Building Community is the Secret of Flight School’s Success
The day after Thanksgiving, Sporty’s Academy shared news of a week that any flight school would love to have, four first solos, two new private pilots, two new commercial pilots, and a new flight...
View ArticleHow Will Flying Clubs Welcome New Pilots?
There’s no denying that flying clubs make aviation affordable by sharing the fixed costs of airplane operation among a number of people. Active pilots are the obvious benefactors, as are lapsed pilots...
View ArticleIs Rise of Civilian Drones Accelerating?
Many would not expect a prediction of aviation’s future on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, but there it was on January 23. The guest, Missy Cummings, one of the Navy’s first female F-18 drivers and...
View ArticleMove Past LaHood … and the Sooner the Better
Sometimes the best action is to take none, which is precisely the route I chose last week when many people were falling over themselves to tell outgoing Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood how much...
View ArticleA Future View of UAV Safety & Surveillance
The 1.8 gigapixel looks at 20 square miles at once. Comments on last week’s post on UAVs focused on safety and privacy, and rightly so. Most offered valid examples of why UAVs won’t work today, and I...
View ArticleKite-flying Canadian Dances in the Sky
Ray Bethell choreographs three kites’ ballet on an azure stage. Kites were our first form of flight, and they played a crucial role in the Wright brothers’ quest for powered flight. Since then, the...
View ArticleGA’s Future Depends on Recalibrated Desires
As Baby Boomers march into retirement in increasing numbers, there’s an opportunity for general aviation and its surviving participants to recalibrate their desires and define the future of personal...
View ArticleAdventure Dominates Memorable Records
As the official keeper of US aviation world records, the National Aeronautic Association each year lists the previous year’s most memorable records ratified by the Fédération Aéronautique...
View ArticlePilot Population & Demographic Stability
Most pilots know that the test of an airplane’s dynamic stability is to trim for a specific hands-off speed, increase or decrease pitch to a faster or slower speed, then let go of the stick and measure...
View ArticleSee and Avoid: Airplanes and Partisan Politics
Since the FAA issued the list of contract towers it will close to satisfy the self-inflicted sequester, I’ve been reading a lot of wailing and gnashing and incredulous screeds of how could they? Common...
View ArticleDragonfly Vision & Hungry Midair Meetings
Like many aviators I appreciate anything that flies whether it’s a manmade machine or product of natural selection. Among insect aeronauts the dragonfly is my favorite. Let’s face it, who wouldn’t envy...
View ArticleInstructor Academy Gives Beech a Future
The recent announcement that the American Bonanza Society and its ABS Air Safety Foundation had established the ABS Flight Instructor Academy was not only good news, it was a surprise. For some reason...
View ArticleMonday Morning Surprise at Flight Schools
Wandering around Addison Airport, a busy Dallas-area reliever, one Monday morning in late April, I dropped in, unannounced, at the airport’s four flight schools. Given the day and hour, I assumed they...
View ArticleAircraft Development Awaits Disruptive Tech
Catching up on the news after a two-week vacation that was, like my last two week respite in 1975, totally disconnected from the wider world, on May 5 The New York Times reported that there are new...
View ArticleLindbergh’s Boyhood Adventures Led to Paris
A solo trans-Atlantic flight to Paris is the signature event in the iconic life of Charles Lindbergh, but it was, perhaps, not the most challenging or arduous. A visit to his boyhood home on the bank...
View ArticleTwo Professional Pilots … Missing
Two Turkish airline pilots have gone missing. The aircraft they flew to Beirut on August 9 is just fine, as is their cabin crew, but these two men simply vanished into thin air … and almost no one is...
View ArticleFriends, Forecasts & the Future of Aviation
Most of my friends and acquaintances are, in some way or another, involved with aviation. Talking with them over the past months, the future of aviation seems to be the discourse destination of choice....
View ArticleSuction Engineers Relieve Shutdown Despair
Drowning in the destructive rhetoric spewing unabated from self-important politicians, I turned to the sky to relieve the oppressive shroud of despair their words have woven around me. A beautiful...
View ArticleAre US Investors Trying to Tell GA Something?
Time will ultimately confirm or deny the recent rumors that the Chinese will become the controlling investor in another venerable American manufacturer of general aviation aircraft. Looking at this...
View ArticleEinar Enevoldson Likes to Fly Gliders High
High as in altitude. Wandering through the science section of the New York Times in the dying days of October, “A Quiet Trip to the Ozone Hole” caught my attention. It’s about the Perlan Project, which...
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