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<title>Today is 9/11 … again</title>
<link>https://jetwhine.com/2025/09/today-is-9-11-again/</link>
<comments>https://jetwhine.com/2025/09/today-is-9-11-again/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Mark]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Thu, 11 Sep 2025 09:00:46 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Air Traffic Control]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[airline safety]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Aviation History]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[aviation safety]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Aviation Security]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[The Buzz]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[2001]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[September 11]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Terrorist Attack]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[World Trade Center]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://jetwhine.com/?p=11919</guid>
<description><![CDATA[My memory of September 11, 2001, is, at best, a blur except for the images. The scenes, however, are indelibly etched in my mind. It was a sunny morning with temperatures in the low 70s and not a cloud in the sky. A perfect day, I thought. I’d just walked back in the house from […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<img alt="" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-11925" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/9-11-150x150.jpg" alt="" width="150" height="150" />My memory of September 11, 2001, is, at best, a blur except for the images. The scenes, however, are indelibly etched in my mind.
It was a sunny morning with temperatures in the low 70s and not a cloud in the sky. A perfect day, I thought. I’d just walked back in the house from the short stroll delivering my daughter to one of her first days in first grade. Class began at 8 AM (9 AM Eastern). Nancy met me at the door, somewhat out of breath, her eyes wide. “An airplane crashed in New York,” she said. Clearly agitated, I could tell there was more to the story. “It hit the World Trade Center!”
She had my attention as we both rushed to the family room, where the TV was already showing the volcano-like eruption of smoke pouring from the North Tower of the World Trade Center. We’d only been watching the screen a few minutes when, just after 9 AM Eastern, a camera caught an image of a United Boeing 767 headed for the South Tower. Half an hour later, a American Airlines Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon. All three airplanes had been hijacked by terrorists earlier that morning. The crashes claimed the lives of everyone aboard each aircraft. Later that morning we learned that another airplane, United 93, had been hijacked from Newark Airport, but crashed in Shanksville, PA after passengers regained control from the terrorists. Unfortunately, no one knew how to fly the aircraft. It’s believed the original terrorist plan was to crash Flight 93 into either the White House or the US Capitol building in Washington.
Nearly 3,000 people lost their lives that morning, including many hundreds of brave first responders who ran toward the chaos as everyone everyone else ran the other way.
Nancy and I spent that entire morning staring at the TV, barely saying a word. I wondered if this was how our parents felt when they learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. I was numb as I wondered out loud … “Are we at war?”
Within that first hour, the FAA’s Command Center issued a nationwide ground stop to everything flying … airliners, flight trainers, business jets … everything. Everyone was ordered to land at the nearest suitable airport while the feds tried to figure out what was actually happening.
The rest is of course, history to those of us who lived through it. To young people today however, it’s probably just another date in history that makes their parents shake their heads if they remember it.
September 11, 2001 – 24 years ago today – irrevocably changed the aviation industry around the world, not to mention our lives as Americans.
Remembering 9/11 can only be even mildly experienced today by watching the video below demonstrating how the nationwide ground stop affected US airspace from the perspective of air traffic controllers. It took just four hours to completely clear the skies over our nation, skies that normally host 10,000+ flights at any given point.
We live not far from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, and for most of that week following 9/11, the skies above Chicago were absolutely silent. Think about that. Not a plane flying anywhere.
Rob Mark
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<title>A Few Thoughts About Labor Day</title>
<link>https://jetwhine.com/2025/09/a-few-thoughts-about-labor-day/</link>
<comments>https://jetwhine.com/2025/09/a-few-thoughts-about-labor-day/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Mark]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 02 Sep 2025 00:46:13 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Podcast]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[The Buzz]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://jetwhine.com/?p=11832</guid>
<description><![CDATA[The Airplane Geeks are off this week for the Labor Day holiday here in the States, but we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled show of news and zaniness next week. At least, I hope we will. But since Max Flite asked us all to try and produce a short segment about something interesting, I […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[The <a href="http://www.airplanegeeks.com">Airplane Geeks</a> are off this week for the Labor Day holiday here in the States, but we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled show of news and zaniness next week. At least, I hope we will.
But since Max Flite asked us all to try and produce a short segment about something interesting, I thought I’d take a few minutes to speak about Labor Day itself, which might be a topic that some of you living outside the United States might find worth listening to, since many of you know very little about it. However, from what I’ve seen, most people living in the United States are also unfamiliar with the labor movement or unionism.
<figure id="attachment_11838" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-11838" style="width: 150px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img decoding="async" class="size-thumbnail wp-image-11838" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Sam-Gompers-150x150.jpg" alt="Samuel Gompers - Jetwhine.com" width="150" height="150" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-11838" class="wp-caption-text">Samuel Gompers</figcaption></figure>
Labor Day was first celebrated here in the United States on September 5, 1882, in New York City. If you think back to America in the late 19th century, it was a time of much labor anger at tycoons like Andrew Carnegie and George Pullman. The Pullman railroad strike of 1894, in fact, transformed Labor Day from a local event into a national holiday following worker clashes with federal marshals that led to the death of a number of workers. President Grover Cleveland rushed the passage of Labor Day through our Congress to avoid, or at least to attempt to avoid, any of the additional upheavals like the <a href="https://www.illinoislaborhistory.org/the-haymarket-affair">1886 Haymarket riots</a> in Chicago that killed a number of police and workers.
In the labor movement in the United States, names like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Gompers">Sam Gompers</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_V._Debs">Eugene V. Debs</a> were well known in the early 20th century, as were organizations such as the Industrial Workers of the World. We called them the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Workers_of_the_World">Wobblies</a>, the AFL-CIO socialists, anarchists, well, the rise of unionism in general.
But let’s return to the present for now and maybe a few confessions about my own role in labor unions. I have a few, and for some of you, they may explain some of my opinions. My dad was a union plasterer in Chicago, and my grandfather was an early president of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amalgamated_Meat_Cutters" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Amalgamated Meat Cutters Union</a> in the early 1920s, when the stockyards were still in their heyday. If you’ve read Upton Sinclair’s novel <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle">The Jungle</a>, there’s a mention in there about my grandfather, Big John Kikulski, that I’m now particularly proud of, being a history buff. However, I’m certainly not the history buff my Airplane Geeks buddy David is, of course. I found the why behind the events of labor to be just as interesting as the events themselves.
But honestly, I didn’t start out terribly impressed or really even interested in unions, to tell you the truth; however, a kid in his
early 20s defines that, of course. My first exposure to unions came as a government employee when I worked for the FAA in the
<figure id="attachment_11837" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-11837" style="width: 300px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-11837" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/PATCO-300x148.jpg" alt="Patco logo - Jetwhine.com" width="300" height="148" srcset="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/PATCO-300x148.jpg 300w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/PATCO-768x380.jpg 768w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/PATCO.jpg 914w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-11837" class="wp-caption-text">Patco logo</figcaption></figure>
early 1970s. I joined the infamous controllers’ union, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Professional_Air_Traffic_Controllers_Organization_strike" target="_blank" rel="noopener">PATCO— the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization</a> —long before the 1981 strike. I eventually rose, or was kicked upstairs, some might say, to the role of president of our local at the Chicagoland control tower – <a href="https://chiexec.com/history/">Palwaukee Airport</a> – where I worked, which is now Chicago Executive Airport just north of Chicago, O’Hare.
I found unions to be a great opportunity to interact with FAA management about working condition issues without fear of reprisal. They couldn’t do anything to us because we weren’t coming at them personally. We were talking to them as members of the Union. Now, prior to the union, you took your career in your hands if you said anything to anybody about anything, actually. So, management spent an inordinate amount of time bullying people, perhaps because they could. That didn’t end with PATCO, though.
Unions just helped bring a little balance to the constant arguments, which is really what unions were designed to do in the first place: create a balance of power between labor and management. Now it worked fairly well, as unions came to despise management, while management reciprocated with similar feelings towards the workers; however, it was balanced, no matter how you looked at it.
Now, of course, for those times when it wasn’t, most of us found out when a strike was called. A strike was labor’s way of withholding their services from management. It was used to help leverage a solution to a wage or a working condition, like a safety issue. In fact, this remains a persistent issue in the US mining industry, where we’ve had too many accidents.
Luckily for me, I was out of the FAA when PATCO called their illegal strike in 1981. Some people also will tell you that a strike isn’t illegal if you win. Unfortunately, in 1981, PATCO lost. They lost big time. The union was decertified a few months later, and 14,000 people lost their jobs. An interesting side note, though, when we talk about unions and PATCO and the people that lost their jobs. The current union, NATCA, the<a href="https://www.natca.org/"> National Air Traffic Controllers Association</a>, appeared just a few years after PATCO disappeared, because all the problems the union had struck for in 1981 still existed. So maybe their hearts were in the right place. My next personal foray into unionism was as a member of the <a href="https://www.alpa.org/">Airline Pilots Association</a> at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midway_Airlines_(1976%E2%80%931991)">Midway Airlines</a>.
<figure id="attachment_11836" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-11836" style="width: 344px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class=" wp-image-11836" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/ALPA-300x108.jpg" alt="ALPA logo - Jetwhine.com" width="344" height="124" srcset="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/ALPA-300x108.jpg 300w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/ALPA-1024x370.jpg 1024w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/ALPA-768x278.jpg 768w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/ALPA-1536x555.jpg 1536w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/ALPA.jpg 1554w" sizes="(max-width: 344px) 100vw, 344px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-11836" class="wp-caption-text">ALPA logo</figcaption></figure>
It must have been the volunteer in me, but I have always found the interaction between labor and management fascinating, to the point where I really wanted to be a part of it. I took on the role as Secretary/Treasurer at our local council at Midway Airport, became the Communications Officer and even sat in on a few of the eye-opening contract bargaining sessions. We never had a strike at Midway Airlines, but we did have a couple of close calls, and those incidents demonstrated to me why, to this day, the aviation industry remains one of the most unionized industries in America.
Many of you under 40 probably have a strong distaste in your mouth when anyone even mentions the word unions these days. Well, we have a generation of Republican control of our American Congress to thank for that, good or bad. That’s just the way it worked out. Now that’s not, of course, to say that unions haven’t shot themselves in the foot many times. They’ve been slow to change with the times. In fact, so slow that American companies have sent hundreds of thousands of jobs abroad. Look at the US auto industry. It all comes down to money. Most of the time.
Workers tend to be on the front lines of wage and job cuts. I mean, just look at the pension issues, at United and Delta Air Lines. Those pilots worked their careers expecting to have a nest egg to live on, and management at both airlines pushed the responsibility for those pensions on the American taxpayer.
Look at the people at United Airlines for a minute. They watched management stuff their employee stock ownership plans into the toilet. They took huge salaries, benefits, and job cuts since 9/11. There were those pension shuffles I just mentioned to the employees. It’s all about cuts when times are bad, but none of it ever seems to come back to them when times are good. You know what? I’d be angry at management, too, which is part of the reason unions still exert considerable control over the airline industry, much to the chagrin of airline managers.
So will the labor movement ever return to those glory days when 10s of millions were proud members? I know it sounds crazy right now, but people were actually proud to show their union card to other people. In fact, if you came to our office here in Chicago, I still have one of my original ALPA cards hanging on the wall. Now, I honestly vacillate between loving and hating unions, perhaps because I try to be open-minded enough to consider the situations before I condemn or support either side. In the end, though, I hope you’ll leave today realizing that, to me, at least, unions are not the problem, nor are they the only problem.
Unions were created to bring balance to the workplace, a concept that many young people are unfamiliar with today. Let me leave you with this thought, though: if your boss told you that you would be working 12-hour days, Saturdays, and Sundays, possibly even through your vacation, would you even think to question their authority or their right to impose whatever work rules they want? Of course not, but in a time gone by, people didn’t simply turn the other cheek and take it; they pushed back.
How many of you working today would even think of that? Yeah, I thought so. But realize simply pushing back against the authoritarianism of an employer is not illegal. It’s your right, but you have to believe it is. Look at the world around you, ask yourself, why there seem to be so many bullies in the workplace, those bosses that we all complain about but never seem to be able to shake.
Part of the reason they exist is that no one stands up to them. Everyone fears for their job or their next promotion or their next raise, and that fear of reprisal, that’s just where management wants you. For the Airplane Geeks, I’m Rob Mark.
PS – Because this story was first written in 2010, a few of the references might appear a bit outdated today.
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</item>
<item>
<title>Highlights of the NTSB’s DCA Hearings</title>
<link>https://jetwhine.com/2025/08/highlights-of-the-ntsbs-dca-hearings/</link>
<comments>https://jetwhine.com/2025/08/highlights-of-the-ntsbs-dca-hearings/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Mark]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Mon, 11 Aug 2025 13:00:17 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Air Traffic Control]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Aviation Education]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[aviation safety]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[FAA]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[The Buzz]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://jetwhine.com/?p=11747</guid>
<description><![CDATA[It’s understandable that even the geekiest of airplane geeks didn’t have enough time in their week to listen to the more than 30 hours of testimony created when the NTSB began its recent public investigation of the events surrounding the January midair collision near the approach end of Runway 33 at Washington, DC’s Ronald Reagan […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure id="attachment_11771" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-11771" style="width: 180px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-11771" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/NTSB-Hearing-pic-150x150.jpg" alt="NTSB Hearing Room Jetwhine.com" width="180" height="180" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-11771" class="wp-caption-text">NTSB Hearing Room</figcaption></figure>
It’s understandable that even the geekiest of airplane geeks didn’t have enough time in their week to listen to the more than 30 hours of testimony created when the <a href="http://www.ntsb.gov">NTSB</a> began its recent public investigation of the events surrounding the January midair collision near the approach end of Runway 33 at Washington, DC’s Ronald Reagan National Airport (DCA).
<a href="http://www.ntsbnewstalk.com">NTSB News Talk</a> has made learning the essential details easier by condensing all three days into three separate episodes, totaling slightly less than five hours. You’ll find the links at the bottom of this story.
While five hours is still quite a bit of time, we think you’ll find it time well spent listening and learning not only about the threats that existed at National Airport on and before January 29, but also how the NTSB approached the interview process in its search for recommendations to help prevent another similar tragedy
_____________________________________________________________
There was an air of sadness that hung over the hearings, certainly, for the 67 lives that were snatched away that night, but also by the sense of inevitability many witnesses expressed. Some said they knew a collision was going to happen sooner or later.
Shortly after the collision, DOT Secretary Sean Duffy closed helicopter routes over the Potomac that brought them anywhere close to landing aircraft. The testimony spoke primarily to the failures of the FAA and the US Army to address safety threats that some witnesses had previously warned about.
Here are a few, but not all, of the topics that stood out …
<ul>
<li>The FAA took no action when users suggested that the proximity of the helicopter routes to fixed-wing aircraft demanded that Army helicopters be given alternate routes away from aircraft. The accident occurred when both aircraft were just 278 feet above the ground.</li>
<li>DCA tower controllers said FAA management regularly expected them to handle an increasing number of airliners. Numbers that at times exceeded their capabilities. There was, however, no actionable response from the FAA to those calls for additional resources.</li>
<li>Over the past decade, FAA air traffic managers at DCA were changed out about once a year on average, creating a void in continuity with other management staff.</li>
<li>NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said the controller working the local control position on the night of the accident admitted that prior to the collision, they were starting to feel overwhelmed. A pilot the investigators spoke to said while listening on the tower frequency that night, the controller seemed “exceptionally busy” and that they were “not instilling a lot of confidence.”</li>
<li>There were known inaccuracies in many of the 12th Battalion’s Blackhawk altimeters. Normally, not a huge concern under VFR conditions, but in the DC area they represented an accident waiting to happen when separation was regularly measured in just 10s of feet.</li>
<li>The Blackhawk’s ADS-B system was not operational on the night of the accident. A post-accident inspection discovered that none of the 12th’s helicopters had a working ADS-B.</li>
<li>Blackhawk pilots regularly flew missions wearing Night Vision Goggles. No one is quite clear about whether those view-limiting devices added to the helicopter pilots’ confusion that night, only that they may have.</li>
<li>Local helicopter pilots admitted that when approaching DCA along the Potomac from the north, fixed-wing traffic circling to runway 33 could be difficult to pinpoint. No one knows which aircraft the accident helicopter crew was focused on when they called “Traffic in Sight.”</li>
</ul>
Let us know what you think.
