Tom Benenson

It wasn’t a big deal. Shortly before Judith and I were slated to leave for a trip (possible only with our own airplane) to a reunion of college friends in Wyoming, a stop to help with haying at the Flying A Ranch in South Dakota and a week at AirVenture in Oshkosh, I fell off […]

I made a list of the people I had to call. There were 10 people on the list ranging from Bonnie, who was scheduled to house-sit for our Aussie shepherds, Rueben and Whoopi, to my mother, who watches the weather and knows-even before I do-where bad things are happening. One of the names on the […]

A security system that uses biometrics embedded in an identification smart card has begun beta testing at FlightSafety International’s training academy in Vero Beach, Florida. Sponsored by the National Air Transportation Association (NATA) and dubbed the National Air Transportation Security Identification System, the system uses a “SkyGuard” card that contains a 16K computer chip that […]

When the poet Robert Burns wrote, “the best laid schemes o’ mice and men, gang aft a-gley,” what he meant was that things often don’t work out the way we intend. The well laid plan was for Robert Goyer to fly up to Columbia County to take some pictures of me with my Cardinal. That […]

||| |—|—| | | | The most unusual introduction at the NBAA gathering in New Orleans, maybe at any NBAA gathering, was made by AeroCopter. The Andover, Massachusetts, company announced the Humming, a unique aircraft that combines jet engines and helicopter aerodynamics to create a new kind of tiltrotor aircraft. A relatively traditionally configured delta-wing […]

||| |—|—| | | | Student pilots, worried they don’t have the right stuff, often ask me, “What makes a good pilot?” They’re usually surprised when I don’t cite physical coordination and natural ability. No, if I had to identify one personality trait that makes for a good (read safe) pilot, I’d have to say […]

Bombardier has soft-launched its latest business jet, the “super-large” Global 5000. The intercontinental jet is designed to fill the niche in the company’s product line between the Challenger 604 and the ultra-long-range Global Express. Powered by the same 14,750-pound-thrust Rolls-Royce Deutschland BR710 engines as the Global Express, the 5000 will have a range, with NBAA […]

||| |—|—| | | | I’m not in my airplane. I’m sitting in my office. The sun is shining and there’s a gentle breeze caressing the leaves outside my window. Now. It didn’t start out to be a good day. The plan was to fly Judith to Ithaca, New York, to spend a weekend with […]

No matter how many tests I’ve taken, I still get anxious the night before an exam. In school I never pulled an all-nighter, believing that it was better to get a good night’s sleep and that anything I crammed into my cranium late the night before an exam wouldn’t stay with me after I’d handed […]