On Course

The Air Line Pilots Association has come out and said what a lot of folks in aviation already suspected: The looming pilot shortage we’ve been hearing so much about lately is a myth, created by airlines unwilling to offer better pay. There is no pilot shortage, period. ALPA agrees that there may in fact be […]

I spent some time this week with Kenny Dichter, the founder of Wheels Up, a startup private aviation company that is rolling the dice with a fleet of brand new King Air 350i turboprops. The New York-based firm has taken delivery of its first nine King Airs as part of a massive deal with Beechcraft […]

Gallup reported today that Congress’ approval rating has dropped to 14 percent, the lowest figure in four decades of polling. The recent battles over the budget and health care are driving the public’s exasperation with the House and Senate, and rightly so. But pilots shouldn’t be so quick to criticize. Never have we enjoyed a […]

My first year of membership in DiamondShare is almost over. And as the end of my one-year lease approaches, I have an important choice to make: stick with the shared-lease program or find some other way to fly. My introduction to the DiamondShare experience was somewhat unusual in that I was handed the keys to […]

The odd case of a Boeing 747 Dreamlifter mistakenly landing at Wichita’s Jabara Airport instead of its intended destination, McConnell Air Force Base about 7 miles to the south, wasn’t the first time the crew of a mammoth jet made such a colossal positional error. You might remember our story last year about a C-17 […]

The FAA’s major overhaul of training rules for airline pilots, formally adopted with a new final rule on Tuesday, came as a long-overdue reaction to the deadly Colgan Air Dash-8 Q400 crash in Buffalo, New York, almost five years ago. Earlier changes, also prompted by the Colgan disaster, have altered flight and duty time regulations […]

Honeywell advanced technology guru Bob Witwer gave an interesting talk in Las Vegas this week in which he discussed the future of air travel and posed the intriguing question of whether airliners, cargo planes and business jets years from now will have a need for pilots or, indeed, even cockpit windows. If the thought of […]

No wonder the White House believes it’s winning the 10-day-old standoff with Republicans over the government shutdown. With the power he has American businesses, including much of the aviation industry, the president holds what might be an unbeatable hand. If Republicans didn’t know it before, they do now. With one phone call to Transportation Secretary […]

It was five years ago this week that the wheels came off the global economy. As we all vividly remember, the U.S. government bailout of AIG and the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 sent the Dow into a tailspin unlike anything we had seen in decades. The historic Great Recession was officially under […]

You may recall at the start of the summer flying season FAA Administrator Michael Huerta implored general aviation pilots to fly safely in June, July and August. In an open letter to the GA community delivered just before the Memorial Day weekend, Huerta begged us, “Make sure you’re ready – really ready – to fly.” […]