Rob Mark
<figure id="attachment_11751" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-11751" style="width: 150px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="https://player.captivate.fm/episode/6760497c-af50-4c08-9f81-d74a843be455"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-11751 size-thumbnail" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Day-1-150x150.jpg" alt="NTSB News Talk Day 1" width="150" height="150" srcset="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Day-1-150x150.jpg 150w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Day-1-300x300.jpg 300w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Day-1-1024x1020.jpg 1024w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Day-1-768x765.jpg 768w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Day-1.jpg 1520w" sizes="(max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px" /></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-11751" class="wp-caption-text"><a href="https://www.podpage.com/network/aviation-podcast-network/show/ntsb-news-talk/reagan-national-midair-ntsb-hearing-day-1-army-black-hawk-regional-jet-crash-testimony/">NTSB News Talk Day 1</a></figcaption></figure>
<figure id="attachment_11752" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-11752" style="width: 150px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-11752 size-thumbnail" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Day-2-150x150.jpg" alt="NTSB News Talk Day 2" width="150" height="150" srcset="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Day-2-150x150.jpg 150w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Day-2-300x300.jpg 300w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Day-2-1024x1020.jpg 1024w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Day-2-768x765.jpg 768w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Day-2.jpg 1520w" sizes="(max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-11752" class="wp-caption-text"><a href="https://www.podpage.com/network/aviation-podcast-network/show/ntsb-news-talk/reagan-national-midair-ntsb-hearing-day-2-army-black-hawk-crj-700-testimony/">NTSB News Talk Day 2</a></figcaption></figure>
<figure id="attachment_11753" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-11753" style="width: 150px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-11753 size-thumbnail" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Day-3-150x150.jpg" alt="NTSB News Talk Day 3" width="150" height="150" srcset="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Day-3-150x150.jpg 150w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Day-3-298x300.jpg 298w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Day-3-1017x1024.jpg 1017w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Day-3-768x773.jpg 768w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Day-3.jpg 1512w" sizes="(max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-11753" class="wp-caption-text"><a href="https://www.podpage.com/network/aviation-podcast-network/show/ntsb-news-talk/reagan-national-midair-ntsb-hearing-day-3-collision-avoidance-safety-culture/">NTSB News Talk Day 3</a></figcaption></figure>
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<title>Flying Demands Keeping Your Head in the Game</title>
<link>https://jetwhine.com/2025/08/flying-safely-demands-getting-your-head-in-the-game/</link>
<comments>https://jetwhine.com/2025/08/flying-safely-demands-getting-your-head-in-the-game/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Mark]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Wed, 06 Aug 2025 13:18:15 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[aircraft accident]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Aviation Education]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[aviation safety]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Blogging]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[general aviation]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[The Buzz]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://jetwhine.com/?p=11714</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Pilots get rusty when they don’t fly often. No matter whether they hold a private pilot certificate or an ATP. Even a professional pilot with thousands of hours in their logbook can easily find themselves behind the power curve in an airplane. Staying current keeps you legal with the feds, but being proficient is what […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[Pilots get rusty when they don’t fly often. No matter whether they hold a private pilot certificate or an ATP. Even a professional pilot with thousands of hours in their logbook can easily find themselves behind the power curve in an airplane. Staying current keeps you legal with the feds, but being proficient is what will keep you out of serious trouble when you’re actually flying the airplane.
After my two-hour flight that Monday afternoon, I walked away realizing I’d given new meaning to the phrase lack of proficiency. I couldn’t remember a time when I’ve performed as poorly as I did that day. Frankly, it was embarrassing.
With 50+ years of flying and as a CFI behind me, I’ve taken and given enough instruction to know that even when it’s “just” an aircraft checkout with a new instructor, every pilot comes face-to-face with a little performance anxiety. But it wasn’t until the day after my 182 flight that I realized how deeply a pilot’s state-of-mind can affect their performance. I’ve been teaching pilots about the benefits of using risk management tools like – IMSAFE and P-A-V-E – long enough that I easily calculated my score and knew I was fine before I left home.
Hence, this story … about the importance of slipping into complacency when a pilot like me ignores what’s really going on inside his head long before heading to the airport.
<figure id="attachment_11718" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-11718" style="width: 150px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-11718 size-thumbnail" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Cessna-182-150x150.jpg" alt="Cessna 182 - Jetwhine.com" width="150" height="150" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-11718" class="wp-caption-text">Cessna 182 – Jetwhine.com</figcaption></figure>
For Starters
I didn’t sleep well the night before the flight because my wife is seriously ill and awakening a few times before dawn contributes to the fogginess we know as fatigue. Fatigue alone is high on the risk factor list, but honestly, I ignored it before the flight because, well, I just wanted to fly. I quickly fell into the trap that anyone with high time, multiple type ratings, and instructor certificates, might. “Yeah I’m a little tired, but it’s just an aircraft checkout.”
It got worse.
The 182 was G1000 equipped. I had flown the G1000 on X-Plane, so I felt good about the buttonology. Maybe I was a little slow, but nothing to worry about.
Next there was my body itself. Oh, I’m healthy enough to pass my medical, but over my life I’ve had a couple of surgeries on my back and neck. Over those decades, my spine has crunched its vertebrae together enough that I’ve lost a couple of inches of height, all between my waist and the tippy top of my curly head. What I realized that afternoon was that with the seat cranked up all the way, and even with a pillow under my butt, my visibility over the panel was still limited. Making matters worse is the panel on the 182 sits a couple of inches higher than that of a 172. I didn’t have time to find anything else to sit on, so I figured I’d just need to work a little harder.
Now I should have said enough right then, but the airplane was ready, and the instructor was already sitting next to me. So, strike two and three for me before we even reached he runway.
The weather outside was hot. Not blazing, but hot enough that opening the windows on the ground barely flooded the cabin with enough cooling air so to me, it was stuffy. “Ah stop complaining,” I told myself. “Just go fly the dammed airplane.” I didn’t think of this as a strike, of course, but more of a foul ball. My takeoff was sloppy too … I hadn’t expected that.
After takeoff, I could tell the haze was a little thicker than I’d expected. Not terrible, but enough to create a fuzzy horizon and a vis of 6 or 7 miles. That made the airwork a tad more challenging for me as I stretched to see over the panel. “Ahhhh … it’s not that bad.” Of course, flying toward the afternoon sun meant the glare inside made seeing anything on the panel and other parts of the cockpit tough. But I continued.
Departing the Pattern
<figure id="attachment_11740" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-11740" style="width: 150px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-11740 size-thumbnail" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/A380-150x150.jpg" alt="Airbus A380 - Jetwhine.com" width="150" height="150" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-11740" class="wp-caption-text">Airbus A380 – Jetwhine.com</figcaption></figure>
During the climb and even the initial straight and level flight, I knew I was fighting the airplane to maintain a constant altitude. “Of course it wasn’t me.” I like hand-flying airplanes, I always have. When I had the opportunity to command the left seat of the giant A380 at Toulouse some years ago, I surprised the check pilot when I told him I wanted to hand-fly the big bird to get the feel for the airplane.
This 182 was no different. But no matter how busy my thumb was flicking that electric trim, the nose just would not sit still. After a few minutes, the instructor asked me to run the electric trim forward and back a few times while he watched the manual trim wheel for movement. He said he saw nothing. So, all this time, while I was fighting the airplane and thinking I was adjusting the trim to compensate, the trim was not even moving. That was beyond frustrating, of course, but more so because I hadn’t figured it out on my own. One more distraction.
My steep turns were OK, but a little tougher because I fumbled trying to find the manual trim wheel made harder due to the glare. The stalls were … ah, passable, I’d say.
Then we headed to a local airport for a few landings and takeoffs. Of course, I hadn’t studied the profiles of specific speeds and power settings ahead of time because “C’mon, it’s just another Cessna.” I was pretty slow establishing a stable approach. I made a couple where I ended up pulling the throttle to idle a half mile out because I was too high. Then I’d shove the power in as I prepared for the flare. I forgot to add the touch of nose up trim the 182 likes before the power goes to idle. With those barn-door flaps, pulling the power back makes the nose pitch down, just when you don’t want that to happen.
Not having a good sight picture over the panel came back to haunt me again during the flare because I couldn’t clearly pick out that sweet spot at the far end of the runway I needed for guidance. The result is I kind of pranged it in. “Sh”x”T” was all I said.
I’m Done
There were a few more screw ups that afternoon. And the more I made, the madder at myself I grew. Fatigue and lack of proficiency can do that. When the instructor suggested a few more takeoffs and landings, I finally said what I should have said hours earlier. “Nah. I’m done. Let’s just go home.”
My final approach to home plate was no better than the others. I saw the white lights on the PAPIs, but my brain just didn’t seem to be sending the message to my hands. We ended up high again. Not a terrible landing, but not impressive either.
But we were home, and I had plenty to think about. And I did … all the rest of that day and even in the middle of that night. “What the Hell was wrong with me? I’ve flown much better than that all my life. Today I barely performed at the private pilot. Maybe it really was time to think about hanging it all up.”
<figure id="attachment_11721" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-11721" style="width: 150px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-11721 size-thumbnail" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/NTSB-News-Talk-logo-1-150x150.jpg" alt="NTSB News Talk - Jetwhine.com" width="150" height="150" srcset="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/NTSB-News-Talk-logo-1-150x150.jpg 150w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/NTSB-News-Talk-logo-1-300x300.jpg 300w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/NTSB-News-Talk-logo-1.jpg 360w" sizes="(max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-11721" class="wp-caption-text">NTSB News Talk – Jetwhine.com</figcaption></figure>
The next morning, I began reviewing accident reports to prepare for a new <a href="http://www.ntsbnewstalk.com">NTSB News Talk</a> episode. The unfortunate ones made me think … “How could that pilot have been so distracted that they pranged the airplane?”
That’s when it hit me. One of those reports could have been talking about me flying the day before because I missed every single warning light flashing in my head … fatigue, anxiety about my wife, the poor cockpit visibility, the haze, not knowing the maneuver profiles and a few more I don’t want to mention again.
How many of the pilots I’d been reading about missed their warning signs because they let their egos get in the way? I thought of a few friends I’ve lost in the past few years, guys I thought were good pilots, guys who’d made simple mistakes like stalls and spins on short final. That could have been me.
Like George Baily in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_a_Wonderful_Life">“It’s a Wonderful Life,”</a> I realized I’d been granted an opportunity to experience my distractions head on and learn from those mistakes without losing my life.
Folks. Believe me when I say that what’s going on in your head before you arrive at the airport doesn’t just disappear during preflight.
Thank goodness, even an old dog can learn some new tricks. Please learn from my mistakes.
Rob Mark
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<title>NTSB News Talk is On the Air</title>
<link>https://jetwhine.com/2025/07/ntsb-news-talk-is-on-the-air/</link>
<comments>https://jetwhine.com/2025/07/ntsb-news-talk-is-on-the-air/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Mark]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 29 Jul 2025 19:36:29 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Jetwhine Podcast]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Safety]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[The Buzz]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Airplane Geeks podcast]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Aviation News Talk]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Aviation podcast]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[EAA Radio]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[jetwhine]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Max Trescott]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[NTSB News Talk]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Rob Mark]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://jetwhine.com/?p=11722</guid>
<description><![CDATA[A few months ago, my buddy Max Trescott and I realized we were speaking to each other three or four times a week about recent aircraft accidents. We’ve both been flying for more than 50 years and have both hold multiple CFI ratings nearly that long as well. We’re also both terminally curious about nearly […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure id="attachment_11721" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-11721" style="width: 150px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-11721 size-thumbnail" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/NTSB-News-Talk-logo-1-150x150.jpg" alt="NTSB News Talk logo" width="150" height="150" srcset="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/NTSB-News-Talk-logo-1-150x150.jpg 150w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/NTSB-News-Talk-logo-1-300x300.jpg 300w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/NTSB-News-Talk-logo-1.jpg 360w" sizes="(max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-11721" class="wp-caption-text">NTSB News Talk logo</figcaption></figure>
A few months ago, my buddy Max Trescott and I realized we were speaking to each other three or four times a week about recent aircraft accidents. We’ve both been flying for more than 50 years and have both hold multiple CFI ratings nearly that long as well. We’re also both terminally curious about nearly everything and everyone who flies, which is probably why Max recently added rotorcraft ratings to his certificate.
Anyway, when we’d talk, we were always wondering why or how the pilot in question could have blundered into IFR weather when they don’t possess an instrument rating. Or why the pilot of a multi-engine aircraft let the aircraft slow below Vmc after losing an engine after takeoff. Or why they failed at something that seemed as simple as radio calls in the traffic pattern at a non-controlled airport were skipped. No matter the reason, the outcomes are unfortunately usually the same: Loss of control in flight, impact with the Earth and the loss of more lives.
We’d always wonder about the reasons for a crash of course, but more importantly whether there might be insights we might uncover from the available evidence, facts we’d want to share with our flying friends or students to prevent them from becoming a statistic. That’s when we landed on the idea of starting the NTSB News Talk show to talk about recent accidents and other stories related to aviation safety. Of course the disclaimer … we’re not affiliated with the NTSB, nor are we attempting to solve the case before the folks in Washington. We’re just a couple of guys trying to use their decades of expertise to be of some value to listeners as we impress upon them that any of these accidents might have included them, or us for that matter.
<figure style="width: 250px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f9/A_Boeing_B-52H_Stratofortress_in_flight_over_the_Persian_Gulf_%28190521-F-XN348-9173%29.jpg/250px-A_Boeing_B-52H_Stratofortress_in_flight_over_the_Persian_Gulf_%28190521-F-XN348-9173%29.jpg" alt="Boeing B-52" width="250" height="148" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Boeing B-52</figcaption></figure>
That said, I give you <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/ntsb-delta-b-52-close-call-and-runway-incursion-at/id1814231526?i=1000719533513">episode #6 of NTSB News Talk</a> where Max and I dissected incidents like the really close calls between a regional jet and a B-52 over Minot, ND or the one in Mexico City where it appears an AeroMexico regional aircraft almost landed on top of a Delta Airbus just starting its takeoff roll on the same runway. Other stories include a Dassault Falcon 10 overrun accident at Panama City, Florida and a the unfortunate story of what happened to the AOPA’s Husky on the way to this year’s AirVenture.
And just because I know neither of us has all the answers, I recall a story in which I recently took some refresher training in a Cessna 182 and seemed to have completely forgotten some of the safety training I’d learned in my many years in the cockpit. The story is about more than just having a bad day aloft though, it’s about what happens when we don’t listen to those little voices in our head that try to warn us all is not right … those voices that we often criticize others for not paying attention to.
It proved again that we’re all human, I guess.
So please do give <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/ntsb-delta-b-52-close-call-and-runway-incursion-at/id1814231526?i=1000719533513">episode #6</a> a listen. If you enjoy what you hear, you can subscribe through the Apple Podcast platform or wherever you find your favorite shows. We’d appreciate you sharing the show with your flying friends too. And of course, we always welcome your feedback.
Thanks for reading and listening
Rob Mark
<img alt="" loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-11726" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Behind-the-mic-at-EAA-Radio-150x150.jpg" alt="" width="150" height="150" />PS – for those who aren’t familiar with either of us, Max and I are both alums of the <a href="http://www.airplanegeeks.com">Airplane Geeks</a> podcast. Max has also been successfully producing the <a href="http://www.aviationnewstalk.com">Aviation News Talk</a> show, while I’ve been continuously producing my blog <a href="http://www.jetwhine.com">Jetwhine</a> right here for 19 years and until recently co-hosted the Attitude Adjustment show each summer on EAA Radio. My detailed <a href="https://jetwhine.com/about-us/">bio is available here</a>.
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<title>The Mystery Deepens Around Air India 171</title>
<link>https://jetwhine.com/2025/07/the-mystery-deepens-around-air-india-171-crash/</link>
<comments>https://jetwhine.com/2025/07/the-mystery-deepens-around-air-india-171-crash/#comments</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Mark]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Mon, 14 Jul 2025 22:25:22 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[The Buzz]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Ahmedabad]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Air India 171]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Boeing 787-8]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[jetwhine]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin (SAIB) No. NM-18-33]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://jetwhine.com/?p=11683</guid>
<description><![CDATA[A single never-changing question follows every aircraft accident … “What happened?” Most expected the recently published preliminary report by India’s Ministry of Civil Aviation, Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau of last month’s Air India 787 8 crash at Ahmedabad would shed a bit of light on what brought down the Boeing.However, the 15-page report seems to […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[A single never-changing question follows every aircraft accident … “What happened?”
Most expected the recently published <a href="https://aaib.gov.in/What's%20New%20Assets/Preliminary%20Report%20VT-ANB.pdf">preliminary report by India’s Ministry of Civil Aviation, Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau</a> of last month’s Air India 787 8 crash at Ahmedabad would shed a bit of light on what brought down the Boeing.However, the 15-page report seems to have created more questions than it answered.
<figure id="attachment_11686" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-11686" style="width: 168px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-11686" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Air-India-Boeing-787-150x150.jpg" alt="Air India Boeing 787" width="168" height="168" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-11686" class="wp-caption-text">An Air India Boeing 787</figcaption></figure>
That’s because of a short piece of text on page 13 reads, “The aircraft achieved the maximum recorded airspeed of 180 Knots IAS at about 08:08:42 UTC, and immediately thereafter, the Engine 1 and Engine 2 fuel cutoff switches transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one after another with a time gap of 01 sec. The Engine N1 and N2 began to decrease from their take-off values as the fuel supply to the engines was cut off. When fuel control switches are moved from CUTOFF to RUN while the aircraft is inflight, each engines full authority dual engine control (FADEC) automatically manages a relight and thrust recovery sequence of ignition and fuel introduction. The EGT was observed to be rising for both engines indicating relight. Engine 1’s core deceleration stopped, reversed and started to progress to recovery. Engine 2 was able to relight but could not arrest core speed deceleration and re-introduced fuel repeatedly to increase core speed acceleration and recovery.
A few seconds later one of the pilots transmitted, “MAYDAY MAYDAY.
That made the primary question not what, but why.
Leading up to that paragraph, the report offered several indisputable facts.
The aircraft was found to be airworthy at takeoff. The weather was good VFR that afternoon, although the temp was 37C, nearly 100 degrees F. Ahmedabad sits nearly at sea level but density altitude that day would have been very high with aircraft performance reduced due to the high density altitude. Despite the post-crash fire that consumed much of the aircraft, the throttle quadrant showed details that will be critical to the investigation. In this photo, the fuel shutoffs are the black switches immediately beneath the two white throttle knobs. The fuel switches were found in the normal, or “Run” position during the investigation. Contrary to some earlier speculation, the flaps were found set for takeoff in the normal 5 degree detent. The thrust reversers – the smaller white knobs above the throttles were found in the normal, or stowed position.
