Rob Mark

Investigators are sifting through the mangled wreckage of a Cessna 140 that crashed about 7:30 p.m. Tuesday night shortly after takeoff from a private airport in southeast Florida. The airport, Spruce Creek Fly-In is located in Port Orange just south of Daytona Beach. Witnesses reported the classic metal taildragger never climbed more than 200 feet […]

This story on non-towered airports comes from Jetwhine, a blog that began in 2006 as my experiment into what was then a new world of self-publishing. In the 12 years since, Jetwhine has never failed to regularly publish a story about some aspect of the aviation industry that wasn’t available anywhere else. Few other blogs […]

Buried deep within the House’s recent version of the FAA Reauthorization Act (H.R. 4) sits section 587, innocuously titled “report,” language aimed at providing some financial relief to industry businesses affected by the dozens of TFR-induced shutdowns of Florida’s Palm Beach County Park Airport in Lantana (LNA). The relief only happens, of course, if the […]

Much talk about future eVTOL aircraft has focused around the electric propulsion systems these aircraft will demand to effectively scoot around heavily populated urban landscapes, places that most pilots understand offer few safe landing options in the event of a power failure. Now BRS Aerospace, the company famous for its ballistic parachute system standard on […]

As the investigation into last month’s wing separation on a Piper Arrow near Daytona Beach continues, the National Transportation Safety Board on Tuesday issued an update that points to a number of wing fractures. The PA28R-201 was owned and operated by Embry-Riddle Aeronautic University as a Part 91 instructional aircraft at the time of the […]

Loss of control occurs when an airplane unintentionally departs from normal flight, usually with fatal consequences. LOC remains, in fact, the largest single source of fatalities in aviation. LOC remains at the top of the NTSB’s 10 Most Wanted List of problems in search of solutions. In an effort to mitigate LOC accidents the National […]

Unless you’re a stamp collector, word that the U.S. Postal Service recently began selling stamps commemorating the 100th anniversary of the first scheduled airmail service in the United States might well have flown right past you. On Sunday morning however, the anniversary took on new life when Darryl Fisher, founder of Ageless Aviation Dreams Foundation, […]

“Stalls and spins represent the largest single factor in fatal general aviation accidents.” Surprisingly, this quote wasn’t pulled from the latest FAA news release, but rather from a NASA Langley Research Center newsletter dated April 1977. Forty years later, stall-spins and loss of control remain pinned to the top of the National Transportation Safety Board’s […]

With AirVenture just around the corner, women interested in aviation will again have the opportunity to meet new comrades and potential mentors at the 11th WomenVenture held in conjunction with the largest airshow in the United States. WomenVenture is presented by The Boeing Company, with additional support from Glasair Aviation, Women in Aviation International, Ninety-Nines […]

Imagine an electric vertical take-off and landing vehicle for urban travel that’s quieter, safer, more affordable and more environmentally friendly than a traditional helicopter. At this week’s Uber Elevate Summit, Pipistrel, an Uber Elevate partner, revealed an aircraft the company thinks might fit that bill. The Pipistrel eVTOL concept uses dedicated propulsion systems for cruising […]