AVweb Insider

So now it’s finally reality. The Third-Class medical exemption is a real thing, or at least it will be in May. Oddly, I am underwhelmed; like winning the lottery and learning that money can’t buy happiness. (OK, but all the same, I’d like a new TBM.) I think I’m not alone in this sentiment, yet […]

With the Model T and the assembly line that produced it, Henry Ford taught the world a seminal lesson in mass production and economics. Some two decades later, he got schooled himself when General Motors caught up and demonstrated a fundamental truth about selling stuff in a consumer economy: Markets stagnate and so do sales […]

On a news sensationalism scale of one to 10, stories about drunken airline pilots are about an 11. These seem to pop up in the news cycle about once a month and occasionally, just to really turbocharge them, we even get video of the pilot stumbling through security and falling down %^$faced into the cockpit […]

I’m sure I’m not the only one hearing this question: A friend or relative reports that a son or daughter is interested in a piloting career and, well, you’re a pilot, what’s your advice? I field this query carefully. While I think the profession definitely has legs, my concern is that in the next two […]

Did you get a drone for Christmas? I know some of you did and I know a lot more people will be interested in the video I’m publishing in today’s blog. I predict a range of reaction from slack-jawed wonder to spittle-spewing high dudgeon that people like this are now invading our sacred airspace. (Better […]

The other evening I was returning from a flight to the east coast of Florida in an aircraft Sarasota Avionics kindly loaned me for the day. I landed just past dusk when, rare for Florida, the temperature and dewpoint came together and as I was tying down, the fog was forming. We occasionally get marine […]

As 2016 stumbles to the finish line, it will close with one dubious achievement: A record number of U.S. companies have been bought by foreign investors and leading the charge is China. According to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., just three years ago, Chinese interests acquired 43 companies. In 2015, the total […]

As I was flipping through the depressing photos of those Cessna Skycatchers being reduced to so much scrap metal, I felt a certain immune response kicking in. I’ve seen this before, so let’s not get too maudlin about it. The time frame was 1995. The Air Force had bought a fleet of 113 airplanes from […]

I was doing one of my periodic office de-clutters this week and up on the far northwest corner of one shelf, I found some interesting artifacts. Like an archeologist dusting off pottery shards, there was the last of my Jeppesen binders and a stack of paper charts, some dating to 1997. I can’t remember when […]

High-profile aviation accidents usually get a public hearing in which the NTSB reveals what it knows and allows input from other parties on the road to establishing probable cause. Such hearings offer tantalizing factuals but they rarely reveal jaw-dropping lack of judgment. But rarely is not the same as never and this week’s hearing on […]