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I attended a meeting last night at Morristown Municipal Airport (MMU) in New Jersey, where officials from the tower and the FAA were on hand to discuss with local pilots the new Mandatory Occurrence Reporting (MOR) system that many have likened to an ATC snitching program.

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With Cirrus Aircraft’s announcement that it has gotten funding — nearly $150 million, by some accounts — for its single-engine jet, there’s great joy in Duluth, and rightly so. I’ve spoken with a couple of Cirrus reps on the subject, and they’re absolutely thrilled by the prospect, and that’s not because they’re supposed to be acting thrilled. They’re excited because their prospects are excited by the jet, so much so that they get asked by a high percentage of their customers when they can get a jet; a lesser percentage puts money down on the jet, flight unseen.

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Self-assessment is key to becoming a safer pilot.

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If you’re honest about aviation safety you’ve got to constantly ask yourself what you can do to cut down on the risks inherent in flying. Admittedly, taking a hard look in the magic mirror of safety and reflecting honestly upon what you see is not an easy thing to do. It might be one that pilots as a group are inherently bad at. After all, we tend to be confident self-starters who have gotten where we are not so much by questioning what we were doing but by forging ahead despite our doubts, reflecting more on the possible rewards than the risks inherent in what we do.

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It takes years to build a successful brand, but only a few bad decisions, or in some cases a run of bad luck, to ruin one. That’s what makes the planned revitalization of the storied Bendix/King brand name so intriguing. For the past 15 years, Bendix/King has more or less been a victim of neglect as the weeds were allowed to grow up all around it. In short, the brand suffered from the sort of parental abandonment that would have done in lesser names.

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