Search Results for: general aviation inc

The Pacific Northwest, for the purposes of this article, includes the states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and parts of Montana and Wyoming. Thats a huge hunk of territory and comprises more than 250,000 square miles for Washington, Oregon and Idaho alone. The region includes two major mountain ranges-the Cascades and the Northern Rockies-and many smaller ones, as well as several major river basins. There are major cities in the region, such as Seattle, Portland and Boise, but also thousands of square miles of largely empty land and wilderness.

A few years ago, an engineer, friend and pilot shared a story about retrieving his Cessna 182RG from the paint shop. Before he took the plane out for a run-up and test flight, he asked his even more meticulous engineer-spouse do the preflight. When she did, she discovered something rather important. The bolts and nuts that connected the elevators were just hand-tightened, unsecured by cotter pins. The bolts and nuts securing the primary pitch control surfaces were essentially ready to fall out. Not good. My friend managed a major nuclear facility in Idaho, and he shared the story with his workforce as an example why operators should trust, but verify others work.

Vintage aircraft often have vintage owners. Familiarity being a source of contempt, long-time owners of aircraft seeing little activity may also see little need to perform preventive maintenance or conduct regular inspections. It was just fine when I parked it; what could possibly have broken while it was sitting in a hangar? can be a familiar refrain to pilots who have owned the same airplane for a significant time. After a while, the pilot/owner is so familiar with the aircraft, he or she can tell somethings wrong just by the slipstream noise.

It stands to reason that if a passenger pays for a charter flight, they’re entitled to expect a significantly better level of safety than if they accept a free ride from a neighbor in their single-engine trainer. That’s because the FAA has said, “Pilots who transport paying passengers must have the required qualifications and training, […]

OpenAirplane and FlyOtto ceased operations on December 29, 2019. The aircraft rental and charter services sought to make processes easier and with less hassle for pilots and prospective passengers. Co-Founder and President Rod Rakic cited a discrepancy between the stated desire of pilots to use the OpenAirplane service and the numbers that actually showed up […]

NASA’s first large scale, piloted X-plane in more than three decades is cleared for final assembly and integration of its systems following a major project review by senior managers held December 12, 2019 at NASA’s headquarters in Washington. The management review, known as Key Decision Point-D (KDP-D), was the last programmatic hurdle for the X-59 […]

Wings Over the Rockies Air & Space Museum (WOTR) and the Jeppesen Aviation Foundation announced on December 17, “Wright Brothers Day,” that they have joined forces to create the Wings Over the Rockies Captain Jeppesen Foundation, a new 501(c)(3) organization. The foundation’s mission is to support Wings Over the Rockies Air & Space Museum in […]

In California, my current home state, one is surrounded by quite a few within the populace whose level of inanity seems as homogeneous and predictable as that of the Three Stooges. Perhaps the state motto should be changed to: “Too many lemmings, not enough cliffs.” But I say, in the midst of this mélange, one […]

It was a cold February morning on the way to Europe in a single-engine Cessna 210. I was enjoying the performance and steady rumble of the big-bore Continental IO-55O engine. I had my little red booklet on the dash where I continually scribbled down speeds, fuel burn and temperatures as part of my performance log. […]

The sad saga of the Boeing 737 Max has been a slow-burning corporate, engineering, regulatory, human-interest and public-relations nightmare for going on six months now—with no end in sight. The magnitude of Boeing’s deadly foul-up is a frequent topic of conversation in airliner cockpits, and considerable ink has been spilled over the subject in both […]