Rob Mark

The CARES Act recently signed by President Trump included $10 billion in economic relief for more than 3,000 airports around the country affected by the COVID-19 virus. Most general aviation airports, for example, survive through a combination of ground and hangar rentals, as well as per-gallon fuel flowage fees, so any decline in traffic can […]

If Charley Valera told you the organization he works for “can move anything from anywhere to anywhere,” you’d assume he worked for FedEx or UPS, but you wouldn’t even be close. Valera handles public relations for AERObridge, a US-based logistics group that provides air support using donated, mostly GA aircraft and crew to deliver supplies […]

Some element of human interaction, or lack of one, is responsible for nearly 70 percent of all aircraft accidents. Most of those involve violating a least one FAR, like flying a VFR aircraft into IFR weather, busting minimums on an approach, or a pilot flying when common sense said they weren’t in physical shape to […]

No one wants to bust a company tradition, especially one that’s held fast for decades. Dallas-based Southwest Airlines has a couple of well-known ones. Prominently, the airline has remained profitable for each of the 49 years the company has been in business. Another is that Southwest Airlines has never involuntarily furloughed an employee during that […]

Flight instructors are required to renew their certificate every two years. CFIs with a specific number of successful checkride recommendations during the previous two years can however, renew based alone on that record—but that may not be possible in the current environment. Recently, the bottom has fallen out from underneath flight schools because of the […]

The National Business Aviation Association and a number of other alphabet groups last week participated in a conference call with senior Flight Standards officials to reiterate the importance of providing general aviation operators with regulatory exemption and accommodation in the face of the devastating industry effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Agency officials said they are […]

Both the FAA and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) recently issued airworthiness directives to operators of Gulfstream’s fly-by-wire aircraft, with an additional warning of potential applicability to the company’s G500/ G600 fleet. The initial ADs were issued against the G650/G650ER, G500 and G600 fleet regarding continued flight after a flight control surface shutdown. […]

As in-person attendance numbers for recurrent training decline because of the COVID-19 virus, companies such as FlightSafety International and Legacy Flight Training have transferred one of the most people-intensive portion of their courses—groundschool—to the internet. Legacy Flight Training is the exclusive authorized Piper training provider for the M600. FlightSafety International now provides the ground school […]

Jason Blair, a longtime flight instructor, aircraft owner, and designated pilot examiner in the Kalamazoo, Michigan, area recently published two practical guides—An Aviator’s Field Guide to Buying an Airplane, and An Aviator’s Field Guide to Owning an Airplane—through ASA aimed at getting more pilots flying and keeping them flying. Blair authors the monthly Chart Wise […]

These days some hangar flying in a flight training device doesn’t seem all that unusual, especially to pilots living in cities with local shelter-in-place orders. No matter how realistic a simulator claims to be though, most pilots will tell you they still know the devices are simply pretend airplanes. Trying to take on that realism […]