On Course

They tell us that weather forecasting is seeing dramatic improvements thanks to new supercomputers capable of making hundreds of trillions of calculations per second. The latest computers in the arsenal of the National Weather Service are now more than twice as fast as they were just a few years ago, enabling far more accurate forecasts […]

There’s a lot we still don’t know about yesterday morning’s crash of a UPS Airbus A300 in Birmingham, Alabama. But what we do know is both troubling and at the same time eerily reminiscent of the Asiana Flight 214 crash in San Francisco last month. The causes of these crashes won’t be determined for some […]

Folks from Jeppesen have been strolling the grounds of EAA AirVenture this week with an iPad in hand to give demonstrations of a nifty VFR flight app with some cool capabilities and a surprising price. The subscription service costs $49 — which usually elicits the question from Oshkosh showgoers, “Per month?” Nope, that’s the price […]

Much has been said and written about the FAA’s plans to overhaul the decades-old regulations governing the certification of Part 23 airplanes. The new regulations, we are told, will cut certification costs in half. These savings will be passed along to consumers – that is, us pilots. Congress likes the idea so much that it […]

I’ve watched “TWA Flight 800” — the much-hyped Epix original documentary that purports to present “new” evidence proving that a missile attack brought down the Paris-bound Boeing 747 over the Atlantic 17 years ago this month. Yesterday I interviewed Hank Hughes, a former NTSB investigator who was involved in the TWA 800 investigation. Here is […]

Normally if I heard about a documentary that purported to uncover “new” evidence about the TWA Flight 800 disaster, I would roll my eyes. But I’m actually quite interested to see the film and am approaching it with an open mind. Here’s why. The crash of Flight 800 into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast […]

By now you’ve probably heard that the FAA wants the Experimental Aircraft Association to foot the cost for air traffic controllers at this summer’s EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin – to the tune of about $500,000. Not surprisingly, EAA is hopping mad. In a normal year this request would be ludicrous. After all, pilots who […]

No doubt you’ve heard by now that Icon Aircraft is asking the FAA for an exemption to LSA weight rules for the company’s sleek Icon A5 light sport amphibian. Specifically, the company is seeking a 250-pound max gross weight increase above the LSA limit of 1,430 pounds. Without the exemption, it’s unlikely the A5 can […]

The FAA’s handling of a variety of prickly issues from the planned closures of scores of contract control towers to the hotly anticipated Part 23 rewrite to the up-in-the-air fate of leaded aviation gasoline will affect general aviation in important ways for years to come. Get the Part 23 rewrite right, and we could witness […]

FAA Administrator Michael Huerta got the chance to experience what it feels like to be raked over the coals yesterday as lawmakers at a House hearing expressed their mounting frustration over his agency’s handling of sequester-related controller furloughs. It was uncomfortable to watch as House members bluntly told Huerta he did a poor job of […]