The landing gear switch was set to the “Down and Locked” position emphasizing how quickly the engine issues appeared. During a normal takeoff, the non-flying pilot (NFP) will call “Positive Rate,” as soon as the aircraft is confirmed to be climbing. The normal response from the flying pilot is “Gear Up.”
The crew included the captain with more than 15,600 hours & nearly 8,600 on type while the first officer had logged 3400 hours of time with 1128 on the 787. Both pilots were well rested.
<h4>The Fuel Control Switches</h4>
<figure id="attachment_11698" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-11698" style="width: 197px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-11698 " src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/787-throttle-1-150x150.jpg" alt="Boeing 787 Throttle with Fuel Cutoff Switches highlighted" width="197" height="197" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-11698" class="wp-caption-text">Boeing 787 Throttle with Fuel Cutoff Switches highlighted</figcaption></figure>
Early on the preliminary report mentioned an interesting Boeing service bulletin related to the aircraft’s fuel switches. “The FAA issued Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin (SAIB) No. NM-18-33 on December 17, 2018, regarding the potential disengagement of the fuel control switch locking feature. This SAIB was issued based on reports from operators of Model 737 airplanes that the fuel control switches were installed with the locking feature disengaged. The airworthiness concern was not considered an unsafe condition that would warrant airworthiness directive (AD) by the FAA. The fuel control switch design, including the locking feature, is similar on various Boeing airplane models including part number 4TL837-3D which is fitted in B787-8 aircraft VT-ANB. As per the information from Air India, the suggested inspections were not carried out as the SAIB was advisory and not mandatory. The scrutiny of maintenance records revealed that the throttle control module was replaced on VT-ANB in 2019 and 2023. However, the reason for the replacement was not linked to the fuel control switch. There has been no defect reported pertaining to the fuel control switch since 2023 on VT-ANB.” The report then proceeded to discuss damage to the aircraft and buildings on the ground.
The Boeing’s CVR recorded conversation between the two pilots including one in which one asked the other why he’d cut off the fuel. The other pilot replied he didn’t do any such thing. CCTV footage obtained from the airport showed Ram Air Turbine (RAT) getting deployed during the initial climb immediately after lift-off. A Boeing 787 captain I interviewed explained the RAT doesn’t actually deploy because of a dual engine failure. He said the RAT deploys, “If three or more engine-driven generators fail.
There’s an implication the switches could be related to the accident, but nothing else was specifically mentioned, until the switches mysteriously moved to cutoff. A Boeing 787 captain I interviewed explained the cutoff switches are normally locked in place. To move either from “Run” to “Cutoff” requires one of the pilots to physically pull the switch out of the gate and lower it to “Cutoff,” a procedure he said would be nearly impossible to initiate accidentally. Also, consider the speed at which this action would have had to occur. Just as the nose of the aircraft is rising during rotation, one of the pilots would have needed to look down below the throttles and perform the above sequence, not once, but twice. If the reason for this action was suicidal as some pilots have claimed, then why quickly switch them back to run?
On Monday Reuters reported the FAA and Boeing have privately issued notifications that the fuel switch locks on Boeing planes are safe. When asked for comment, the FAA said it did not have anything to add beyond the notification.
To be clear, the information included in the preliminary report is not solely from the Indian Air Accident Investigation Bureau. The report’s creation was overseen by India’s Sanjay Kumar Singh, Investigator-in-Charge and, Mr. Jasbir Singh Larhga as Chief Investigator. Another team led by the NTSB Accredited Representative comprised of representatives from Boeing, GE and FAA participated in the investigation as well as officials from the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB), UK. Additionally, experienced pilots, engineers, Aviation Medicine Specialists, an Aviation Psychologist and Flight Recorder Specialists have been taken on board as Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to assist the Investigation. All they had to work with were facts uncovered during their initial dissection of the Boeing’s remains.
The answers to these and other questions will be only be found in the final report on Air India 171 which is expected to demand 12-18 months to complete.
Rob Mark
 
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<title>My Date With a Citation CJ4</title>
<link>https://jetwhine.com/2025/06/my-date-with-a-citation-cj4/</link>
<comments>https://jetwhine.com/2025/06/my-date-with-a-citation-cj4/#comments</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Mark]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Wed, 18 Jun 2025 16:25:24 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[The Buzz]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Business Aviation History]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Cessna Citation CJ4]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[jetwhine]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://jetwhine.com/?p=11658</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Although this date is a bit-ah, well, dated – I remember the pre-flight walk around like it was yesterday. She had the clean, sleek lines of a speed demon. It was to be love at first flight. _____________________________ When it comes to buying an airplane–any airplane–manufacturers and their salespeople can talk utility and value until […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[Although this date is a bit-ah, well, dated – I remember the pre-flight walk around like it was yesterday. She had the clean, sleek lines of a speed demon. It was to be love at first flight.
_____________________________
<img alt="CJ4" loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-11672" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/CJ4-1-150x150.jpg" alt="" width="150" height="150" />When it comes to buying an airplane–any airplane–manufacturers and their salespeople can talk utility and value until the cows come home. But people buy airplanes–and learn to fly–because they want to move from one place to another fast…the faster, the better. Combining speed with comfort is often a challenge, though, especially in the light-jet arena.
Cessna demo pilot John Reimer wanted to wow me as I put the new CJ4 I was flying through its paces. “Line up on the centerline, hold the brakes and run the throttles of the two [Fadec-controlled] Williams engines right to the stops,” he suggested. “Then release the brakes.” A few seconds later as I released the brakes, it all made sense. I was immediately pressed back into my seat as the CJ4 shot down the runway, as if on a catapult. Of course, the airplane was light with four people and just under 3,500 pounds of fuel and an outside temperature of 24 degrees C. Rate of climb easily topped 3,000 fpm for the moment or two I caught a glimpse of the VSI. I had to yank back on the power quickly to not blow through Wichita’s 2,600-foot pattern altitude. Amazing what an extra 1,600 pounds of thrust on those upgraded Williams FJ44-4As can deliver.
Not Just a New CJ3
When I first learned Cessna was planning the CJ4, like many others I envisioned a slightly roomier, slightly faster, longer-legged CJ3. The CJ4 goes way beyond that. Without giving away too much of the ending up front, the Cessna book numbers are well researched and tested figures that allowed me to have quite a bit of confidence in the other numbers I saw.
<a href="https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/business-aviation/2011-05-31/pilot-report-cessna-citation-cj4">Read More</a>
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<title>The Adventures of the Lucky Flying Hat</title>
<link>https://jetwhine.com/2025/06/the-adventures-of-the-lucky-flying-hat/</link>
<comments>https://jetwhine.com/2025/06/the-adventures-of-the-lucky-flying-hat/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Mark]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Mon, 02 Jun 2025 13:00:39 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[The Buzz]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Bob Brandt]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Cessna 180]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[flying taildraggers]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Los Angeles Basin]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[McFarlane Aviation]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://jetwhine.com/?p=11639</guid>
<description><![CDATA[by Cappy McHat My first memory was being taken out of a big box with a lot of my friends after we had all been stitched with McFarlane emblems on our fronts. I learned as the days went on that McFarlane is a famous provider of almost anything great for airplanes and has a great […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[by Cappy McHat
<div>
<div>
<img alt="Cappy McHat" loading="lazy" decoding="async" class=" wp-image-11645" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Cappy-McHat-300x138.jpg" alt="" width="424" height="195" srcset="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Cappy-McHat-300x138.jpg 300w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Cappy-McHat-1024x472.jpg 1024w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Cappy-McHat-768x354.jpg 768w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Cappy-McHat-1536x709.jpg 1536w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Cappy-McHat-2048x945.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 424px) 100vw, 424px" />
My first memory was being taken out of a big box with a lot of my friends after we had all been stitched with <a href="https://www.mcfarlaneaviation.com/?">McFarlane</a> emblems on our fronts. I learned as the days went on that McFarlane is a famous provider of almost anything great for airplanes and has a great reputation for building things better for less money. Before too long we were all being unloaded in the booth at a place called Oshkosh before the big AirVenture flying show and airplane-fanatic gathering with 10,000 nice airplanes. It was amazing to see all the people coming and going at our booth. Before long a guy named Bob was explaining how he just bought all new McFarlane control cables and fuel parts and wondered if he could get a free hat. I was chosen to be his new hat. I walked around the show with Bob that year seeing all kinds of amazing airplane things.
</div>
<div>Bob was restoring his Dad’s 1954 Cessna 180, that his Dad and Mom flew around the country on their honeymoon in 1956. They even landed on a street near Los Angeles Airport due to fog. Bob decided the way to get the best flying lessons in a Cessna 180 was from an experienced former airline pilot that coincidentally lived near Los Angeles. We hopped on a jet and flew out there and received 25 hours of training in the instructor’s Cessna 180 together. I don’t really know how Bob and I did the flying so well, although there were a few times where I almost jumped off of his head. It was extremely windy with the Santa Ana winds blowing at some of the 23 airports we went to in the Los Angeles basin and up in the mountains. Somehow the fear is the back of the plane wanting to go first and swap ends or at least that was what Bob and I had been told about those notorious tail wheel airplanes. The old-time instructor would always step in to save the day if things got squirrely. He said it was all because he had his lucky flying hat watching out for him. His cap – me of course – learned quite a bit on that trip. I know he is only human, but I wish Bob had paid better attention during all those lessons. After that trip Bob decided I should be promoted to become his Lucky Flying Hat! I was so proud to be called to that important duty.</div>
<div></div>
<div dir="ltr">Bob and I have been through a lot together since. I flew Bob and his wife Susan on some fun, folding bike riding, camping and some Great Lakes Island airport adventures. He goes flying for lunches a lot and probably could drop a few pounds, but I don’t tell him that. He says more adventures will come when he retires from selling airpark houses and other homes. I have worked hard to keep him on the runway and not off in the weeds. He has done pretty well for the most part. He still hasn’t perfected all of his landings though, even though it’s been about 800 hours and 22 years since he took those initial taildragger Cessna lessons with me on top. Fortunately, we both like practicing landings and we do pretty good with our exciting super short landings. His and my job is still a work in progress, I guess. Maybe in another 22 years he’ll finally nail those crosswind landings if we’re lucky.</div>
<div dir="ltr"></div>
<div>Lately I’ve noticed the edges of my front and sides are getting really frayed. I think Bob has aged a bit too. We don’t talk about that much, but I noticed he leaves me in the airplane now and takes a handsome new hat when he goes into an Airport Restaurant. He has started carrying this hat around and introduced this new guy to me as his backup lucky flying hat. It is a Recreational Aircraft Foundation hat with fancy venting and nice fabric. We have actually become good friends and share stories with the yellow airplane, Bob’s Mom’s lucky flying rosary and Bob’s Dad’s miniature funeral flag, while we’re all parked in the hangar waiting for our next flight. I’m confident that when my time comes to retire, Bob will be in good hands. In the meantime, we’ll all try to keep the greasy side down and not bounce too high on our landings. </div>
<div></div>
<div dir="ltr">It has been a pleasure flying with you, Bob. Thanks for the memories!</div>
<div> </div>
<div>
<div id="m_-4309687830127677050ydp4e6302bbyiv4160836273ydp38be1a8byiv9563555978ydpccef5846yiv9755746444ydpe782d1aeyiv0602403405ymail_android_signature">Bob Brandt</div>
</div>
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<title>When a CEO Becomes the Brand</title>
<link>https://jetwhine.com/2025/05/when-a-ceo-becomes-the-brand/</link>
<comments>https://jetwhine.com/2025/05/when-a-ceo-becomes-the-brand/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Paula Williams]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Wed, 21 May 2025 13:33:13 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[The Buzz]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Aviation leadership]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[CEO Visibility]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Ed Bastian]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[jetwhine.com]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Kenn Ricci]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Oscar Munoz]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://jetwhine.com/?p=11601</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Case Studies in Aviation Leadership Visibility By Paula Williams In aviation, where trust, precision, and safety are the currencies of credibility, the visibility of a company’s leadership is more than just a PR play — it’s a brand asset. Or it could be a liability. At a time when customers, regulators, and employees are increasingly […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h3>Case Studies in Aviation Leadership Visibility</h3>
By Paula Williams
In aviation, where trust, precision, and safety are the currencies of credibility, the visibility of a company’s leadership is more than just a PR play — it’s a brand asset. Or it could be a liability.
At a time when customers, regulators, and employees are increasingly skeptical of corporate communications, an aviation CEO’s personal brand can either amplify a company’s values or reveal its weaknesses. Some leaders understand this responsibility and actively cultivate it. In contrast, others disappear behind layers of legal and marketing teams, leaving their companies adrift during moments that demand a human voice.
Let’s explore how strong or absent leadership visibility has shaped the brand value of airlines, business aviation, and aviation services companies recently and the lessons that emerged.
 
The Power of Presence
Ed Bastian – Delta Air Lines<img alt="Ed Bastian" loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-11611" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Ed-Bastian-300x300.png" alt="" width="175" height="175" srcset="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Ed-Bastian-300x300.png 300w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Ed-Bastian-150x150.png 150w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Ed-Bastian-768x768.png 768w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Ed-Bastian.png 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 175px) 100vw, 175px" />
When COVID-19 battered the airline industry, Delta CEO Ed Bastian stepped into a difficult spotlight. Instead of issuing sterile press releases, Bastian became a consistent, reassuring voice for passengers and employees alike.
He appeared frequently in internal videos, open letters, interviews, and social media, emphasizing Delta’s commitment to safety protocols, customer flexibility, and financial recovery.
Bastian’s presence wasn’t just reactive — it was strategic. His personal credibility strengthened Delta’s reputation for service and reliability at a time when trust in travel was near historic lows.
Lesson: In a crisis, a CEO’s steady, personal communication can bridge trust gaps faster than any marketing campaign.
 
<img alt="Ken Ricci" loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft wp-image-11610" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Ken-Ricci-300x300.png" alt="" width="181" height="181" srcset="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Ken-Ricci-300x300.png 300w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Ken-Ricci-150x150.png 150w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Ken-Ricci-768x768.png 768w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Ken-Ricci.png 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 181px) 100vw, 181px" />Kenn Ricci – Directional Aviation
In business aviation, Kenn Ricci, principal of Directional Aviation (parent of Flexjet and Sentient Jet), has long understood that leadership visibility builds brand authority.
Ricci isn’t just a financier behind the scenes; he’s often seen speaking at industry events, contributing articles, and providing commentary on topics like private aviation growth and workforce development. His active role showcases a broader industry vision, helping Directional’s brands feel anchored in innovation and leadership, not just service delivery.
Lesson: A visible, visionary leader in business aviation reinforces a company’s position as a category thought leader.
 
Silence Speaks
Oscar Munoz – United Airlines (Early Tenure)
When a passenger was forcibly dragged from a United Express flight in 2017 and captured on video, the incident quickly became an international PR disaster.<img alt="Oscar Munoz" loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-11609" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Oscar-Munoz-300x300.png" alt="" width="185" height="185" srcset="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Oscar-Munoz-300x300.png 300w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Oscar-Munoz-150x150.png 150w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Oscar-Munoz-768x768.png 768w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Oscar-Munoz.png 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 185px) 100vw, 185px" />
United CEO Oscar Munoz initially issued a tone-deaf, bureaucratic statement defending employees, referring to the passenger’s removal as a need to “re-accommodate” customers.
It took Munoz multiple days — and massive public backlash — to offer a sincere apology.
But the damage was done. United’s stock price dropped, and the brand’s reputation for customer service plummeted. Although Munoz later recovered his standing through extensive internal and external engagement, the early silence and mishandled tone taught a brutal lesson.
Lesson: In today’s connected world, CEOs must move fast — and authentically — when public trust is on the line.
 
Charter Operators and the Missing Human Voice
In business aviation, many smaller charter companies and Part 135 operators can suffer from a visibility vacuum.
Despite operating high-quality services, few leaders step forward to represent their brands publicly. Search for many regional operators online, and you’ll find slick websites — but few (if any) interviews, letters, op-eds, or videos from leadership.
Without a human face or voice, these brands struggle to differentiate themselves in a competitive, reputation-driven market. Worse, in the rare event of an incident, the absence of a trusted, known leader worsens public skepticism.
Lesson: You don’t have to be a Fortune 500 CEO to realize the value of humanizing your brand, especially in niche, trust-dependent sectors like private aviation.
 
Why Leadership Visibility Matters More Than Ever
Today’s aviation audience — whether passengers, partners, or investors — demands transparency. A CEO who shows up consistently:
<ul>
<li>Signals confidence and responsibility.</li>
<li>Builds personal credibility that bolsters corporate trust.</li>
<li>Humanizes complex technical organizations.</li>
<li>Sets the tone for internal culture and external relationships.</li>
</ul>
Conversely, invisible leadership breeds suspicion. When something goes wrong, a silent C-suite looks evasive, even if the facts favor them.
Visibility isn’t about vanity. It’s about stewardship — guiding not just operations but perception.
How Aviation Leaders Can Step Forward (Without Becoming “Typical Influencers”)
Not every aviation CEO needs to be a rock star on social media. Authentic leadership visibility can take many forms:
<ul>
<li>Timely public statements on industry issues or crises.</li>
<li>Guest columns in reputable aviation outlets (e.g., AIN, Aviation Week, Skies).</li>
<li>Panel appearances at industry conferences.</li>
<li>Video messages to employees and stakeholders (especially during transitions or challenges).</li>
<li>Proactive social media engagement— even just reposting and commenting on significant aviation news.</li>
</ul>
The key is consistency and sincerity, not self-promotion.
