Photos

The rain is, if anything, coming down even harder than it was a few minutes ago. The bench I’m sitting on is covered in puddles, and the stream of water cascading off my umbrella has completely soaked my legs and sneakers. The field where the big event is supposed to take place is quickly becoming […]

It’s too bad that the image of the Century of Flight Celebration that was most widely flashed to the non-flying world was of the 1903 Wright Flyer reproduction lying in a mud puddle. The weeklong festivities at Kill Devil Hills were a huge success for every one of the thousands of aviation enthusiasts who attended […]

Awesome. That’s the word that kept running through my mind when I first stepped into the new Gulfstream 550 cockpit. The aviation industry has been talking about “glass” cockpits for more than 20 years, but Gulfstream has finally done it. Four 14-inch flat-panel displays mounted in the horizontal landscape position cover the entire instrument panel, […]

****Part 2 of a 3-part series on the AirShares Elite small-airplane fractional ownership program, here on flyingmag.com.**** What’s the ideal airplane? For most of us, it’s the one that goes a few knots faster, travels a little farther or carries a bit more weight than the one we’re currently flying. As in the rest of […]

In some ways, the land is still as I remember it. Emerald-green hills dotted with darker green pines, eucalyptus, rimu, kauri and tree ferns flash underneath the airplane as we circle over the rolling landscape that stretches southeast from New Zealand’s largest city. It’s been a long time, so I can’t place the exact locations […]

As I have noted many times, the advances that have taken place in piston airplane development over the past 25 years have been portable. New avionics, better interiors, more powerful engines, improved propellers and even air conditioning can usually be installed in an existing airplane, as well as a newly manufactured one. This evolutionary process […]

In the mercilessly cruel financial world of small airplane companies, and the new companies that plan to build airplanes, bankruptcy may offer the only chance of success. Nobody can, you see, sell enough airplanes quickly enough to recover the development costs of starting a company and designing and certifying an airplane. That means somebody needs […]

I can’t believe we’re doing this!” Kimberly’s laughing voice sails through the air from somewhere behind me as our horses canter through the ponderosa pines of an Oregon trail. I don’t answer immediately, because just staying in the saddle is taking up most of my focus at the moment. But I laugh, inside and out. […]