Coronavirus

If you think back to the days when you regularly travelled aboard an airliner, you’ll remember it’s a federal crime to interfere with a flight crewmember carrying out their normal duties. Practically, that usually meant some poor flight attendant trying to deal with a passenger who’d had too much to drink. Since the pandemic hit […]

When the Great Lakes Region Civil Air Patrol received a request from the Defense Coordinating Element at FEMA’s Region V office in December 2020 to transport the COVID-19 vaccine by air to several locations in Wisconsin and Michigan, the unit was poised for action. The request? To deliver the first and second rounds of the […]

Tecnam has partnered with ultra-freezer manufacturer Desmon to retrofit the P2012 Traveller for COVID-19 vaccination transportation, into a new version dubbed the Travelcare. The P2012 was deemed a good platform for transportation of the critical materials to remote locations in Europe and around the world. A special ultra-freezer designed by Desmon can maintain product temperatures at minus 86 […]

The Canadian government is serious about squashing the transmission of the COVID-19 virus, especially from anyone visiting the country by air. Early last year, Canada strongly advised against non-essential travel, adding that travel restrictions and measures can be amended at any time for public health reasons. The definition of business air travel requires spending some […]

The $900 billion stimulus package officially known as the Consolidated Appropriation Act of 2021 was signed into law on Monday, December 21, and includes a second round of CARES Act Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) relief for commercial air carriers and contractors with additional CARES Act Payroll Support Program (PSP) funding. The additional stimulus funds will […]

When we look at the sleek outlines of the latest Cessna Citation Latitude, Pilatus PC-24 or Gulfstream G600, we see the potential for performance, agility, and the speed that gets us to a destination safely and in style. What a cancer patient sees—looking at that same airstair door—is entirely different. Therein lies a protected cocoon, […]

Call it renewal or redemption, but flying has taken on a more important, maybe even precious, role in life. COVID-19 made sure that flying for all of us was sharply diminished. As we started to come back, I found the cadences and clearances to be more like diamonds, each exquisite and pleasing in a lapidary […]

On Saturday, October 10, Kayla Varcoe and husband David Berman held their intimate wedding in the family’s private airplane hangar in Charlevoix, Michigan (KCVX). While many pilot couples have found an aviation theme or location to envelope their nuptials, the current COVID-19 situation that has delayed so many special events led Varcoe and Berman to […]

It is no surprise that the airline industry has been hit hard by the plunge in passenger traffic caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, but the industry losses recently reported are staggering by any measure. According to StockApps, a UK-based investment newsletter, year-to-date, “Delta Air Lines, American Airlines, Lufthansa Group, United Airlines, Air France, and the […]

At this point in the year, it’s pretty widely known that pilot hiring at the airlines fell off a cliff during most of 2020 following the COVID-19 outbreak. Louis Smith said, “The 12 major US airlines combined hired only 98 pilots in September.” Smith is president of the Future and Active Pilot Advisors (FAPA). Aircraft […]