Final Approach 
In an industry where a split-second error can cost millions — or lives — trust is a company’s most valuable asset. And trust is built through people, not logos.
When aviation CEOs embrace their role as public stewards, they elevate not just themselves but the entire enterprise they lead.
When they hide, they leave the narrative — and the future of their brand — in someone else’s hands.
At Jetwhine, we believe leadership communication should not be optional. It’s flight-critical.
]]></content:encoded>
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<title>Secretary Duffy’s ATC Modernization Plan Has Just a Couple of Problems</title>
<link>https://jetwhine.com/2025/05/secretary-duffys-atc-modernization-plan-has-just-a-couple-of-problems/</link>
<comments>https://jetwhine.com/2025/05/secretary-duffys-atc-modernization-plan-has-just-a-couple-of-problems/#comments</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Mark]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Mon, 12 May 2025 13:33:09 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Air Traffic Control]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[aviation safety]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[The Buzz]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Donald J. Trump]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Newark ATC]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Sean Duffy]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://jetwhine.com/?p=11592</guid>
<description><![CDATA[“The performance of the system depends on how the parts fit, not how they act taken separately.” Doctor Russell Ackoff – American organizational theorist, consultant, a pioneer in the field of operations research, systems thinking and management science. __________________________________________________________________________________ In case you missed last week’s unveiling of the White House plan to revitalize the nation’s arthritic air traffic control system, I’d […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[“The performance of the system depends on how the parts fit, not how they act taken separately.” Doctor Russell Ackoff – American <a class="mw-redirect" title="Organizational theorist" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_theorist">organizational theorist</a>, <a title="Management consulting" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_consulting">consultant</a>, a pioneer in the field of <a title="Operations research" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_research">operations research</a>, <a title="Systems thinking" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_thinking">systems thinking</a> and <a title="Management science" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_science">management science. </a>
__________________________________________________________________________________
In case you missed last week’s unveiling of the White House plan to revitalize the nation’s arthritic air traffic control system, I’d encourage you to spend an hour or so watching the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/live/fEqNa_hC2lE?si=BQ427wXqpabBi47n">video replay of DOT Secretary Sean Duffy</a> strutting around the stage like rooster in a new hen house as he detailed the plan. Just be ready to see a parade of airline CEOs, association execs, and politicians patting the administration on the back before the show moves to the details. It was quite the show.
Of course, let’s not forget Mr. Duffy’s boss is Donald J Trump, a fellow who has some experience spectacularly plastering a message around the media nearly every hour of every day.
<img alt="Duffy" loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft wp-image-11598" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Duffy-300x275.jpg" alt="" width="224" height="206" srcset="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Duffy-300x275.jpg 300w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Duffy-1024x940.jpg 1024w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Duffy-768x705.jpg 768w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Duffy-1536x1409.jpg 1536w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Duffy.jpg 1600w" sizes="(max-width: 224px) 100vw, 224px" />On a more serious note, I actually don’t deny the Secretary his moment of glory, because never in the 40 years since I left the FAA have I seen any administration spend as much media time focusing on an ATC overhaul. Of course, there’s been no lack of ideas over the past 40 years. Remember the MLS, AAS, ISSS, FANS, GPS, CPDLC, NextGen, STARS, and ERAM. Some worked. But all of them demanded huge sums of taxpayer cash. Some broke down, and nearly all ran over budget. Most importantly, even the new technology was usually outdated by the time the FAA was putting together the bits and pieces.
But that was then. This is now.
The Department plans to rip the guts out of the old ATC radar, radio, and connectivity systems, technology for which there often are no spare parts when a breakdown occurs. It’s a system in which the mice have probably chewed through the wiring to cause the radar screens to go dark and the radios to go dead, as it appears happened at Newark over the past few weeks. A Newark controller recently transferred from the NY TRACON said, “Some of us have lost confidence in the equipment. The drop in service quality isn’t from a lack of care. It’s from a lack of resources.”
The DOT in the next three years or so plans to “seek to transform the United States air traffic control system from its current antiquated state to a modern system capable of meeting the demands of today and the future. <a href="https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/brand-new-air-traffic-control-system-plan">This proposal</a> will build a new, state-of-the-art, air traffic control system in three years that will enhance the safety and efficiency of our nation’s airspace.”
This all sounds impressive, and it will be, IF the agency can pull it off. But nothing will happen without serious support from Congress.
<h3>That’s What</h3>
Tens of thousands of American households include better constructed home theatre systems than what’s available at the Philadelphia TRACON from where the Newark sector ATC instructions flow. So why has the nation’s ATC system been pieced together with chicken wire and Duct tape?
The goal seemed to be to get the technology to work, but not necessarily to build a new ATC system. There were many vendors to corral and the money to pay for everything appeared in drips and drabs. And too, no one really cared that much because even the old technology still worked, except when it didn’t.
<img alt="ORD Radar Map" loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-11615" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/C90-300x217.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="217" srcset="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/C90-300x217.jpg 300w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/C90-1024x740.jpg 1024w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/C90-768x555.jpg 768w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/C90-1536x1110.jpg 1536w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/C90-2048x1479.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
<h3>But Where’s the How?</h3>
If you read the plan, you’ll notice that nowhere does it mention the men and women operating this new Gee-Wizz technology. Remember them, Mr. Duffy? Those are the folks who are often still working mandatory six-day weeks with 10-hour shifts. And this will continue for at least another two or three years before there’s any relief? Really?
You’ve often mentioned the need to hire more air traffic controllers. That’s a great idea. But what’s your strategy for that? For decades, the plan has been simple. If the system needs 2,000 new controllers, hire 2,000 new controllers. Except that idea has never worked either, because the failure rate of trainees still hovers around 30-35 percent. If you want 2,000 new controllers, you probably need to begin training 2500-3000 people to end up with 2000. The chronic understaffing isn’t a recent problem. It’s not even a 10-year-old problem. The core of the staffing issue dates back to August 3, 1981, when President Reagan fired nearly 13,000 controllers. I was not a supporter of the strike, though. I’m simply pointing out that the agency never took the action it should have to fix staffing back then.
Nowhere in the plan does anyone mention that the agency needs a better way to qualify applicants before they start training, to learn whether they have the right stuff to survive in this job? It takes some people a while to realize that a grueling week of making split-second decisions eight hours a day isn’t for them. By then, the agency had wasted months and sometimes years on someone who never came up to speed. The only solution at that point is to grab another recruit and start the journey again.
I understand why all those people at the podium the other day were practically giddy about the Secretary’s plan. There hasn’t been anything like it since 1981. But the US has the world’s biggest, safest, and most complex ATC system. This sounds impressive, but the details of how the President’s “Great Big Beautiful ATC system” will come together are noticeably absent. Where’s the research data or the big questions the DOT asked before they began? Many worry Mr. Trump will hand this project over to his pal Elon Musk and let him run with it like he did DOGE.
And while Mr. Musk’s companies have helped create some impressive results over the past 10 years, does everyone really believe Mr. Musk can pull this off?
Me … I believe we should be very skeptical of a plan that sounds way too good to be true.
Rob Mark, Publisher
 
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<title>Fat Cats, Fallacies, and the Business Jet Backlash:</title>
<link>https://jetwhine.com/2025/04/fat-cats-fallacies-and-the-business-jet-backlash-why-business-aviation-needs-better-storytelling/</link>
<comments>https://jetwhine.com/2025/04/fat-cats-fallacies-and-the-business-jet-backlash-why-business-aviation-needs-better-storytelling/#comments</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Paula Williams]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 15 Apr 2025 13:01:58 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Business Aviation]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://jetwhine.com/?p=11564</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Why Business Aviation Needs Better Storytelling By Paula Williams, ABCI “Those who tell the stories rule the world.” – Native American proverb. In February 2025, Senator Edward Markey reintroduced his “Fat Cat” tax bill—officially known as the Fueling Alternative Transportation with a Carbon Aviation Tax (FATCAT) Act. The legislation proposes removing business aviation’s exemption from federal fuel […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h1>Why Business Aviation Needs Better Storytelling</h1>
<div></div>
<div>By <a href="https://aviationbusinessconsultants.com/paula-williams-marketing-professional-and-pilot-melds-passions-into-business-opportunity/">Paula Williams, ABCI</a> 
 
<a href="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/paula_abci_wealthy_businessman_on_private_jet_smoking_a_cigar_7506bc14-9043-497b-8a23-0039f6a87a8e_11.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-11570" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/paula_abci_wealthy_businessman_on_private_jet_smoking_a_cigar_7506bc14-9043-497b-8a23-0039f6a87a8e_11-300x300.png" alt="This is the story the media tells about business aviation. Time to start telling our own stories!" width="300" height="300" srcset="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/paula_abci_wealthy_businessman_on_private_jet_smoking_a_cigar_7506bc14-9043-497b-8a23-0039f6a87a8e_11-300x300.png 300w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/paula_abci_wealthy_businessman_on_private_jet_smoking_a_cigar_7506bc14-9043-497b-8a23-0039f6a87a8e_11-150x150.png 150w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/paula_abci_wealthy_businessman_on_private_jet_smoking_a_cigar_7506bc14-9043-497b-8a23-0039f6a87a8e_11-768x768.png 768w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/paula_abci_wealthy_businessman_on_private_jet_smoking_a_cigar_7506bc14-9043-497b-8a23-0039f6a87a8e_11.png 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a>“Those who tell the stories rule the world.” – Native American proverb.</div>
<div>
In February 2025, Senator Edward Markey reintroduced his “Fat Cat” tax bill—officially known as the Fueling Alternative Transportation with a Carbon Aviation Tax (FATCAT) Act. The legislation proposes removing business aviation’s exemption from federal fuel excise taxes, citing luxury and inequality concerns. Once again, corporate jets have become a symbol of excess—an easy target for politicians and media critics.
But what’s missing from the conversation, as usual, is context. Business jets are not just tools for billionaires and celebrities—they’re lifelines for small businesses, mobile technicians, medical missions, remote communities and companies trying to compete globally from far-flung corners of America. The “fat cat” narrative not only misunderstands the purpose of business aviation—it actively harms it.
And worse yet, we in the industry have been complicit in this misrepresentation because we haven’t done enough to tell our own story.
</div>
<div></div>
<h1><strong style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, 'Noto Sans', sans-serif, 'Apple Color Emoji', 'Segoe UI Emoji', 'Segoe UI Symbol', 'Noto Color Emoji';">The History of a Punching Bag</h1>
<div>
Aviation was once the darling of the media in the days of Charles Lindbergh and Eddie Rickenbacker. But that “Golden Age” gave way to cynicism.
In 2009, during the height of the financial crisis, the CEOs of the Big Three automakers were pilloried by a beleaguered Congress for flying private jets to Washington to request bailout money. The optics were terrible—and they ignited a firestorm.
The country needed a scapegoat, and they found one that gave <a href="https://bjtonline.com/business-jet-news/defending-your-business-jet">nearly zero resistance</a>.
That same year, Wired magazine declared, “General Aviation Sounds Mayday As Fat Cats Ditch Their Jets.” Across mainstream media, business jets became shorthand for greed, arrogance, and poor judgment. The Economist followed in 2011 with a blistering column mocking defenders of business aviation for “claiming it creates jobs”—a claim they deemed “dubious.”
That narrative has stuck, in part, because it’s simple.
Planes = rich people = unfairness.
But reality, as usual, is more complicated.
<h1>Business Aviation Is More Than C-Suite Luxury</h1>
<div>
<figure id="attachment_11568" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-11568" style="width: 300px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Rob-g500-flying_media_visit-scaled.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-11568" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Rob-g500-flying_media_visit-300x200.jpg" alt="Business aviation is used for many things, most of which are good business. " width="300" height="200" srcset="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Rob-g500-flying_media_visit-300x200.jpg 300w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Rob-g500-flying_media_visit-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Rob-g500-flying_media_visit-768x512.jpg 768w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Rob-g500-flying_media_visit-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Rob-g500-flying_media_visit-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-11568" class="wp-caption-text">Rob after flying the G500</figcaption></figure>
Here’s what doesn’t make headlines: The NBAA reports that 85% of business aircraft are used by small to midsize enterprises, not massive corporations. Most passengers on these flights aren’t celebrities or hedge fund managers—they’re technicians, engineers, sales reps, and medical personnel.
These aircraft allow businesses based in small cities or rural communities—places not well-served by commercial airlines—to reach clients, inspect factories, attend meetings, and stay competitive. Without them, many companies would be forced to relocate or close.
Let’s be honest: the optics of business jets are terrible. But the economics are sound.
A 2018 study by NEXA Advisors found that companies using business aviation consistently outperformed their peers in revenue growth, profitability, and shareholder value. The jets aren’t perks—they’re performance tools.
</div>
<h1>When Privacy Becomes a Liability</h1>
<div>
<a href="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Praetor-600-_PR-ZTX_CC4_9970-scaled.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-11569 alignleft" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Praetor-600-_PR-ZTX_CC4_9970-300x200.jpg" alt="Jets like this Praetor 600 are actively tracked. " width="300" height="200" srcset="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Praetor-600-_PR-ZTX_CC4_9970-300x200.jpg 300w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Praetor-600-_PR-ZTX_CC4_9970-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Praetor-600-_PR-ZTX_CC4_9970-768x511.jpg 768w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Praetor-600-_PR-ZTX_CC4_9970-1536x1022.jpg 1536w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Praetor-600-_PR-ZTX_CC4_9970-2048x1363.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a>Despite the value business aviation brings, public perception continues to erode. Part of the reason is our own instinct for privacy and discretion.
In a world where social media thrives on oversharing, business aviation remains stubbornly tight-lipped. CEOs (very understandably) don’t want people to know where they’re going. Companies don’t want to expose clients or deals. Even humanitarian missions are often kept quiet to avoid unwanted attention.
This privacy is viewed as a gauntlet by activists. In recent years, the veil of privacy around business aviation has been challenged by digital activists like Jack Sweeney, a college student who gained global attention for creating automated Twitter bots that track the private jet movements of high-profile individuals—including Elon Musk, Taylor Swift, and several political leaders. Sweeney used publicly available ADS-B flight data to publish real-time updates on VIP jet activity, raising concerns about carbon emissions, government accountability, and elite privilege. While Musk famously offered him $5,000 to take the tracker down (an offer Sweeney declined), the incident highlighted just how vulnerable business aviation can be to public scrutiny—and how quickly private travel can become viral news. For the industry, it reignited the debate between operational privacy and public perception, especially in the age of climate awareness and digital transparency.
Without visible faces and actual stories, the public fills in the blanks—with activism and caricatures.
</div>
<h1>Good News Gets Buried</h1>
There are hundreds of stories that could change public perception—if only they were told.
<ol>
<li>Business Aviation During COVID-19</li>
</ol>
During the height of the pandemic, business aircraft were used to deliver vaccines, PPE, and critical personnel. Companies like Wheels Up and Flexjet provided airlift capacity when commercial aviation ground to a halt.?
<ol start="2">
<li>Remote Plant Support</li>
</ol>
Caterpillar Inc., the global heavy equipment manufacturer headquartered in Illinois, used its business aviation fleet to fly critical engineers and parts to a remote mining site in northern Canada experiencing a mechanical failure that threatened to halt operations. According to a case study presented by the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA), the mine faced a multi-million dollar shutdown if production stopped for more than 48 hours. Despite severe weather, lack of commercial flight options, and the urgency of the repair, the company’s in-house aviation department dispatched a jet within hours. The team was able to diagnose and resolve the issue on-site, avoiding an estimated $3.5 million in production losses and preserving dozens of jobs linked to that operation.
This story echoes many others in industries like oil and gas, utilities, and manufacturing—sectors that rely on timely technical support to maintain remote, high-value infrastructure. Yet because these missions often go unreported, the public rarely hears how general aviation quietly keeps the gears of industry turning.
<ol start="3">
<li>Medical Missions</li>
</ol>
Organizations like Angel Flight, Corporate Angel Network, and Paraflight fly patients to life-saving treatments or organs to patients who desperately need them and literally would find a delay to be a life-or-death situation. And these flights are usually offered to patients at no cost.
These aren’t luxuries. These are lifelines. But because many of these missions are quiet, confidential, or pro bono—they vanish from public view
<h1>The Fat Cat Bill: What’s Really at Stake</h1>
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<a href="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Gulfstream-Pic-G550.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-11567 size-medium" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Gulfstream-Pic-G550-300x192.jpg" alt="Planes like this Gulfstream G550 in the sky are usually a sign of good things for the local economy!" width="300" height="192" srcset="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Gulfstream-Pic-G550-300x192.jpg 300w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Gulfstream-Pic-G550-1024x654.jpg 1024w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Gulfstream-Pic-G550-768x490.jpg 768w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Gulfstream-Pic-G550-1536x981.jpg 1536w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Gulfstream-Pic-G550.jpg 1776w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a>Markey’s FATCAT bill may never pass. It’s largely symbolic—like many tax bills aimed at inequality. But symbolism matters. And the symbolism of this bill reinforces a damaging narrative.
More than anything, the bill is a wake-up call.
It’s not enough to have the data. We need to change the conversation.
That means telling better stories—and telling them publicly. Companies need to highlight their employees who benefit from business aviation, not just their executives. It means lifting the veil, even if just slightly, to show the real, practical impact these aircraft have.
</div>
<h1>Time to Act Like a Fourth Estate</h1>
I studied journalism at the University of Utah in the ’90s. My heroes were Edward R. Murrow, and Woodward & Bernstein—champions of truth, transparency, and public accountability. Journalism, they taught us, was the “fourth estate,” vital to democracy.
