AVweb Insider

The question of a pilot shortage continues to draw comments from all segments of the aviation industry, showing that interests instead of fact may be what’s generating press and clouding real analysis. The Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) contends that there is no pilot shortage, but a pilot pay shortage. If you think this is […]

Occupational hazards come in all shapes and sizes: Nuclear technicians have to worry about ionizing radiation; Amtrak engineers, we’ve just learned, have to dodge cinderblocks hurled at their heads. For journalists—and consumers of news, I hasten to add—the risk is being spun up like a dime-store top with so many incomplete facts, half truths and […]

Cessna’s admission this week that it now has no definite timeline for its diesel 182 JT-A invites speculation. Or maybe I’m the only one who can’t resist asking what’s going on in Wichita. Earlier this week, we got an email from a reader trying to snag some hangar space at Independence, Kansas, where Cessna builds […]

Pawing back through the archives, I can confidently declare that 2002 was the summer of the VLJ—the very light jet. Some were practically swooning over the notion of sub-$1 million jets and there was a thundering herd of them, led by the rock star of VLJs, the Eclipse. During a round of interviewing that year […]

I can’t speak for every other reporter in the room, but the FAA’s announcement at AUVSI Wednesday that it was partnering up—and my how they love that word—with a major news network, a railroad and a drone company to advance the cause of sUAS operation in the national airspace was just a little hard to […]

At the Electric Aircraft Symposium in Santa Rosa, California, on Saturday, I scribbled in my notebook a wry comment from Tine Tomazic of Pipistrel Aircraft, the innovative Slovenian company that’s an unabashed supporter—and maker—of electric airplanes. Tomazic said he hoped the era of electric conversions was coming to an end and he pointedly noted that […]

This week’s announcement that the FAA closed comments on the NPRM for small UAS so caught me by surprise that I never got around to submitting my own comments. Not that it matters much; my views were well represented by many others, perhaps with just a couple of exceptions I’ll get to in a moment. […]

At Sun ‘n Fun early in the week, I got a good long sit in Mooney’s new M10T mockup, which they unveiled for the first time in the U.S. First impression: It’s big. Like Cirrus big. The cabin interior is about 48 inches wide, so it will easily accommodate two 21st century Americans rather than […]

When Superior Air Parts told us that it was announcing a new engine product for Sun ‘n Fun, I figured it would be one of two things: another gasoline variant in the experimental or certified line or a resurrection of the three-cylinder diesel that Tim Archer was involved with back in 2008. He had left […]

Most instructors these days, when pressed to give an ideal number of hours for a new student to solo, will say it’s 10 hours in the airplane. So, all things being equal, can you do that in a week? Sure. Redbird’s “One Week Ready to Solo” campaign, now four days in at Sun ‘n Fun […]