After some years, I ran into John and Martha King of King Schools at the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) Convention this fall and caught their Light Business Aircraft briefing on jet ownership. As usual they were frank, straightforward and fact-based. They told it like it is. It was refreshing, educational too. They know how […]
Drew's Views
Corkey Fornof: Flying with Fury
“I’ve known your name forever,” I told Corkey Fornof, star attraction of the “First Saturday” breakfast last month at LoPresti Speed Merchants in Sebastian, Florida. “Me too!” laughed the stunt pilot legend, showing off the long-awaited LoPresti Fury (nee SwiftFury) these days at airshows. The man is having fun. And can he fly! Everyone’s first […]
To win, you’ve got to play the game
“I’m seeing a virtuous cycle,” said National Business Aviation Association president Ed Bolen at this year’s NBAA convention in Orlando. He was speaking of The Alliance for Aviation Across America. Ad hoc Washington coalitions are often just “inside baseball” (and manufactured “causes” by corporate front-groups are downright deceptive), but the Alliance’s cumulative results since 2007 […]
The show goes on
Conversations drifted to tragedy in Connecticut, but the holiday season’s 25th annual Toy Parade went on as scheduled at the Spruce Creek Fly-In community in Florida. The parade boasted an ingeniously decorated Cub, Cherokee and Waco, the latter owned by 2012 Grand Marshalls Pat and Lenny Ohlsson, long-time real estate gurus (pictured below) Spruce Creek’s […]
Vero Beach Memoirs
With apologies to both playwright Neil Simon and Brighton Beach, it was a sentimental journey Nov. 10 to Vero Beach, Florida, for Piper’s Factory Fly-In, the final event of the Cub’s 75th Anniversary year. Scattered among the 40 yellow taildraggers at the invitational fly-in were the all-metal Pipers of MY youth. I could only reminisce. […]
Notes from NBAA: Good show!
The National Business Aircraft Association show made it into the Orlando Convention Center unscathed Oct. 30-Nov. 1 despite an on-again/off-again Presidential TFR, turmoil from Hurricane Sandy in the Northeast and economic headwinds in the industry. Show attendance looked thin but official numbers said otherwise. Along with multi-million dollar jets, more everyday GA was on display. […]
Bowling alone
The new flying club proposal from the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association is news, but the association has tried it before. Moreover, Americans generally (pilots in particular) are individualists – even more so recently, says a unique thesis titled “Bowling Alone.” But now GA’s survival is at issue, or at least the ability of “average […]
Embry-Riddle: Climbing out despite turbulent times
You might wonder how a big aviation university is doing during the recession. After all, airline flying is not the glamorous, big money career it used to be. What’s a college to do? At Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida, change is the order of the day. That change has been underway for some […]
GA’s next generation of entrepreneurs: PilotMall.com’s Neil Glazer
I always marvel at how anyone makes a go of it in aviation. I’m especially cheered by young people who stake their claim. I’ll be writing about a young aviation entrepreneur or leader from time to time. The first represents success on the Internet: Neil Glazer, the founder of PilotMall.com. Last month, I visited the […]