AVweb Insider

AVweb Insider offers a curated collection of opinion pieces, personal narratives, and expert analyses that delve into the nuances of aviation. From firsthand pilot experiences to in-depth discussions on industry trends and safety considerations, this section provides readers with thoughtful perspectives that go beyond standard news reporting. Ideal for aviation professionals and enthusiasts seeking deeper insights into the flying world.

Evidently, Legends Make Mistakes, Too

What the camera and teleprompter giveth, it can just as rapidly take away. That would be my salient observation from Harrison Ford’s recent dust-up at the Orange County Airport in California. You will not have missed, I’m sure, the story that Ford flew his Husky over the top of a stopped American Airlines 737 and […]

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Should The FAA Be Run By A Pilot?

General aviation pilots have several auto-fume modes. One of them is ADS-B and anything to do with medicals is a good way to get people spun up. So is the argument that the administrator of the FAA should be a pilot. This is a perennial and it came up last week when President Donald Trump […]

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BasicMed Survey: Disappointed Resignation

After a month on simmer, what do AVweb readers think aboutthe FAA’s new BasicMed Third-Class medical exemption rule? Our recently completed survey provides a glimpse and if I could characterize the overall mood, I’d call it disappointed resignation. Why the disappointment? If there’s any common theme in the responses we received on the survey it’s […]

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Santa Monica In The Age Of Alternative Facts

Now that it has been established that we live in a world of regular facts and alternative facts, the morass of confusion over the announced closing of the much-fought-over Santa Monica Airport comes into perfect focus. As far as this airport is concerned, there aren’t so much alternative facts as multiple parallel realities. I think […]

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Sport Expo: The Year Of The Drone

Sometime between mid-January and mid-February, the tourist hordes descend on Florida to escape the winter miseries of the northern tier. They’re often disappointed to learn how sporting a winter cold front can be in Florida, sometimes all the way to Key West. Great news this year, though: The 13thannual Sport Aviation Expo in Sebring had […]

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Teaching In Taildraggers

I’ve done enough instruction in the Cub now to understand it’s the worst place in the world to do great flight instruction. Ever been in the front seat of one? Super Cubs don’t count and neither do any of the new-age Cub knockoffs. They’re as far from the 1930s ergonomic hell of a J-3 as […]

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BasicMed: I’m Leaning Toward Self Help

For the past week, we’ve been running a survey on what readers think about the just-announced BasicMed program from the FAA. I’m gonna guess here, but maybe I shouldn’t have dived into the data so soon because doing so caused me to have several revelations. One is what a largish crapshoot this whole thing is, […]

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Time To Revisit Holding Out And Common Carriage

If you were busy last week, you may not have noticed the story about Flytenow scrolling by on AVweb. In a nutshell, the brief described how the U.S. Supreme Court had declined to hear the company’s challenge of a ruling upholding a lower court finding that Flytenow was engaged in improper common carriage. Flytenow, you […]

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Aviation Predictions We Got Right. And Wrong.

The good thing about having advanced ADD is that the distractions can you lead you on some fascinating forays into the obscure, the esoteric and the downright bizarre.The other day, I was paging through our archives looking for something—I can’t even remember what—and I found an article published in a 1992 issue of Aviation Consumer […]

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