Tom Benenson

There were no firetrucks spewing plumes of water arching over the airplane as I taxied in after our final flight together. It wasn’t my retirement flight, but the delivery flight to turn over the Cardinal RG I’d flown for almost 24 years to its new owner. The Cardinal that I’d originally bought with a partner […]

June 2010 UNLIKE THOSE IN MOST other pursuits, as pilots we’re all required to keep a bound logbook. The logbook is to be used to record at least some of our flight time. But a logbook is much more than a simple record with pages filled with columns, numbers and hen-scratched entries in spaces too […]

The idea was to get away. We’d just learned that the life of the engine in our Cardinal ¡ha terminado! And, even after we decided what to do about replacing the engine, it would be some time before we’d be able to fly the airplane again. In the meantime, the IFR certification (transponder and pitot-static […]

Tom, I’ve got bad news for you,” Brian says when I answer the phone. The phone call isn’t a surprise. I’ve expected the call every time my airplane was in the hands of a mechanic during the last year or so, but it isn’t welcome. The Lycoming IO-360 in my 1976 Cardinal RG was overhauled […]

I thought of it as a “fam” flight — a flight to familiarize someone with why general aviation engenders such passion. A week or so earlier, during a physical, my doctor expressed an interest in going for an airplane ride. Since I try to never postpone joy, I invited her. Lauren was hesitant to take […]

I was surprised and disappointed when I read the headline “C-GCC Grounds Flight Majors” in a local newspaper. Almost two months into the semester, school officials at a community college decided to pull the plug on its aviation sciences program. Earlier in the year I had been asked, along with another person (even more qualified […]

It seems, from recent media reports, that the general public has a myopic view of general aviation. Voices have been raised castigating executives for flying in business jets and decrying the expenditure of funds that go to rural and “underused” general aviation airports. There’s an unfortunate disconnect between who and what we are and the […]

There used to be this guy on late-night television who would promote a home decorating store and would yell, “It ain’t just paint!” Wandering around Wittman Field at Oshkosh during AirVenture, I was reminded once again that, for me, the annual gathering “ain’t just planes!” Sure, on display there were more than 2,500 airplanes of […]

For those of us who donned military uniforms during the Vietnam venture — either voluntarily or reluctantly — and came home to a less than supportive populace, today’s bands, banners and parades honoring our retrurning soldiers are gratifying. We seem to have learned our lesson and now publicly show our appreciation for the sacrifices too […]

Redundancy is a good thing. If one component fails to do its job a second one can take over and provide the needed function. Thinking about redundancy, I considered my gluttonous appetite for aviation information. I subscribe to a handful of aviation magazines. I get Business & Commercial Aviation (BCA) and Aviation International News to […]