Close

Member Login

Logging In
Invalid username or password.
Incorrect Login. Please try again.

not a member? sign-up now!

Signing up could earn you gear and it helps to keep offensive content off of our site.

Home
Default Blog Header

Recent Posts

Blog Categories

September 20, 2011
Making Sense of the Unthinkable 5
Pia Bergqvist
Reno Air Race grandstands, minutes before the accident.
Enlarge Photo

After having experienced the Reno Air Races once in 2003, I was thrilled to return to the show this year. The weather forecast for the races looked good and the lineup of race airplanes was as exciting as ever. I took off IFR into a 1,200-foot ceiling on Thursday morning in a 172RG that I rented from the local flight school at Santa Monica Airport. It was great getting some actual time, but the clouds were not thick and I continued my flight into smooth clear skies, enjoying the views of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

September 14, 2011
Corporate Jets: The Next Political Punching Bag 11
Sephen Pope
Enlarge Photo

Watch for “corporate jets” to emerge as a hot-button campaign issue in the coming months as Democrats seize on a change in the tax code proposed in President Obama’s Jobs Act to paint their Republican rivals as supporting tax-cheating corporations.

It’s happening already. In an ad created for the Congressional campaign of Democrat David Weprin, a business jet is shown flying across the screen as a voiceover warns viewers: “Corporate executive Bob Turner lives the high life. While you struggle to pay the bills, Turner supports tax loopholes for corporations.”

September 12, 2011
Stream Your Flight Data to the FAA? 18
Robert Goyer
Enlarge Photo
Photo: illustration by Robert Goyer

A team headed by an award-winning professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, John Hansman, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems at the school as well as a 5,600-hour pilot, has come up with a really cool idea: mining data from flight data recorders to identify anomalies. Check out our news story on the subject here.

September 08, 2011
The Right Call
Stephen Pope

Flooding caused by hurricane Irene at
Morristown Municipal Airport

Enlarge Photo

When I called up the pictures of Morristown Municipal Airport (KMMU) drowning in muddy-brown water wrought by Hurricane Irene’s torrential rains late last month, I was a bit taken aback by how widespread the flooding appeared to be. I just didn't expect that much of my home airport to be underwater.

And yet I was also heartened by something else I saw in the photos – or, rather, by the airplanes I didn’t see.

September 08, 2011
King Airs and Class Warfare 9
Robert Goyer
Enlarge Photo

Though it was sometimes hard to tell while reading the article, Wednesday's New York Times piece by Christopher Drew addressed an interesting topic: the Air Force's King Air program that uses GA airplanes as a launching point and then installs sophisticated electronic gadgets to create a spy platform that gets the job done when other options aren't available. It's a surprisingly entrepreneurial approach to battlefield needs.

September 06, 2011
September 11th, Timothy McVeigh and the Small Airplane Threat 8
Robert Goyer
Murrah Federal Building, Oklahoma City, 1995
Enlarge Photo

On Friday the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security warned us all to be on the alert for terrorists trying to use small airplanes as weapons of mass destruction in the days leading up to the solemn 10-year anniversary of the attacks of September 11th, 2001.

That horrific day almost 10 years ago now wasn't the first terrorist attack against the United States on our own soil, not even the first in recent memory.

September 01, 2011
Pilots and Automation: Is there a Problem? 14
Robert Goyer
Enlarge Photo

A recent Associated Press story by Joan Lowy entitled "Automation in the Air Dulls Pilot Skill" looked to highlight what must have seemed to the author like a critical safety concern that people in high places were missing, namely that technology is causing many airline accidents and that nobody's paying attention to this glaring problem.

Lowy's piece, however, managed to entirely miss what should have been the main point of the story: airline accidents today are almost non-existent, and like it or not, that is a result of the emergence of technology.

August 31, 2011
Virtual Control? 2
Connie Sue White
Enlarge Photo

As I was reading the latest issue of Wired the other day, a tidbit updating the remote air traffic management system being developed by Saab and Sweden’s LFV air traffic control service piqued my curiosity enough for me to delve into the topic deeper. My first thought was simple: leave it to the Swedes to maximize practicality and efficiency (oh, how I miss my Saab 9.3 hatchback and its utilitarian design and its turbo, pre-GM!).

August 30, 2011
The Long Trip Home 4
Stephen Pope
The only way to fly. If you can afford it.
Enlarge Photo
Photo: Stephen Pope

“This is the crack cocaine of air travel.”

That was the humorous yet apt assessment by my seatmate after we touched down last Friday at Rio’s downtown airport in an Embraer Legacy 600. It was a colorful comparison to airline travel from a fellow journalist who had never before experienced flight on a private jet. And while I probably wouldn’t use the hard-drug metaphor to describe what it’s like to travel as a passenger aboard a business jet compared with just about any other form of transportation, I also had to admit that he was exactly right.

August 25, 2011
Part 23 Do-Over 19
Robert Goyer
The 2007 launch of the Cirrus Jet.
Enlarge Photo

News came down from the feds the other day that the FAA was forming an aviation rulemaking committee to look into overhauling the standards contained within Part 23 of the regs that govern certification of most light airplanes. This is a great thing. These rules are too complex and complying with them is extremely costly.

Page 18 of 44
< previous
next >