But the landscape has changed. The economics of journalism are broken. The rise of social media, influencer culture, and clickbait headlines have upended traditional norms. Many bloggers, podcasters, and freelancers now fill the gap left by shrinking newsrooms.
And that’s not entirely a bad thing. Sunlight is still the best disinfectant. But it does mean we in aviation can’t afford to sit back and hope someone tells our story.
The great news is that every company has access to tools and channels that media moguls could only dream about 20 years ago. ANY company can publish news directly to the masses, by means of ready-made channels, with tools we all have in our pockets.
Because of ubiquitous smartphones and media, we have far better tools and broadcasting power than any newsroom of past decades.
Why don’t we use these tools?
Because it’s not our job. And because it’s safer to stay silent.
Because we’re afraid of what people will think
That’s precisely why WE need to take charge of the story.
We need to tell our great stories and detail the impact we have on the lives of our employees, our clients, and the local economies we serve.
We need to tell these stories – Loudly. Clearly. Repeatedly.
<h1>More Transparency, Fewer Targets</h1>
Every time business aviation chooses silence over storytelling, we become an easier target. Every time we fail to explain our value, someone else (with a different agenda and without any background education) defines it for us.
Yes, privacy matters. But perception matters more.
Great stories can and should be told by industry professionals who know what they’re talking about.
The business aviation community needs to embrace a new ethos—one of strategic transparency. Share your case studies, promote your employees, and highlight your missions. Don’t just let the press define you—start acting like the press.
Because if we don’t, we will keep paying for someone else’s perception of business aviation. That translates into being on defense, forever.
We can do better than that.
<div> 
Sources 
</div>
<div>1. AIN Online: Markey Reintroduces Business Jet ‘Fat Cat’ Tax Bill 
</div>
<div><a href="https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/business-aviation/2025-02-24/markey-reintroduces-business-jet-fat-cat-tax-bill" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> 
https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/business-aviation/2025-02-24/markey-reintroduces-business-jet-fat-cat-tax-bill 
</a></div>
<div>2. National Business Aviation Association (NBAA): Business Aviation Fact Book 
</div>
<div><a href="https://nbaa.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">
<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content" data-secret="wiprd8SBnq"><a href="https://nbaa.org/">NBAA – National Business Aviation Association</a></blockquote>
<iframe class="wp-embedded-content" sandbox="allow-scripts" security="restricted" title="“NBAA – National Business Aviation Association” — NBAA - National Business Aviation Association" src="https://nbaa.org/embed/#?secret=xKqMQsR2v6#?secret=wiprd8SBnq" data-secret="wiprd8SBnq" width="600" height="338" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> 
</a></div>
<div>3. The Economist: Fat cats and corporate jets (July 7, 2011)</div>
<div><a href="https://www.economist.com/united-states/2011/07/07/fat-cats-and-corporate-jets" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> 
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2011/07/07/fat-cats-and-corporate-jets 
</a></div>
<div>4. Wired Magazine: Fat Cats Ditch Their Jets (May 2009)</div>
<div><a href="https://www.wired.com/2009/05/general-aviation-sounds-mayday-as-fat-cats-ditch-their-jets/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> 
https://www.wired.com/2009/05/general-aviation-sounds-mayday-as-fat-cats-ditch-their-jets/ 
</a></div>
<div>5. NEXA Advisors: Business Aviation and Top Performing Companies Report (2018)</div>
<div>6. Corporate Angel Network: Mission Impact</div>
<div><a href="https://www.corpangelnetwork.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> 
https://www.corpangelnetwork.org</a>7. The New York Times – “Tracking Elon Musk’s Private Jet Made a College Student Famous. It Also Made Him a Target.”</div>
<div><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/26/technology/elon-musk-private-jet-tracking.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> 
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/26/technology/elon-musk-private-jet-tracking.html 
</a></div>
<div>8. CNN Business – “Teen tracking Elon Musk’s jet turns down $5,000 offer to stop”</div>
<div><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/26/tech/elon-musk-jet-tracker-jack-sweeney/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> 
https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/26/tech/elon-musk-jet-tracker-jack-sweeney/index.html</a></div>
</div>
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<title>When WASPS took over Avenger Field</title>
<link>https://jetwhine.com/2025/04/when-wasps-took-over-avenger-field/</link>
<comments>https://jetwhine.com/2025/04/when-wasps-took-over-avenger-field/#comments</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Mark]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Mon, 07 Apr 2025 23:36:16 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Aviation History]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Education]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Flight Training]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Military]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[The Buzz]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Avenger Field]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[National WASP WWII Museum]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Pam LeBlanc]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Sweetwater]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Texas]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[WASPs]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Women Airforce Service Pilots]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://jetwhine.com/?p=11548</guid>
<description><![CDATA[I enjoyed Pam Leblanc’s story when I read it in another magazine. I asked, and she graciously allowed us to reprint it here. Enjoy – RM ______________________________ By Pam LeBlanc They had to cinch up the waistbands of their oversized, hand-me-down flight suits, and they weren’t allowed to climb out of a cockpit without applying […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[I enjoyed Pam Leblanc’s story when I read it in another magazine. I asked, and she graciously allowed us to reprint it here. Enjoy – RM
______________________________
<img alt="Wasp vintage photo" loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-11552" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/WASP-1-300x273.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="273" srcset="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/WASP-1-300x273.jpg 300w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/WASP-1-768x699.jpg 768w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/WASP-1.jpg 1004w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />By Pam LeBlanc
They had to cinch up the waistbands of their oversized, hand-me-down flight suits, and they weren’t allowed to climb out of a cockpit without applying fresh lipstick. The women who trained at <a href="https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/sweetwater-army-air-field">Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas</a>, stepped up in a serious way.
They volunteered when more pilots were needed to fly vital stateside missions during World War II.
The <a href="https://www.waspmuseum.org/">National WASP WWII Museum</a>, which opened in 2005 in a circa 1929 hangar at <a href="https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/sweetwater-army-air-field">Avenger Field</a>, celebrates the Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs, who trained at the remote airbase, about 40 miles west of Abilene, as part of an experimental wartime program designed to free up male pilots for combat.
“A lot were young and single and free, but some were married—and some had children,” says Lisa Taylor, executive director of the museum, located across Avenger Field from what is now Texas State Technical College, where the female trainees once lived in barracks.
“The feeling was, ‘We have this skill, and there’s a need for us.’ They adored flying and were thrilled to fly, but they were also thrilled to be needed.”
Applicants to the program, which ran for two years, had to have high school diplomas or the equivalent and be between 18 and 35, although at least one 17-year-old lied about her age to get in. They had to be at least 5 feet 4 inches tall, have a pilot’s license, and pass a physical exam and interview to get a spot.
About 25,000 women applied, and 1,830 were accepted.
They came from all 48 states and Alaska and Hawaii. They were overwhelmingly white, but there were at least two Chinese Americans, a Native American and two Latina women. The program rejected Black applicants. They were high school dropouts and debutantes, blackjack dealers and teachers. One was a pinup girl. Some had worked as crop duster pilots or barnstormers, performing stunts in traveling shows.<img alt="WASP Event at Avenger Field" loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-11554" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/WASP-3-300x196.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="196" srcset="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/WASP-3-300x196.jpg 300w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/WASP-3-768x500.jpg 768w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/WASP-3.jpg 890w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
The program officially started in Houston in November 1942 under the direction of pioneering aviators Jacqueline Cochran and Nancy Harkness Love. It quickly outgrew its space in Houston and moved to Avenger Field, where the women could live in bunks in on-site barracks.
The new location worked well. The airfield had two runways plus classroom space. The sparsely populated area’s big skies and open fields suited the flight school’s needs, and the stiff West Texas wind provided ample training opportunities.
The women spent half their days in ground school, learning meteorology, navigation, first aid, military law, Morse code, mechanics and parachute packing. The rest of the working day was spent learning to fly various military aircraft.
Many of the women were small and had a hard time reaching the pedals on aircraft designed for men. They used blocks of wood and parachute packs as cushions to make it work. One bragged that she was a “three-cushion pilot,” meaning she stuffed three packs behind her back so she could operate the controls.
For their efforts, the women earned $174.50 per month (about $3,250 today), deducting $1.65 for room and board. Because they were civil workers and not officially part of the U.S. military, they even had to buy their own uniforms.
Training lasted at least seven months, and about 40% of the recruits washed out before earning their wings. But ultimately, 1,102 women completed training.
<img alt="WASP" loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-11555" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/WASP-4-263x300.jpg" alt="" width="263" height="300" srcset="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/WASP-4-263x300.jpg 263w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/WASP-4.jpg 682w" sizes="(max-width: 263px) 100vw, 263px" />Those who graduated were assigned to air bases around the country, where they went to work shuttling military personnel and ferrying aircraft from base to base. The WASPs flew 78 different aircraft, including pursuit planes and bombers, and flight-tested others, flying more than 60 million miles.
Some of the women served as tow pilots, dragging targets 1,000 feet behind their planes so soldiers on the ground could practice firing at them with live ammunition. Others worked as instructors or practiced concealment, learning to lay smoke that would hide personnel on the ground.
Thirty-eight WASPs were killed during their service, including 11 who died in training accidents. The military didn’t pay for their funerals, so fellow WASPs took up collections to send the women’s remains home to family.
About 14,000 people visit the museum in Sweetwater every year, exploring two hangars filled with everything from flight suits to logbooks, part of a tow target, a flight simulator, medals, parachutes and four complete aircraft of the type the women used for training.
Visitors can take a turn at a chin-up bar like one the women used during daily calisthenics or grab a seat in a re-creation of a classroom, where a film leads them through what it was like as an incoming recruit reporting for duty. They can peer into a mock-up of a room in the barracks too.
Mostly, though, visitors can learn who the WASPs were as individuals. “They’ve all got really amazing stories,” Taylor says, sharing a few as she walks through the museum.
When one group of WASPs traveled to California on a mission, they were arrested and briefly jailed for impersonating military pilots, Taylor says. Another WASP made an emergency landing in a farmer’s field, and the family who owned the land fed and housed her for the night. Other stories describe WASPs who had to parachute to safety from their airplanes and WASPs who tested aircraft with engines prone to catching fire.
The names of all the WASPs, including those who didn’t complete training, are listed on one wall of the museum, and visitors can access a database that includes information about each one. There are photos and handprints of many of the women.
Each April, the museum hosts a Homecoming Celebration & Fly-In, set for April 25–26 this year. While most of the WASPs are now gone, their families, as well as members of the public, still attend.
At the 2012 homecoming, WASP Nell “Mickey” Stevenson Bright, who is now 103 years old, explained that she skipped meals as a teenager to pay for flying lessons. After becoming a WASP, she remembers standing in a shower wearing her flight suit to clean it.
“The thrill of flying those wonderful airplanes and getting paid for it—that was worth it,” Bright, who is from Canyon, said at the time.
The WASPs were deactivated in December 1944, but it took more than 30 years before President Jimmy Carter signed a bill recognizing them as military veterans. In 2010, President Barack Obama awarded the WASPs Congressional Gold Medals, the oldest and most prestigious civilian award in the U.S.
Today, museum officials hope the institution can inspire the next generation.
“These women went to a lot of time and trouble to learn how to fly in a world that wasn’t going to let them in,” Taylor says. “So, what is it that you want to do and try, and what barriers will you need to overcome to leave a good legacy for yourself?”
(photos courtesy <a href="https://www.waspmuseum.org/">National WASP WWII Museum</a>)
]]></content:encoded>
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<title>Autothrottles – An extra pair of hands in the cockpit</title>
<link>https://jetwhine.com/2025/04/autothrottles-an-extra-pair-of-hands-in-the-cockpit/</link>
<comments>https://jetwhine.com/2025/04/autothrottles-an-extra-pair-of-hands-in-the-cockpit/#comments</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Mark]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Thu, 03 Apr 2025 01:01:41 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[The Buzz]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[autothrottles]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[cockpit automation]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Leonard Greene]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Safe Flight Instrument Company]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://jetwhine.com/?p=11539</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Flying an airplane smoothly demands dozens of subtle, often repetitive movements, like adjusting engine power each time the aircraft’s pitch attitude changes. Any repetitive process is, of course, perfect for some form of automation. Leonard Greene understood that nearly 70 years ago when he created the first commercial autothrottle system. Greene founded the New York-based […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<img alt="" loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-11543" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Pilatus-300x168.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="168" srcset="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Pilatus-300x168.jpg 300w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Pilatus-1024x575.jpg 1024w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Pilatus-768x431.jpg 768w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Pilatus-1536x862.jpg 1536w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Pilatus-2048x1150.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Flying an airplane smoothly demands dozens of subtle, often repetitive movements, like adjusting engine power each time the aircraft’s pitch attitude changes. Any repetitive process is, of course, perfect for some form of automation. Leonard Greene understood that nearly 70 years ago when he created the first commercial autothrottle system. Greene founded the New York-based Safe Flight Instrument Company, also known for its angle-of-attack and stall warning systems.
A few definitions first. Boeing calls its installed system an autothrottle, while a similar system on an Airbus is known as autothrust. Autothrottles typically synchronize with the autopilot and operate in either speed or thrust mode, creating many practical hands-free benefits, like flight envelope over- and under-speed protection. Typically connected to the aircraft through the flight management system (FMS) computer and an outside air temperature sensor, the autothrottle calculates engine power more accurately than any human. During an instrument approach or on a standard terminal arrival route (STAR), autothrottles relieve the pilot of the throttle-jockeying work during required speed changes. If the autothrottles are switched off or become inoperative, the flying pilot can easily revert to flying the aircraft by adjusting the throttles manually.
During an engine failure aboard a multiengine airplane, the autothrottle automatically sets the best power on the good engine. Many modern aircraft also offer an additional power boost in case of an engine failure during takeoff known as reserve thrust. This system boosts the good engine at takeoff or go-around when it senses a difference between both engine low-speed fan (N1) values of more than 15 percent.
Today, most transport category aircraft from Boeing, Airbus, and Embraer, and most major business jets produced by Cessna, Bombardier, Dassault, Gulfstream, and Honda are equipped with autothrottles. Some single-engine jets like the Cirrus Vision Jet and turboprops like the Pilatus PC–12 and the Daher TBM 900 series are also autothrottle equipped. General aviation aircraft that use Garmin’s Autoland system, in fact, require Garmin’s autothrottles installed.
<a href="https://aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2025/april/pilot/taircraftsystems-autothrottles">Click here to read more </a>
(Reprinted courtesy of AOPA Pilot)
 
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<wfw:commentRss>https://jetwhine.com/2025/04/autothrottles-an-extra-pair-of-hands-in-the-cockpit/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
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<title>Are Aviation Bloggers Really Journalists?</title>
<link>https://jetwhine.com/2025/03/are-aviation-bloggers-really-journalists/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Paula Williams]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 18 Mar 2025 13:00:18 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Aviation Education]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Aviation Marketing]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Blogging]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Business Aviation]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://jetwhine.com/?p=11528</guid>
<description><![CDATA[By Paula Williams In the 1990s, when I studied journalism at the University of Utah, my heroes were Edward R. Murrow, David Brinkley, Walter Cronkite, Bob Woodward, and Carl Bernstein. I believed firmly in the importance of the Fourth Estate—journalism as an institution supported by the Founding Fathers, ingrained in our culture, and necessary to […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div>By Paula Williams 
</div>
<div>In the 1990s, when I studied journalism at the University of Utah, my heroes were Edward R. Murrow, David Brinkley, Walter Cronkite, Bob Woodward, and Carl Bernstein. I believed firmly in the importance of the Fourth Estate—journalism as an institution supported by the Founding Fathers, ingrained in our culture, and necessary to democracy. Back then, newsrooms were filled with seasoned reporters who made a good (but not necessarily great) living and supported their families through a long career of crafting stories, bound by journalistic ethics, fact-checking standards, and a shared mission to hold power accountable.</div>
<div></div>
<div><a href="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/PRESS1.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-11531" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/PRESS1-300x300.png" alt="Are Aviation Bloggers Really Journalists?" width="300" height="300" srcset="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/PRESS1-300x300.png 300w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/PRESS1-1024x1024.png 1024w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/PRESS1-150x150.png 150w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/PRESS1-768x768.png 768w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/PRESS1.png 1080w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a>
There was literally a wall in most news organizations between the editorial department and the advertising department.Of course, after graduating with a journalism degree and finding myself actually trying to make a living as a single mother in this profession, I quickly abandoned my aspirations and found some new ones in the marketing department.
But I still have a profound reverence for “real” journalism.
</div>
<div>Fast forward to today, and the media landscape has changed dramatically. The rise of independent bloggers, YouTube commentators, and social media influencers has blurred the lines between professional journalism and personal opinion. This shift is especially evident in aviation media, where passionate pilots, engineers, and industry insiders now wield influence through blogs, podcasts, and self-published reports.</div>
<div></div>
<div>But are aviation bloggers really journalists? Do they adhere to the same ethical and professional standards that traditional reporters do? Or are we in an era where anyone with a Wi-Fi connection and strong opinions can claim the title of “aviation journalist”?</div>
<h2> 
The Legacy of News Agencies: The Gold Standard of Journalism 
</h2>
<div>
Before we explore aviation blogging, it’s important to acknowledge the role of major news agencies in shaping modern journalism.
</div>
<div>
Two of the most influential are the Associated Press (AP) and Reuters.
