Editor’s Log

There have been some developments in the industry’s quest to shift itself away from leaded fuel, i.e., 100LL avgas. We start in California, where the political push to get the lead out is strongest and has already resulted in prohibiting 100LL at a few airports. In early February, George Braly of General Aviation Modifications, Inc. […]

It was the latest event in Boeing’s 737 Max saga, which includes two destroyed aircraft and 346 fatalities, plus lengthy worldwide groundings.

Right at the end of 2023, the U.S. airline industry decided it was time to revive one of its age-old shibboleths: that private aircraft are the source of air-travel delays. In a letter to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker, industry organization Airlines4America (A4A) wrote to call their attention to operational challenges […]

Like many of you, I used a personal airplane over the Thanksgiving holiday to be with family. I flew from Florida to a spot in the Virginia mountains and back, over 700 nm one-way flown nonstop. The northbound portion featured decent weather and a tailwind. The southbound leg included a mix of everything, including stiff […]

Our long national nightmare is over: By a vote of 98-0, the U.S. Senate on October 24 confirmed Michael Whitaker to a five-year term as FAA Administrator. The position had been vacant since Steve Dickson resigned on March 31, 2022, and was filled by a succession of acting administrators. This won’t be Whitaker’s first rodeo […]

I’ve often criticized airlines large and small over their flight crew hiring practices and, especially, the boom-and-bust nature of their characteristic binges when times are good and furloughs when they aren’t. We’re still mired in one of those cycles, thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, when no one was traveling and thousands of pilots were either […]

August brought good news to the general aviation industry as two major trade groups reported their respective segment’s sales number for the first half of 2023. First out with avionics-industry stats was the Aircraft Electronics Association (AEA), which celebrated the highest quarterly sales volume in the history of its Avionics Market Report. According to AEA, […]

By any measure, the Experimental Aircraft Association’s just-concluded AirVenture fly-in was a success. According to online sister publication AVweb.com, official attendance was “approximately” 677,000—a new record handily blowing past last year’s count of 650,000. According to EAA CEO and President Jack Pelton, “We had record-setting totals of campers, exhibitors, volunteers, and more. It was also […]

Each month, we sort through scores of recent NTSB preliminary accident reports to develop our Accident Briefs feature, which begins on page 19 this month. We don’t use all of them—there’s never enough space—so many prelims don’t make the cut. It might be helpful for readers if we explain how we decide which ones to […]

Many regular readers may recall my occasional musings about trading out the round, “steam” flight instruments in my Beech Debonair for a fancy “glass panel.” Many pixels and buckets of ink, plus hours of research, went into my consideration of the various options and how well or poorly they may coexist with my existing avionics. […]