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I was attending a Wings safety seminar recently and the 1995 American Airlines crash in Colombia was discussed, including the video American Airlines made two years after the fact. If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth a click. In this compelling video, the speaker says the words that I believe have subtly, but profoundly, influenced […]

Remember that IBM commercial back around 1998 that had two executives sitting in the corner office? One is reading The Wall Street Journal and says to the other, “It says here we have to be on the Web.” His companion asks why. “It doesn’t say,” says the WSJ reader. The spot perfectly captured the confusion […]

In last week’s blog, I recounted a conversation I had with my friend TK, who at 55 was considering himself a little long in the tooth to take up motorcycling. That naturally led to considering how old is too old to take up flying airplanes or jumping out of them. Should people of a certain […]

The ego—especially the male ego—is a curious thing; a cursed delight that’s inextricably tangled up in this pilot thing we all seem to enjoy. From the ego flows the self confidence required to learn flying and overcome the inherent risks in operating an airplane. If you didn’t have it, you’d cower in the den with […]

As a percentage of the total cars sold in the U.S., Corvettes and Camaros are but a tiny slice. Chevrolet sold about 35,000 ‘Vettes last year. The fact that they moved even that many shows that Americans have a taste for vehicles stuffed with far more horsepower than they could conceivably ever need. But need […]

As a Florida resident with more than a decade of Sunshine State winters behind me, I have to admit that the Sport Aviation Expo has a knack for picking the coldest day to open the show. It was in the high 30s in central Florida, with scattered frost. But no matter; it warmed up and […]

Over the weekend at the dropzone, I had a conversation with my friend TK, who runs the place. He asked me if I had really been riding motorcycles for 40 years and yes, I really have, although not continuously. He told me he was thinking about a bike, but at 55, was considering himself a […]

Readers of this blog know—or should know—that I have, from time to time, complained about GA’s tendency to incessantly blame and whine about the government’s poor treatment of the industry. Such diatribes tend to be too pat, lack any creative impulse and are boringly, depressingly predictable. So I try to restrain myself. So when this […]

I’ve been reading a book called Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free. Beyond its amusing title, it’s but an extended essay on the notion that the U.S. is the ideal place to breed and encourage cranks because the entire country was founded on imaginative ideas that challenged the […]

Although he’ll probably thump for me saying it, the well-known aviation raconteur and instructor, John King, has the same thin patience with aviation psychobabble that I do. I can’t recall the context, but a few years ago, we were discussing the hackneyed five dangerous attitudes aviators are supposed to be alert to. You know the […]