</div>
<div>
The Associated Press was founded in 1846 as a cooperative effort by five New York newspapers that sought to share the costs of transmitting news. Over time, it became one of the world’s most trusted sources of accurate, unbiased reporting. AP journalists follow strict editorial guidelines, ensuring rigorous fact-checking and balanced reporting.
</div>
<div>
Reuters was established in 1851 by Paul Reuter, who famously used carrier pigeons to transmit financial and general news across Europe. The agency became known for its speed and accuracy, eventually evolving into a global powerhouse of business, political, and aviation news.
</div>
<div>
These agencies set the gold standard for journalism, ensuring that breaking news and investigative reporting meet high ethical and professional benchmarks. Aviation reporting, when done well, follows the same principles of accuracy, source verification, and neutrality—but does the same apply to aviation blogging?
</div>
<h2>The Evolution of Aviation Journalism</h2>
<div>
The Wright Brothers courted journalists from the newspapers of the day, and there have always been media figures like <a href="https://aviationpersonalbranding.com/2025/01/jimmy-doolittle-the-power-of-personal-branding-in-aviation-and-its-lessons-for-today/">Jimmy Doolittle</a>, <a href="https://aviationpersonalbranding.com/2025/02/fast-eddie-rickenbacker-master-of-personal-branding/">Eddie Rickenbacker</a>, Charles Lindbergh, and Howard Hughes in the headlines of newspapers.
Eventually, aviation developed some of its own media.
</div>
<div>For decades, aviation journalism was dominated by traditional aviation magazines, newspapers, and broadcast media. Outlets like Flying Magazine, Aviation Week, and Business & Commercial Aviation were staffed by experienced reporters who meticulously covered aviation industry trends, air traffic control changes, aviation safety incidents, and technological advancements in business aviation.</div>
<div>
However, as the economics of media shifted, traditional aviation publications faced declining print subscriptions, shrinking ad revenue, and increased competition from online platforms. The result was fewer full-time aviation reporters, leaner editorial teams, and a greater reliance on freelancers who weren’t always held to the same journalistic standards.
</div>
<div>
This vacuum created an opportunity for independent bloggers to step in—many of whom brought valuable expertise from within the aviation industry itself. Airline pilots, air traffic controllers, mechanics, and engineers began publishing firsthand accounts, technical analyses, and bold aviation opinions that readers found refreshing compared to corporate press releases and sanitized PR statements.
</div>
<div>Jetwhine itself was built on this model—aviation commentary from real industry insiders. But does that automatically make all aviation bloggers journalists?</div>
<h2>Journalism vs. Blogging: The Key Differences</h2>
<div></div>
<div>
While blogging and journalism both involve storytelling and information-sharing, there are fundamental differences between the two.
</div>
<div>1. The Role of Objectivity vs. Opinion 
</div>
<div>
Traditional journalism is built on principles of objectivity and neutrality. Reporters are trained to verify facts, interview multiple sources, and present a balanced perspective.
</div>
<div>
Bloggers, on the other hand, often start from a subjective viewpoint. Many aviation bloggers write from personal experience, advocating for or against policies, aircraft designs, or regulatory decisions. They may rely on anecdotal evidence rather than broad investigative work.
</div>
<div>2. Verification and Source Vetting 
</div>
<div>
Journalists are expected to corroborate information through multiple, credible sources before publishing a story. In aviation reporting, this means fact-checking with industry regulators such as the FAA and EASA, manufacturers like Boeing and Airbus, and unions such as ALPA and NATCA.
</div>
<div>
By contrast, some aviation bloggers rely heavily on press releases, unofficial sources, or unverified rumors—particularly in fast-moving news cycles.
</div>
<div>3. Accountability and Ethical Standards 
</div>
<div>
Established news organizations have editorial policies, legal teams, and professional codes of ethics to guide their work. If a journalist makes a major error, retractions and corrections follow. Bloggers, however, operate independently, with no formal accountability beyond reader backlash.
</div>
<div>
This can have real-world consequences. Misreporting on aviation safety incidents can fuel misinformation, create public panic, or damage reputations.
</div>
<h2>When Bloggers Become the News 
</h2>
<div>One of the longstanding ethical boundaries in journalism is that reporters should cover the news, not become the news. However, in today’s influencer-driven media, some aviation bloggers have blurred this line.</div>
<div>In 2019, aviation YouTuber Casey Neistat, known for his travel and airline reviews, found himself at the center of controversy when he accepted a free Emirates first-class flight and reviewed it on his channel. Critics questioned whether his glowing praise was genuine or influenced by the airline’s generosity. This raised broader concerns about conflicts of interest in aviation blogging and whether influencers should disclose sponsorships more transparently.</div>
<div></div>
<div>The most dramatic case occurred when aviation vlogger Trevor Jacob faked an airplane crash in 2021. Claiming an emergency forced him to parachute out of a Taylorcraft plane, his dramatic video quickly went viral. However, investigations revealed that he deliberately staged the event for views. This crossed the line from aviation storytelling into outright deception, undermining the credibility of legitimate aviation journalism.</div>
<h2> 
Credible Aviation Blogs: Who’s Doing It Right? 
</h2>
<div>
While many aviation bloggers are enthusiasts first and reporters second, some have successfully blended industry expertise with journalistic integrity. In addition to Rob Mark and Jetwhine (of course) here are a few of my favorites.
</div>
<div>
• Jon Ostrower – The Air Current – Formerly with The Wall Street Journal and CNN, Ostrower’s blog provides investigative journalism on commercial aviation, aircraft manufacturing, and safety trends.
</div>
<div>
• Leeham News & Analysis – Specializing in business aviation and commercial aircraft, Leeham News is a trusted source for in-depth analysis of market trends.
</div>
<div>
• The Aviationist – David Cenciotti – A former Italian Air Force pilot, Cenciotti covers military aviation news, often breaking stories before major news outlets.
</div>
<div>
• FlightGlobal – Though more of a trade publication than a blog, FlightGlobal maintains high journalistic standards, regularly cited by major news organizations.
</div>
Any list like this risks being overlooking someone equally influential or important – bloggers and journalists demonstrate that independent aviation reporting can meet high standards—when done properly.
 
<h2>Conclusion: More Journalism is Better, But Not Every Blogger is a Journalist 
</h2>
<div>
The democratization of aviation media has benefits. More voices mean more perspectives, more scrutiny of industry practices, and more engagement from the public. As the saying goes, “sunlight is the best disinfectant”—the more we discuss aviation issues, the better we can solve them.
</div>
<div>However, not everyone with a blog is a journalist. True aviation journalism requires verification, accountability, and ethical reporting. The best aviation bloggers embrace those principles, while others merely share opinions, and some actively spread misinformation for clicks.</div>
<div>For readers, the key is media literacy—knowing which aviation sources to trust. And for aviation bloggers who aspire to be true journalists, the challenge is simple: hold yourself to the highest standards, because aviation deserves nothing less.</div>
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<title>Straightening Out the Enola Gay</title>
<link>https://jetwhine.com/2025/03/straightening-out-the-enola-gay/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Mark]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 14 Mar 2025 16:05:15 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Military]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[The Buzz]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[1984]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Aviation History]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[DOD]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Enola Gay]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[George Orwell]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Hiroshima]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Japan]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Nagasaki]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Paul Tibbetts Jr.]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[WWII]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://jetwhine.com/?p=11509</guid>
<description><![CDATA[“Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” George Orwell, from his novel, 1984 The name Enola Gay may mean nothing to quite a few people these days. That’s OK. While I never met Enola Gay, I’ll betcha she was a nice lady. After all, her son, Col. Paul […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[“Who controls the past, controls the future.
Who controls the present controls the past.”
George Orwell, from his novel, 1984
<img alt="" loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-11508" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Enola-Gay-300x265.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="265" srcset="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Enola-Gay-300x265.jpg 300w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Enola-Gay-768x679.jpg 768w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Enola-Gay.jpg 936w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
The name Enola Gay may mean nothing to quite a few people these days. That’s OK. While I never met Enola Gay, I’ll betcha she was a nice lady. After all, her son, Col. Paul Tibbetts Jr., was a US Army Air Force bomber pilot during WWII.
And you gotta just love a mom who can handle a son’s airplane obsession.
But, Enola Gay was also important in American military history.
On the morning of August 6, 1945, Paul Tibbetts Jr. and 11 other men climbed aboard a Boeing B-29 Super Fortress nicknamed after his mom. The aircraft headed northwest from the Northern Mariana Islands on a six-hour flight to Hiroshima, Japan, where it unleashed the first atomic weapon ever used in anger.
The resulting explosion and firestorm claimed the lives of 70 to 80,000 of Hiroshima’s 350,000 citizens. Three days later, another B-29 detonated a second atomic weapon over Nagasaki, Japan.
Six days later, on August 15, 1945, the Empire of Japan surrendered unconditionally, bringing WWII to a close.
What’s so Important About Tibbett’s Mom and the B-29?
This polished aluminum piece of aviation history and Tibbett’s mom have recently come under fire by the current White House. Not because of what the aircraft and Enola represent exactly, but because of her name, actually her middle name … Gay.
Now I know Enola Gay probably just got caught up in some AI app the White House turned loose on its websites, but that also didn’t stop them.
In this current political climate, gay has become a bad word.
Some Americans fear that even seeing the word gay in print, much less hearing it, will instantly turn millions of young people into the walking dead of our society, blindly following a lifestyle of immoral outrage and evil. The Pentagon is currently cleaning house on its websites, ensuring the word gay and its sister acronym DEI and any associated content never again see the light of day … ever. Except, of course, they already have.
The collateral damage to this ridiculous authoritarian move aimed at protecting America is that it will also erase a critical piece of history from existence … as if it never happened … hence the Orwell quote. This is the most recent example of a government that has decided for us that the wrongs of history can be righted by simply removing offending words everywhere.
We had <a href="https://jetwhine.com/2025/02/does-airline-safety-correlate-with-a-diverse-pilot-population/">a story at Jetwhine a few weeks back</a> in which Jenny Beatty took people to task about their need to condemn anyone associated with the DEI acronym. Millions of Americans believe that DEI is responsible for a host of the world’s ills, like … OMG … allowing women to enter roles that have been traditionally male dominated … flying airplanes, becoming air traffic controllers or A&P mechanics for heavens sake.
Take U.S. Air Force Col. Jeannie Leavitt, the country’s first female fighter pilot. Critics claim DEI completely explains her rise in rank and experiences. They of course believe DEI translates into Didn’t Earn It.<img alt="" loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-11520" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/The-White-House-300x170.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="170" srcset="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/The-White-House-300x170.jpg 300w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/The-White-House-1024x580.jpg 1024w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/The-White-House-768x435.jpg 768w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/The-White-House-1536x870.jpg 1536w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/The-White-House-2048x1161.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
<h4>DOD Action</h4>
The Defense Department recently began flagging for removal any photos that could possibly be linked to DEI – like a photo of the Enola Gay because it uses … that word. Other photos thought to be offending contained images of Black women serving during WWII, Korea and Viet Nam. Seriously, we all know those women couldn’t possibly have accomplished anything significant if someone else hadn’t turned a blind eye to their obvious incompetence. And let’s not forget library systems around the nation taking pride in removing offensive books from their shelves.
Today, it’s the Enola Gay on the chopping block of history and references to diversity, equity and inclusion. What’s next?
Even if this current purge is never completed, the White House’s initial efforts since January 20th should give you a pretty good idea of how they’re thinking.
But surely our Democracy is strong enough to withstand this kind of silliness, you say.
Me … I’m not so sure after watching the new administration try to poke holes in the system of government we’ve cherished for nearly 250 years.
Having served overseas in the Air Force during the Vietnam Era, I can tell you that millions of people around the world still envy we Americans this marvelous democracy, even with all its shortcomings … – for now, at least. My time overseas was my first real involvement with people who didn’t think or look like me and frankly it was eye opening, in a good way.
But banning words and books won’t change who we are. People who think differently will still have those ideas locked in our minds … where no government can touch them.
As writer and philosopher George Santayana, said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Think this is all a silly notion?
I challenge you to spend a little time supporting our Democracy and enhancing your own education by reading one of the epic books of the 20th century: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-Third-Reich-ebook/dp/B07XD76H41/ref=sr_1_1?">William Shirer’s “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.</a>” Read about how Germany was slowly transformed into a dictatorship responsible for the deaths of tens of millions during its existence … all because the German people thought Hitler would never last.
And as soon as you finish that massive volume, head over to the library and pick up a copy of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/1984-George-Orwell-ebook/dp/B003JTHWKU/ref=sr_1_2?">George Orwell’s “1984”</a> … assuming it hasn’t been banned, of course.
See if you don’t come away viewing what’s happening here in the good old USA a little differently.
Rob Mark
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<title>Does Airline Safety Correlate with a Diverse Pilot Population?</title>
<link>https://jetwhine.com/2025/02/does-airline-safety-correlate-with-a-diverse-pilot-population/</link>
<comments>https://jetwhine.com/2025/02/does-airline-safety-correlate-with-a-diverse-pilot-population/#comments</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Mark]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Wed, 26 Feb 2025 11:39:50 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Airline Pilot]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[airline safety]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Airlines]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Aviation Education]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Aviation History]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[aviation safety]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Education]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[The Buzz]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Airline accidents]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[airline pilots]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Black pilots]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Captain Jenny Beatty]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[DEI]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[pilots]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[US Airlines]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[white pilots]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Women Pilots]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://jetwhine.com/?p=11478</guid>
<description><![CDATA[A disinformation campaign falsely links “DEI” to airline accidents – let’s check the facts. By Capt. Jenny Beatty There is no extant literature examining this question, so I accessed various sources to compile available data. I researched U.S. scheduled air carriers from the earliest days of aviation to today, including the composition of the airline […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure id="attachment_11483" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-11483" style="width: 184px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img alt="" loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-11483" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/JennyBeatty-uniformjacket-square-300x300.jpg" alt="" width="184" height="184" srcset="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/JennyBeatty-uniformjacket-square-300x300.jpg 300w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/JennyBeatty-uniformjacket-square-1024x1024.jpg 1024w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/JennyBeatty-uniformjacket-square-150x150.jpg 150w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/JennyBeatty-uniformjacket-square-768x768.jpg 768w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/JennyBeatty-uniformjacket-square-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/JennyBeatty-uniformjacket-square-2048x2048.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 184px) 100vw, 184px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-11483" class="wp-caption-text">Capt. Beatty</figcaption></figure>
<strong style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, 'Noto Sans', sans-serif, 'Apple Color Emoji', 'Segoe UI Emoji', 'Segoe UI Symbol', 'Noto Color Emoji'; font-size: 16px;">A disinformation campaign falsely links “DEI” to airline accidents – let’s check the facts.
By Capt. Jenny Beatty
There is no extant literature examining this question, so I accessed various sources to compile available data. I researched U.S. scheduled air carriers from the earliest days of aviation to today, including the composition of the airline pilot profession with regards to white, Black, male, and female-identified pilots and statistics on passenger and crew fatalities from scheduled air carrier accidents (those from intentional acts were omitted).
Scheduled flight operations have carried the U.S. mail since 1911 and passengers since 1914, but records of scheduled air carrier accidents and fatalities were not kept prior to 1927, as far as I could determine. What the available data does show is that fatal accidents were fairly common for the nascent airline industry. However, scheduled air carrier flights were few, and the aircraft carried small numbers of passengers. For example, from 1930 through 1939, there were a total of 94 accidents resulting in 349 fatalities.
<h5>The Data</h5>
The fatal accident rate was also relatively high in the 1950s through the 1970s, as jet aircraft were introduced that carried larger numbers of passengers Pilot training and procedures did not keep pace with advancements in technology and operations. From 1970 through 1979, there were 56 accidents resulting in 2303 fatalities.
As for the airline pilot profession, it was all-male and all-white for the first six decades of air travel, with the brief exception of one white woman pilot hired in 1934 who ended up quitting when she wasn’t permitted to join the pilot union or to fly in adverse weather, despite being as qualified as the men pilots.
In 1963, an airline hired a Black pilot for the first time, and he joined the 18,310 airline pilots and flight engineers employed by all the U.S. airlines at the time. Within two years, there were a total of four Black male airline pilots. The profession remained virtually all-male until 1973 when four white women pilots were hired by four different airlines in the same year. In 1978, when the first Black woman airline pilot was hired, there were approximately 110 Black men and 77 white women airline pilots among the 35,768 airline pilots and flight engineers.
Today, U.S. airlines continue to grow and hire qualified Black and female pilots. However, the representation and rate of hiring are not as high as many perceive it to be. The profession is currently estimated to be about 92 percent white and 95 percent male. Black women airline <span style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, 'Noto Sans', sans-serif, 'Apple Color Emoji', 'Segoe UI Emoji', 'Segoe UI Symbol', 'Noto Color Emoji';">pilots are scarce; my independent research estimates that their number are 120 in total or about 0.1 percent (one-tenth of one percent) of all U.S. airline pilots.
<h5>Safety</h5>
Meanwhile, airline safety has seen significant improvement in modern times, with an overall reduction in accidents. While rare, accidents with fatalities still occur, as recent tragedies have shown. Thorough investigations to determine causal factors and a relentless focus on improvements to aircraft design, flight simulators, pilot training, crew standardization, and other risk mitigation and safety enhancement initiatives remain industry-wide priorities.
