Search Results for: wright

With reference to Mike Hart’s article, “Landing On The Shore” in the October 2020 issue, I, too, have utilized many remote mountain airstrips, including many in his native Idaho. I, too, enjoy the adventure of new challenges, but have some questions about his tradeoffs between legal versus safe. In a sidebar, he documents the legality […]

First flown on December 17, 1935, the Douglas DC-3, an iteration of the DC-1 and DC-2, married reliability with performance and comfort in a way no other airplane had before. So much greater than the sum of its parts, an apt description for an airplane that has earned the right to be called “timeless” more […]

OK, picture some far-in-the-future archaeologist exploring an area that ancient maps call North America and stumbling on an odd-looking site—long strips of concrete radiating out from a once-paved, open area. Combing through the ruins of a nearby structure, he unearths a barely discernible, crumbling document covered with peculiar characters. If only there were accompanying hieroglyphics, […]

Recent data from the National Transportation Safety Board says, over the past decade, the trend in general aviation accidents has been headed in a positive direction—down. In 2012, the board recorded 1,471 GA accidents, 273 of which were fatal. Those accidents claimed the lives of 440 people. The NTSB data available from 2017 lists 1,233 […]

Just like so many events and public spaces that have experienced closures and cancellations this year, the Experimental Aircraft Association was forced to pull the plug on the popular national tour of their beautiful restored B-17 bomber Aluminum Overcast earlier in 2020 because of health concerns arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, with new safety […]

Aviation has always been a breeding ground for technological, social and economic change. Many of these changes, such as the jet airliner, shrank the world and transformed how we see it. The airliner’s influence may be on the wane, however, as challenges in the workplace and the effects of climate change—two major factors among many […]

It’s not a secret that the Covid-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on many industries and businesses. Aviation generally and general aviation specifically haven’t been immune, for which the impossibility of social distancing in a typical cockpit is at least partially to blame. It’s been a rough few months for the overall industry, and the downturn […]

In summer 1954, I was 10 going on 11; the “going on” part is important when you’re 10. My father was in New York for some reason or another, and my mother and I were to join him there for a month. It was the first great travel adventure of my life. Born and living […]

In 1928, Charles Lindbergh personally selected Port Columbus Airport in Columbus, Ohio, as the eastern terminus of Transcontinental Air Transport (TAT), one of America’s first commercial airlines and the first to offer coast-to-coast service. In July 1929, a beautiful art deco and modern (for the era) terminal was opened to the public at what is today known […]

Perhaps you know of the FAA’s Wright Brothers Master Pilot award recognizing 50 years of safe flying. I looked into it but the documentation requirement put me off. But, my wife fulfilled the documentation requirement as a gift to me for a recent milestone birthday. We were visiting my 97-year-old mother with extended family and […]