General Aviation News

Why vs. why not

by 7 Comments

Now and then we overhear conversations. Not the whole discussion, but snippets.

As conversationalists that’s the price we pay for being clustered into well-populated public spaces. As listeners it can be entertaining, or disturbing, or just plain weird. It’s a crap-shoot, really.

But it happens and I rarely put much thought into any given chatter I’ve overheard while going about my business. Until last week. That was different.

“Why aren’t we making hotel reservations for transients?” the airport director asked the line-person.

The airport director is new and making an effort to understand the system now under her control. The line-person is experienced in operations at that airport, having been there for some time.

“Why don’t we fill fuel orders we get over the radio?” the airport director queried another oddity of her new domain. [Read more…]

The building blocks of innovation

by 2 Comments

On the banks of the Caloosahatchee River in North Fort Myers, Florida, stand two important, but surprisingly modest homes. Today they’re known as the Edison and Ford Winter Estates. They’re historic landmarks of a sort. A tourist attraction with gardens, a museum, and plenty of printed three-fold brochures on hand to guide visitors to this or that corner of the grounds.

Thomas Edison took up residence there in 1885, buying 14 acres of land where he could relax, experiment, and host fellow industrialists, who like Edison, were weary of the hardships of a midwestern winter. Henry Ford was one of his guests, as was Harvey Firestone. By 1916 Ford bought the lot next door and built his own winter getaway there.

Each of those names, Edison, Ford, and Firestone are expressed as corporate logos today. However, more than a century ago they were the names of actual men, with families, and businesses that employed significant numbers of people. These three men literally built the mechanisms that led to the modern world. [Read more…]

Shaking the bent metal blues

by 2 Comments

It’s happened again, as we all knew it would. Somewhere, not long ago, somebody found themselves facing a difficult challenge. An off-airport landing was in the cards. Despite all the training, all the planning, all the best wishes of those involved, there just wasn’t a good place to go.

We’ve been taught all our lives to protect our belongings. “Take care of your toys,” mom called after us from our earliest days. An expression that eventually morphed into, “I guess we just can’t have nice things,” because kids will, as kids do, break things. [Read more…]

Relationship therapy for pilots

by 11 Comments

Although many readers will find this difficult to believe, I find myself to be in a committed relationship with a significant number of relative strangers. I depend on these folks to keep me on the straight and narrow, to advise me from time to time, and to be there 24/7 just in case I feel the need to talk. Yet, we’re not all that close. Not really. In fact, I’ve never even met most of them.

It’s complicated. You see, I’m having a long-term relationship with ATC. As sad as I am to say it, things aren’t quite as rosy as they might be. And at least part of the fault lies with me. And you.

It’s a pilot thing. [Read more…]

Another kind of step-down fix

by 3 Comments

I met Brittany by total happenstance. While on a visit to her local airport, she wandered into the tidy, well-appointed meeting room where I was chatting with a business associate.

Brittany is in her mid to late 20s. She’s ambitious, owning her own small company at such a young age. But she’s looking to the long-term, too. When she happened onto the meeting I was engaged in, she was preparing for a flight lesson.

She’s recently become a student pilot. With 15 hours or so in her logbook, she’s at the exciting stage of the process. She knows enough to know she’s got a lot to learn, but she’s mastered the basics sufficiently to be working on the task so many of us struggle with for a lifetime — landing the airplane. [Read more…]

But my instructor said…

by 19 Comments

Prepare yourself for blasphemy. It pains me to write this, but it is true.

Not all flight instruction is good. Not all flight instructors are sharing beneficial information. Not every flight school is acting in your best interest. [Read more…]

To unmuddy the muddiest of waters

by 8 Comments

Recently, a reader named Valerie Lynn Booth left a comment in the online edition of this column, where she shared some impressive enthusiasm – and one errant thought that deserves correction. (Thanks so much for reading and writing, Valerie.)

Valerie’s misinterpretation of a complicated rule is common. As she wrote it, ”FAA takes a dim view of learning to fly at a flying club at federally obligated airports.” [Read more…]

What’s the point?

by 1 Comment

So here we are racing toward the end of the decade with the ADS-B deadline approaching and a strong sense that aviation is lacking the volume of trained workers it will require to barrel into the future with the gusto it should.

Solutions to this conundrum abound. Not the least of which is the shift at high schools across the country to begin offering aerospace programs to their students. This is encouraging.

It’s also fraught with problems for those who are intent on seeing the risk behind every opportunity.

For far too long, far too many have been willing — even eager — to forego practical, beneficial opportunities in a myopic and largely futile effort to avoid risk. [Read more…]

Confronting the fear factor

by 2 Comments

Although I have absolutely no scientific data to support the claim, it’s my belief that folks who want to learn to fly are by and large not afraid to get airborne. Nervous, maybe. Anxious about the overall experience, but excited, too.

Not scared, though. That’s a different emotion entirely.

This suspicion stems from thousands of conversations with a staggering number of pilots of all skill levels and age brackets. Never have I met a pilot who claimed to have been terrified to fly prior to their first lesson. That pilot is out there, I’m sure of it. But I haven’t met him or her yet. [Read more…]

Brace yourself, it’s gonna get weird

by 3 Comments

From time to time I find myself in conversation with someone who finds it odd that I’m such a rabid aviation advocate. I take no offense, of course. They’re right. I am a rabid aviation advocate. In fact it’s my considered opinion that aviation and the technologies it produces are critical to the long-term survival of mankind.

Yes, you read that right. I’m in the camp that thinks aviation will ultimately prove to be the salvation of humanity. I’m a true believer.

Brace yourself, it’s gonna get weird. [Read more…]

Thank you to our online partners