The accompanying graphic plots the following data: The number of Black pilots, women pilots, and Black women pilots, as well as fatalities from accidents for U.S. air carriers, 1927 to February 23, 2025.<img alt="" loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-11484" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/US-Air-Carrier-Pilot-Hiring-and-Safety-Trends-1927-2025-1-300x228.jpeg" alt="" width="300" height="228" srcset="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/US-Air-Carrier-Pilot-Hiring-and-Safety-Trends-1927-2025-1-300x228.jpeg 300w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/US-Air-Carrier-Pilot-Hiring-and-Safety-Trends-1927-2025-1-768x584.jpeg 768w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/US-Air-Carrier-Pilot-Hiring-and-Safety-Trends-1927-2025-1.jpeg 844w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
CONCLUSION: The trend of an increase in Black and women airline pilots actually coincides with a decrease in fatalities from U.S. airline accidents. There is no evidence of a cause-and-effect relationship with pilots from these historically excluded populations.
Sources: Airlines for America; Broadnax, 2007; Douglas, 2004; Ebony Magazine, 1965-2006; Gubert, Sawyer & Finnan, 2002; Hardesty & Pisano, 1983; International Society of Women Airline Pilots; Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals; Sisters of the Skies; U.S. DOL Bureau of Labor Statistics; U.S. DOT Federal Aviation Administration; U.S. DOT National Transportation Safety Board. 
 © 2025 Jenny T. Beatty. All Rights Reserved.
Additional articles and resources helpful to professional pilots are on Jenny’s website: <a href="http://www.jennybeatty.com/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.JennyBeatty.com&source=gmail&ust=1740487351618000&usg=AOvVaw1ILj9E1qTzIOa-NqOVYS2v">www.JennyBeatty.com</a>
]]></content:encoded>
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<title>How the FAA Let Remote Tower Technology Slip Right Through Its Fingers</title>
<link>https://jetwhine.com/2025/02/how-the-faa-let-remote-tower-technology-slip-right-through-its-fingers-2/</link>
<comments>https://jetwhine.com/2025/02/how-the-faa-let-remote-tower-technology-slip-right-through-its-fingers-2/#comments</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Mark]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 21 Feb 2025 20:58:25 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[The Buzz]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://jetwhine.com/?p=11471</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Ed note: With all the 2025 chaos in Washington focused on saving money and streamlining ATC, let’s see if anyone at DOGE again notices this time that the FAA completely blew past an opportunity to engage some new technology while saving millions by NOT replacing old ATC control tower buildings. There’s still time to fix […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[Ed note: With all the 2025 chaos in Washington focused on saving money and streamlining ATC, let’s see if anyone at DOGE again notices this time that the FAA completely blew past an opportunity to engage some new technology while saving millions by NOT replacing old ATC control tower buildings. There’s still time to fix this problem. Rob 
____________________________________________ 
In June 2023, the FAA published a 167-page document outlining the agency’s desire to replace dozens of 40-year-old airport control towers with new environmentally friendly brick-and-mortar structures. These towers are, of course, where hundreds of air traffic controllers ply their trade … ensuring the aircraft within their local airspace are safely separated from each other during landing and takeoff.
The FAA’s report was part of President Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act enacted on November 15, 2021. That bill set aside a whopping $25 billion spread across five years to cover the cost of replacing those aging towers. The agency said it considered a number of alternatives about how to spend that $5 billion each year, rather than on brick and mortar buildings.
One alternative addressed only briefly before rejecting it was a relatively new concept called a Remote Tower, originally created by Saab in Europe in partnership with the Virginia-based VSATSLab Inc. The European technology giant has been successfully running Remote Towers in place of the traditional buildings in Europe for almost 10 years. One of Saab’s more well-known Remote Tower sites is at London City Airport. London also plans to create a virtual backup ATC facility at London Heathrow, the busiest airport in Europe.
 
<figure id="attachment_11474" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-11474" style="width: 225px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/RT-at-Loveland-768x1024-1.jpeg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-11474" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/RT-at-Loveland-768x1024-1-225x300.jpeg" alt="Remote Tower" width="225" height="300" srcset="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/RT-at-Loveland-768x1024-1-225x300.jpeg 225w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/RT-at-Loveland-768x1024-1.jpeg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px" /></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-11474" class="wp-caption-text">Max Trescott photo</figcaption></figure>
A remote tower and its associated technology replace the traditional 60-70 foot glass domed control tower building you might see at your local airport, but it doesn’t eliminate any human air traffic controllers or their roles in keeping aircraft separated.
<h2>Inside a Remote Tower Operation</h2>
In place of a normal control tower building, the airport erects a small steel tower or even an 8-inch diameter pole perhaps 20-40 feet high, similar to a radio or cell phone tower. Dozens of high-definition cameras are attached to the new Remote Tower’s structure, each aimed at an arrival or departure path, as well as various ramps around the airport.
Using HD cameras, controllers can zoom in on any given point within the camera’s range, say an aircraft on final approach. The only way to accomplish that in a control tower today is if the controller picks up a pair of binoculars. The HD cameras also offer infrared capabilities to allow for better-than-human visuals, especially during bad weather or at night.
The next step in constructing a remote tower is locating the control room where the video feeds will terminate. Instead of the round glass room perched atop a standard control tower, imagine a semi-circular room located at ground level. Inside that room, the walls are lined with 14, 55-inch high-definition video screens hung next to each other with the wider portion of the screen running top to bottom.
After connecting the video feeds, the compression technology manages to consolidate 360 degrees of viewing area into a 220-degree spread across the video screens. That creates essentially the same view of the entire airport that a controller would normally see out the windows of the tower cab without the need to move their head more than 220 degrees. Another Remote Tower benefit is that each aircraft within visual range can be tagged with that aircraft’s tail number, just as it might if the controller were looking at a radar screen.
<h2>
Why Erect a Remote Tower?</h2>
Cost, for one.
A Remote Tower system can be constructed for a fraction of the dollars required to erect a traditional tower. No bricks, no mortar, no glass, and hence much less labor to make it all operational. That makes them a perfect fit for airports that need to replace their current aging towers or for low-to-medium traffic airports that might currently have no ATC operations at all. Do the math and it’s pretty easy to see that the dollars saved from that $5 billion allotment each year to create a Remote Tower would be significant.
Another benefit is that a Remote Tower can be constructed and become operational in much less time than it takes to build a traditional control tower. This makes a Remote Tower system easily applicable to small airports that might benefit from ATC services but not have enough traffic to warrant controllers living locally to staff the facility. Thanks to the technology involved, a Remote Tower’s video feeds can be piped into a control room located any distance from the airport. The room could be across the runway, across the road, or across town. That’s why a remote tower could fit well at those low-traffic volume airports.
Of course, there’s a but coming.
Remote Towers are not yet certified by the FAA in the US.
Saab engineers were in fact, close to receiving that needed approval earlier this year until the FAA in June pulled the plug on the test site located at Leesburg Executive Airport (KJYO) just outside Washington D.C. A Saab partnership spokesman explained the choice of JYO as a test site. “We zeroed in on Leesburg because of its complex airspace and the amount of traffic, recognizing as a risk-reward issue here. Every time we briefed somebody about the system, they would say, Oh, yeah, but you’re only doing 15,000 to 20,000 operations and it’s in Sweden. So, we picked the busiest airport we could find in the Northeast US. That became our benchmark.”
When the FAA explained the end of the Remote Tower at Leesburg, they pointed the finger at Saab for failing to prove the efficacy of their Remote Tower system. After diving into the available public documents about the Leesburg Remote Tower, they seem to tell a different story. 
As Sherlock Holmes, the world’s greatest consulting detective would say, the game’s afoot.
<h2>
What Happened at Leesburg</h2>
Back in 2015, Saab approached the town of Leesburg in search of a US test site for their then-new Remote Tower technology. If Saab’s test was successful at the non-controlled JYO, that airport would soon begin receiving actual air traffic control services in place of pilots making calls in the blind while attempting to avoid other aircraft.
At the time, Saab again already had several remote towers in operation at airports in the UK and Sweden. London City Airport a busy single runway airport, is now operated completely using the Remote Tower concept. LCY has a rich mix of business aviation and airline traffic in excess of 80,000 takeoffs and landings annually.
As a precursor to installing that full Remote Tower system at Leesburg, the FAA in 2016 wheeled in a portable control tower staffed by contract controllers who began offering ATC services in the newly named Leesburg Maneuvering Area that sits beneath Washington’s Special Use Airspace. Most of the construction costs for the remote tower were covered by Saab. Once the Remote Tower system became operational at Leesburg, the ATC control room was actually operated from an unused airport conference room.
<a href="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Saab-Remote-ATC-tower.jpeg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-11475 size-full" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Saab-Remote-ATC-tower.jpeg" alt="SAAB Remote ATC Tower" width="500" height="280" srcset="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Saab-Remote-ATC-tower.jpeg 500w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Saab-Remote-ATC-tower-300x168.jpeg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" /></a>
Following FAA guidelines outlined in an Advisory Circular, Leesburg’s Remote Tower ran through a range of increasingly complex tests between 2016, 17, and on into 2018. Early on in the evaluation process, the FAA told Saab in a memo, “that all safety performance targets have been met through all periods of operational use of the Saab, Inc., The Saab RT system is approved for provisional ATC services at JYO.” The FAA did however restrict the Remote Tower operations to single-runway airports like JYO with a runway length of no more than 5500 feet.
Local Leesburg users enthusiastically greeted the airport’s new Remote Tower ATC operation. Before system testing began, annual traffic counts at JYO hovered around 53,000. By the time the Remote Tower system’s plug was pulled in June of this year, air traffic had climbed to 79,000 takeoffs and landings, a 45 percent increase. JYO is home to two FBOs, five flight training operations, five flying clubs, and two additional aviation businesses. Leesburg Airport’s manager Scott Coffman said many new aircraft have chosen JYO as their base, including several jets.
In September 2021, the FAA decided it was time to move the Remote Tower certification up the agency’s food chain. It was about this time that the Saab partnership learned the next group of people at FAA who would be helping to certify the Remote Tower system were engineers in the agency’s Tech Ops division. These people are the ones who normally certify new aircraft and new aviation technology. Saab said as it turned out, “Many of them [Tech Ops engineers], admitted they hadn’t dealt with air traffic systems before.”
Prior to the day when Saab and the FAA began to butt heads at Leesburg, Saab engineers had been working to meet the criteria the FAA had earlier provided them. Then on February 18th, 2022, the FAA published a new advisory circular titled ”REMOTE TOWER (RT) SYSTEMS FOR NON-FEDERAL APPLICATIONS,” in which the agency altered the requirements Saab would need to meet in order to have its system certified.
Essentially, the FAA moved the goalposts on the engineers at Saab. A Saab spokesman said the remote tower at Leesburg, “wasn’t designed with some of these [new] technical requirements and design verification requirements. If we were starting a brand new development, sure we could comply with what they’re asking for. But to reverse engineer our former design processes … got to be more and more burdensome.” Saab said the company believed reverse engineering the current design might have consumed an additional two to three years and many millions of additional dollars.
In a letter to the FAA from Saab dated Feb 7, 2023, Michael Gerry, VP of surveillance systems said, “Saab, Inc. has been working on [the] Remote Tower with the FAA, Leesburg Airport, and the State of Virginia for eight years. Over the last two years, we have been engaged with the FAA Technical Operations Team to achieve System Design Approval (SDA) for the Saab Remote Tower system. We concluded detailed reviews of three key planning documents that were first submitted in early 2022: Systems Engineering Management Plan, System Safety Plan, and Software Approval Plan. We appreciate the FAA support and the effort of your team to help us learn the approval process for non-Federal systems. Given our better understanding of the newly defined SDA process as captured in the February 2022 Advisory Circular, Saab will no longer pursue approval of the system currently baselined and operating at Leesburg. Instead, we will focus our efforts on assessing the impact of the SDA requirements on our future system offering, which will form the basis for a possible technical refresh of the Leesburg system baseline. We expect this assessment to take several months, after which time we understand that we will need to resubmit our SDA application to the FAA, along with the appropriate intake documents, to reflect our updated system baseline.”
Despite the years of error-free ATC operations using the Remote Tower system at Leesburg, the FAA also demanded Saab build another version of the Remote Tower at the FAA’s Technical Center in Atlantic City. How this new site at a completely unrelated airport would assist the FAA in certifying the Remote Tower was never explained.
In an attempt to salvage the operating Remote Tower at Leesburg, Saab petitioned the FAA, “to consider any and all means to extend the operational viability decision for the current system, including potentially providing a limited SDA, which would allow the current ATC services at Leesburg to continue.” The agency politely declined.
Adding salt to the wound, On February 21, 2023, the FAA made a presentation to the Leesburg Airport commission, explaining the specific mistakes Saab made during its efforts to gain system design approval for the Remote Tower. The agency said, “Early FAA efforts on Remote Towers determined the approval and operation of these systems should be handled under the contract tower program due to their potential safety impacts, like hazardous and misleading information being provided to controllers and the legal liabilities the airport sponsor and the FAA could be in for if there were any accidents of incidents.” Again, in the five years of testing, no ATC errors were ever reported. The February meeting also detailed the next steps required to archive the Remote Tower project files, in addition to disposal instructions for what it considered unnecessary Saab documentation.
In early March of this year, the FAA sent a confusing, almost contradictory letter to Leesburg mayor Kelly Burk explaining that, “We at the FAA understand and appreciate your frustration with the decision to cease remote tower services at JYO, but for safety reasons, there was no other choice to be made. JYO has a solid safety track record operating as a non-towered airport, and we expect that to continue.” How the agency expected to maintain the airport’s safety record after ATC services were withdrawn was also not explained at the time.
<figure id="attachment_11476" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-11476" style="width: 1024px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/London-City-Airport-1024x439-1.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-11476 size-full" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/London-City-Airport-1024x439-1.jpg" alt="A British Airways Embraer with a tower in the distance" width="1024" height="439" srcset="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/London-City-Airport-1024x439-1.jpg 1024w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/London-City-Airport-1024x439-1-300x129.jpg 300w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/London-City-Airport-1024x439-1-768x329.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-11476" class="wp-caption-text">A British Airways Embraer with a tower in the distance</figcaption></figure>
So why pressure Saab to pull the plug on a system that was working well at Leesburg by creating unrealistic demands for the company? No one is completely certain of the FAA’s motivation, but that 167-page guide to building brick-and-mortar buildings may have been involved. About 18 months ago, the FAA also held a webinar explaining the agency’s process to begin replacing those old towers with the more environmentally friendly ones. They also introduced the architects the agency planned to use for the work. I asked the FAA employee in charge of the session if the agency would be considering Remote Towers as a tactical alternative. My question was met with a resounding no. The woman told me Remote Tower technology was not mature enough, a rather odd assessment despite the operational record at Leesburg. Surprisingly, the FAA’s FY23 business plan mentions the Remote Tower idea in a few places such as noting an internal target to update an operational safety assessment in April of this year, just a few months after the agency had made the decision to shut down the Leesburg experiment. The plan also strangely calls for the agency to update Saab’s Remote Tower Compliance Matrix by the end of September, again something unlikely to occur now that the JYO project was halted.
<h2>The Aftermath</h2>
In February of this year, the Town of Leesburg issued an update on the Remote Tower’s status. The document confirmed that the FAA was canceling the RT program at JYO despite providing ATC services to airport users 10 hours a day since June 2018. The RT shut down completely in the middle of June 2023. That’s when most local users learned of Saab’s reluctance to continue dumping cash into the Remote Tower project when they didn’t believe the FAA would ever certify the system. They also learned Leesburg was at significant risk of losing all ATC services. A Saab spokesman said, “I do think they [the FAA] came at this from a safety standpoint. But they look at it in a very rigid, very limited way. You’ve got a group here that’s not used to certifying this kind of system. And they said, here’s what we require. And until you do that, it doesn’t make it through. We don’t care, because our goal is to make sure everything is 100% or 110% safe.”
An important update to the Remote Tower project appeared in a recent edition of the Reason Foundation’s Aviation News Policy newsletter, written by the foundation’s director of Transportation Policy, Bob Poole. He said, “The Town of Leesburg, VA, has reached an agreement with FAA for continued air traffic control tower operations at the busy general aviation airport. Leesburg will rent the current mobile tower through June 2024, and FAA has agreed to pay the salaries of air traffic controllers operating from that facility for the next five years, while the town begins planning for a brick-and-mortar tower to replace the mobile facility.” The airport manager at Leesburg told me he hopes the FAA will have the new brick-and-mortar building in operation no later than 2030.
Saab hasn’t given up on Remote Towers entirely, however. The company has managed to install several at airports served by the airlines where the facilities serve as an airline’s ramp control towers. The Saab spokesman said leaving the Leesburg remote tower behind, “wasn’t something we took lightly. We feel obligated to help the airport. We want to see the product work, we want to be successful. We put in a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to even get to where we were at Leesburg. We hope this isn’t the end. Certainly, this is a product that is very important to us, around the world outside of the US and inside the US. It’s a market that is still of interest to us.”
Just because the FAA said no to the remote tower idea for now doesn’t mean other countries haven’t embraced the benefits of the technology. Bob Poole also noted that on the other side of the Atlantic, London’s Heathrow Airport plans to build that new Virtual Contingency Backup ATC Facility, replacing the remote operation NATS first created in 2009. NATS is the UK air navigation service provider (ANSP). That original contingency operation, designed to handle about 70% of LHR traffic, was the U.K.’s first remote air traffic control tower and is located off-airport.
Heathrow says their new remote tower backup facility for Europe’s busiest airport will be operational by 2025. Initially, it will use newer technology to provide the same 70% capacity, but a planned second phase would bring it to 100%. It will be interesting to see if, by 2025, Leesburg and the FAA have even broken any ground for their brick-and-mortar facility.
