated jump suits alone. I […]

The great test to unravel the globalized nature of modern economies was going to happen sooner or later. The just-announced U.S. tariff against Bombardier’s CSeries airliner may not be the first shot nor even the biggest, but it’s illustrative of how difficult placing U.S. trade interests above all else will be. The modern aerospace industry […]

We don’t often find cause to clap for the meddling regulatory overreach of the FAA, but the agency won one this week that I, for one, am personally cheering. U.S. District Judge William G. Young said the city of Newton, Massachusetts (near Boston) can’t require drone operators to register their machines with the city, nor […]

I got an email this week from a reader on the cusp of making a small fleet purchase for a few flight schools. I was asked for an opinion on the various choices in the training market. The more you think about this, the more difficult the decision actually is. There’s simply no perfect airplane […]

Anyone who knows anything about aviation also knows at least two things about regulations: They’re written in blood and despite the belief that the FAA devises rules on a whim, the so-called tombstone mentality lives on. The bodies come before the rules, usually, and sometimes it takes a while. But unless we’re reminded of it […]

Has it gotten to the point that that ultimate gesture of privacy—crashing an airplane into a tree—is now suddenly a thing of the past? Evidently, judging by this video of a tree landing near Robertson Field in Connecticut this week. It’s possible to draw some useful things from this viral clip. The overarching one is […]

In a world stitched together by instant communication, it’s easy to forget that Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and even web mail haven’t existed forever. None of them existed 25 years ago when Hurricane Andrew tore into the southern tip of Florida, instantly educating the populace on how bad a bad hurricane could be. Except it wasn’t […]

Every few years, airplane owners in Florida are confronted with the unsolvable conundrum: A hurricane bears down on the state and they have to decide whether to move their airplanes out of harm’s way or just button up the hangar and ride it out. Thirteen years ago, when Hurricane Charley threatened, here’s what I thought […]

Pilots complain—and have always complained—about ramp and parking fees, those annoying gotchas that so bespoil what would otherwise be a magic moment between man and machine. That’s at the core of the current misalignment between AOPA and NATA and the former’s general complaint against three Signature-owned FBOs. But as far as pilots go, this is […]