One last note. There was another remote tower test happening in Loveland, Colorado at the Northern Colorado Regional Airport (FNL) using Searidge Technology. Searidge is wholly owned by NATS. A statement from Searidge said the company is not expected to consider the FAA’s requirement to move its test site to Atlantic City.
Here in the US, Raytheon Corporation is said to be teaming up with an Austrian company for a future RT project, so remote tower operations somewhere may yet rise like the Phoenix from the ashes. Reportedly, Raytheon is willing to construct a remote tower test site in Atlantic City, although no timeline for that project has been announced.
<h2>
A Final Thought</h2>
One thing has been gnawing at me since that FAA webinar 18 months ago and after reading through the 167-page guide to building new control towers the agency published a few months back. Building a control tower, or dozens of them actually, especially when the agency has $5 billion each year to spend, represents a whole lot of materials and jobs, unlike a Remote Tower. I have no proof of course, but I’ve seriously wondered if there might not be some subtle connection somewhere between the agency’s plan for constructing all those new control tower buildings and the seeming demise of the Remote Tower concept.
In the end, this story does highlight, yet again, what FAA controllers have known for years, that the agency is far behind the rest of the world when it comes to employing new technology for ATC.
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<item>
<title>Asking Why After an Accident? Consider the Source</title>
<link>https://jetwhine.com/2025/02/asking-why-after-an-accident-consider-the-source/</link>
<comments>https://jetwhine.com/2025/02/asking-why-after-an-accident-consider-the-source/#comments</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Mark]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 11 Feb 2025 21:46:12 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[airline safety]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[The Buzz]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://general-curtain.flywheelsites.com/?p=11407</guid>
<description><![CDATA[February 11, 2025 by Robert Mark Leave a Comment The online magazine AvWeb published a poll on Monday asking readers whether “armchair accident analysis” has gotten out of hand. With slightly more than 600 people responding, readers said it absolutely is out of hand because “it leads to misinformation and conspiracy theories.” I disagree, at […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<header class="entry-header">
<time class="entry-time">February 11, 2025</time> by <a class="entry-author-link" href="https://www.jetwhine.com" rel="author">Robert Mark</a> <a href="https://www.jetwhine.com/2025/02/asking-why-after-an-accident-consider-the-source/#respond">Leave a Comment</a>
</header>
<div class="entry-content">
<img alt="" loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-11156" src="https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/AvWeb-2-203x300.jpg" sizes="(max-width: 203px) 100vw, 203px" srcset="https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/AvWeb-2-203x300.jpg 203w, https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/AvWeb-2-692x1024.jpg 692w, https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/AvWeb-2-768x1137.jpg 768w, https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/AvWeb-2-1038x1536.jpg 1038w, https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/AvWeb-2.jpg 1241w" alt="" width="203" height="300" />The online magazine <a href="http://www.avweb.com/">AvWeb</a> published a poll on Monday asking readers whether “armchair accident analysis” has gotten out of hand. With slightly more than 600 people responding, readers said it absolutely is out of hand because “it leads to misinformation and conspiracy theories.”
I disagree, at least a bit. But not because I endorse conspiracies. I’m actually fascinated by a juicy theory like claiming a particular accident was caused by the Russian covert introduction of rogue squirrel fur into jet fuel production (I made this up).
When I joined the aviation industry decades ago as a wannabe, I was fascinated by the final blue book accident reports the <a href="http://www.ntsb.gov/">NTSB</a> published. I read them cover to cover and always put them down, wondering why. “Why would a pilot or crew do what they did … or why did they skip some step along the way in a particular checklist?” Little did I know then that I was leading myself to a lifelong curiosity about human factors analysis. Of course, I always told myself I’d never repeat that mistake when I flew.
Over 50 years, I’ve been lucky enough to be part of the industry in various jobs: first as an air traffic controller, then as a flight instructor, then as a charter and business aviation pilot, and now primarily as an aviation journalist. Along the way, I also had an opportunity to spend five years as an adjunct staffer at <a href="https://www.medill.northwestern.edu/">Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism</a>, where I learned the importance of being able to present my ideas to a group of people. Each role added another perspective on the industry I’d come to call my own. All this said, my inability to hold a job should be viewed through a special lens … that of a guy with an insatiable curiosity. And you know what the world thinks about that.
It was 1598 when the English poet and playwright Ben Jonson conjectured that “curiosity killed the cat.” In other words, being too curious about something might land you in serious hot water. Being born a few centuries later, I’d learn later just how right Jonson was. I was in high school when I first began reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I’ve lost track of how often I’ve reread many of those stories. I always wanted to know what happened and why. I can’t help myself. But letting my curiosity create a conspiracy theory to create a click-bait story … nope. Not me.
<h5>Curiosity</h5>
<figure id="attachment_11158" class="wp-caption alignright" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-11158"><a href="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/TWA_flight_800.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-11408" src="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/TWA_flight_800-300x200.jpg" alt="TWA Flight 800" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/TWA_flight_800-300x200.jpg 300w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/TWA_flight_800-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/TWA_flight_800-768x512.jpg 768w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/TWA_flight_800-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/TWA_flight_800-2048x1366.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-11158" class="wp-caption-text">NTSB’s Recreation of TWA 800’s fuselage.</figcaption></figure>
I like to think my curiosity has never been focused on publicity. I’ve never believed I was superior to the experts, the dedicated individuals at the <a href="http://www.ntsb.gov">National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)</a>. I’ve been fortunate enough to know several current and former Board members personally. Years ago, Nancy and I visited the NTSB training center in Ashburn, Virginia, when the recreation of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_800">TWA 800</a> was still an intact exhibit. Learning how the staff recreated the fuselage of that Boeing 747 was nothing short of awe-inspiring, especially when you can see how one NTSB investigator determined where a three-inch square piece of metal recovered from Long Island Sound fit into the original structure.
I have enormous respect for the Board. That doesn’t mean that my knowledge and experience are of no value, however.
What has always been important to me are the educational aspects of accident investigation. What information can I share with my own students to prevent them from committing the same, often fatal, mistakes as a crew I’d read about? Over the years, I came to realize that there were plenty of working men and women in the world who were just as curious as me about an accident like the horrible ones we’ve experienced recently in DC, Philly, and Alaska. These people seldom asked me for the technical details about TCAS, DEI, prevailing visibility, or to define lord knows how many dozens of industry acronyms. They asked me to explain the details of an accident in layman’s terms. They didn’t ask me to stretch my brain for the probable cause, so I seldom have.
For instance, when someone asked me how the door could have fallen off that Boeing 737 early last year, I was as honest as I could be based on what little we knew then. Common sense and logic told me there must have been some manufacturing or maintenance mistake along the way. My many years of immersion in the industry pretty much do the rest. I offer readers or listeners a “maybe” to hang their hats on. And I’m perfectly happy to wait for the NTSB to generate their final report.
<h5>Human Factors</h5>
Does all this make me an armchair aviation detective? Maybe. I like to think of myself as an educated reader and consumer of media about an industry I’ve been immersed in my entire life. But I believe readers of any text surrounding aviation accidents must take a little responsibility for some of the crazy conclusions promoted on social media and TV. My theory is simple, “Consider the Source.” No matter what the source, readers/listeners of any story, aviation, politics, or economics, must engage a pretty well-oiled BS meter during our 24/7 news cycle. Conspiracy theories are usually generated by people with some axe to grind. Crazy theories are spread by people who read and accept the words without question expecting someone else to handle all the critical thinking for them. This must stop.
My advice … check out the writer’s bio before you believe anything you read or listen to. If the writer doesn’t have one , I’d steer clear and suggest others do the same.
Fly safely.
Rob Mark
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<title>A Sign of Ice</title>
<link>https://jetwhine.com/2025/02/a-sign-of-ice-2/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Mark]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Mon, 03 Feb 2025 18:02:33 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Airports]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Aviation Education]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Flight Training]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Jetwhine Podcast]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Safety]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[The Buzz]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://general-curtain.flywheelsites.com/?p=11378</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Ed note: While this story is a bit dated, the winter-flying lessons are not. Inexperience, stupidity, get-home-itis — take your pick. Any of them applied to me one late November evening as I cruised Just east of Chicago’s Loop with an electric night sign slung beneath the belly of an old but well-running Champion Citabria. […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[Ed note: While this story is a bit dated, the winter-flying lessons are not.
Inexperience, stupidity, get-home-itis — take your pick. Any of them applied to me one late November evening as I cruised Just east of Chicago’s Loop with an electric night sign slung beneath the belly of an old but well-running Champion Citabria. It was supposed to be a routine advertising trip over Soldier Field adjacent to Merrill C. Meigs Airport (the late CGX). I’d flown the trip many times, and I knew the area well. At the time, I’d logged about 400 hours and had a fresh commercial certificate under my belt. I was already working on my instrument rating.
<img alt="" loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft wp-image-11123" src="https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Night-sign-300x114.jpg" sizes="(max-width: 342px) 100vw, 342px" srcset="https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Night-sign-300x114.jpg 300w, https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Night-sign-1024x389.jpg 1024w, https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Night-sign-768x292.jpg 768w, https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Night-sign.jpg 1358w" alt="" width="342" height="130" />The night sign resembled a chicken-wire cage running underneath the aircraft from wing tip to wing tip. When folks on the ground looked up, they’d see words appearing to move from the right wing to the left, similar to a moving marquee sign you might see at a shopping center. The sign was usually hung on the Champ in the fall when the nights were longer. We removed it during the summer when I’d use the same airplane to tow banners along the Chicago lakefront. To the aircraft owner, the sign meant extra income. To me, as the pilot, the sign meant extra drag.
As I prepared for the flight from Palwaukee Municipal Airport (now Chicago Executive PWK), I was aware that light snow was forecast, but not for nearly three hours after the job would end. Unfortunately, as I approached the plane, I noticed it leaning to one side. The right main tire was flat. After some quick phone calls to the customer about the delay, I managed to find the night mechanic to fix the tire. More than an hour late, I rushed to get airborne into the already darkened sky.
I hadn’t checked the weather for almost two hours, but when I did, DuPage Airport (DPA) to the west was still good VFR. I didn’t think to check the weather at Rockford, about 30 miles northwest of DuPage. If I had, I would have known it was 200 overcast and a half mile in snow.
<h5>Giving the Customer Their Money’s Worth</h5>
I turned on the night sign while still about six miles north of the target, figuring that the customer had the extra bit of time coming. I circled around the target numerous times, and the conversation with the tower controller at Meigs made it tough to tell who was more bored. I’d been over the target for perhaps half an hour when I saw lightning to the west of the city. I called Chicago Flight Service and learned that DuPage was IFR in snow, with a thunderstorm, too. I had to do something. But with only $3 in my pocket, I wouldn’t even be able to pay for the cab ride back to my apartment if I landed at Meigs. I made a few more passes around the target to give the customer his money’s worth before I bade the Meigs controller good night and headed north up the Lake Michigan shoreline toward Palwaukee. Actually, Palwaukee is northwest of Meigs, but I didn’t like to fly directly over the city at night in a single-engine airplane.
Three miles north of Meigs, drizzle began that sounded like thousands of tiny grains of sand hitting the plexiglass windshield. The visibility was still good, so I figured I was home-free, even though the outside air temperature was near freezing. As I looked toward my destination, I realized that some of the city was beginning to disappear in the precipitation. I thought about it for a minute and decided that it was time to break my rule and fly over the city.
<figure id="attachment_11126" class="wp-caption alignright" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-11126"><img alt="" loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-11126 size-medium" src="https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/7GCBC-300x123.jpg" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" srcset="https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/7GCBC-300x123.jpg 300w, https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/7GCBC-1024x419.jpg 1024w, https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/7GCBC-768x314.jpg 768w, https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/7GCBC-1536x628.jpg 1536w, https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/7GCBC-2048x837.jpg 2048w" alt="" width="300" height="123" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-11126" class="wp-caption-text">A much newer version of the Champ I flew in this story.</figcaption></figure>
The intensity of the rain increased, but only for a short time. Then, the only sound was the constant drone of that 150-horsepower Lycoming. It took me a few minutes to realize why it was so quiet and why I no longer saw the rain streaming across the windshield. It was freezing. I saw tiny drops of ice clinging to the struts and tires; but, most of all, it was clinging to the hundreds of little pieces of wire on that big night sign.
<h5>One Stupid Decision After Another</h5>
As I looked behind me to the shoreline, I decided that I couldn’t turn around. Palwaukee, now six miles ahead, was reporting three miles visibility in freezing rain. I did the only thing that I thought I could — I climbed — hoping to give myself more time once this big block of ice decided to come down. Straight ahead, the rotating beacon of what was then the Glenview Naval Air Station seemed to beckon. For years, I’d been told that civilian airplanes were not allowed there except in emergencies. The lights of Glenview’s 7,000-foot runway reflected off the ice on my sign as I passed over the field.
Palwaukee was two-and-a-half miles away as I flew a straight-in approach to Runway 30 Right. Even though I was now holding full power, the aircraft began to descend from 1,500 feet AGL. A mile out, I was down to 400 feet agl. The icicles hanging from the night sign looked like stiff tinsel. I held full power almost to the ground. About six feet above the runway I began easing back on the throttle. As the rpm slowed through 2,250, the old Champ gave up the fight and fell to the runway. I don’t think that airplane rolled more than 200 feet before it stopped. The snow, sleet, and freezing rain were now so heavy that I could barely see the tower a half mile away.
As I taxied closer to the fuel pumps, I watched the line attendant’s eyes widen. I shut down and took a few deep breaths before I got out. Now it was my turn to look surprised. The little taildragger looked as though it were encased in clear, shiny plastic.
After I tied the airplane down, I headed for the airport restaurant and some coffee. I ran into one of the charter pilots I knew and told him what had happened. “Why didn’t you land at Meigs?” he asked. “Why didn’t you declare an emergency and land at Glenview?” he continued. “Why didn’t you keep closer track of the weather? What kind of decisions are those?” By now, I realized that most of my decisions had been pretty awful.
There were plenty of options, that night, but I’d been too single-minded to recognize them and make a better decision. There are always other options, but you have to look out the windows to actually see them. And if you’re lucky, you live to tell the tale.
<hr />
Robert P. Mark, AOPA 634507, is a business jet pilot, a flight instructor and publisher at Jetwhine.com. (This story was originally published by AOPA Pilot and is reprinted here with permission.
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<item>
<title>Flying Aero: One Passenger’s Experience</title>
<link>https://jetwhine.com/2025/01/flying-aero-one-passengers-experience/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Paula Williams]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Mon, 20 Jan 2025 18:07:25 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[The Buzz]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://general-curtain.flywheelsites.com/?p=11381</guid>
<description><![CDATA[By Brian T. Coleman An Aero ERJ prepared for departure For discerning travelers seeking to bypass the hassles of commercial air travel, Aero offers first-class seating on private jets. The luxury airline, based at Van Nuys airport in Southern California, presents a compelling alternative to traditional travel options. Aero flies out of Van Nuys, CA […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[By Brian T. Coleman
<figure id="attachment_11104" class="wp-caption alignleft" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-11104"><img alt="" loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-11104 size-medium" src="https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Brian-1-300x220.jpg" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" srcset="https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Brian-1-300x220.jpg 300w, https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Brian-1-768x564.jpg 768w, https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Brian-1.jpg 792w" alt="" width="300" height="220" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-11104" class="wp-caption-text">An Aero ERJ prepared for departure</figcaption></figure>
For discerning travelers seeking to bypass the hassles of commercial air travel, <a href="https://aero.com/">Aero</a> offers first-class seating on private jets. The luxury airline, based at Van Nuys airport in Southern California, presents a compelling alternative to traditional travel options. Aero flies out of Van Nuys, CA airport to select destinations, including Aspen, Sun Valley, Palm Springs, Las Vegas, Napa Valley, and Cabo San Lucas. They deliver passengers to their destination in style and comfort with a focus on luxury and efficiency. Today was my opportunity to experience Aero service.
Aero was founded by Garrett Camp, co-founder of Uber, with the goal of bridging the gap between commercial first-class and semi-private jet charters, offering scheduled service to select destinations. Essentially, Camp viewed Aero as the Uber of air travel. Service was first launched with flights between the Mediterranean vacation Islands of Mykonos and Ibiza before bringing luxury travel to America. In addition to scheduled flights, Aero offers exclusive flights to major sporting and entertainment events nationwide. Aero operates a fleet of Embraer 135 and Legacy jets configured for between 13 and 19 passengers.<img alt="" loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-11107" src="https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Brian-4-300x219.jpg" sizes="(max-width: 256px) 100vw, 256px" srcset="https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Brian-4-300x219.jpg 300w, https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Brian-4-768x561.jpg 768w, https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Brian-4.jpg 794w" alt="" width="256" height="187" />
Aero invited me to experience them on a trip from Van Nuys, CA, to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, and back. A member of their marketing team directed me to book my reservation on their website so I could have a complete passenger experience. Booking my flight was a seamless process. The most difficult part was deciding on a date that fit my busy schedule. The <a href="http://www.aero.com">www.aero.com</a> site was a simple, user-friendly, clutter-free website. It is well laid out with only the basics of what passengers need to make their booking. A nice addition to the site, though, would be a cabin layout graphic so the passenger could easily choose their preferred seat. Of special note, Aero does not fly to every destination every day of the week and offers only seasonal service to some airports.
After booking my reservation, one of their very professional concierge team contacted me and stayed in contact with me throughout the entire process. The concierge team members I worked with were efficient and answered every question I could throw at them. For example, having never flown out of Van Nuys airport, I had no idea where to park. After a text to my concierge, I learned valet parking is available for $45. In addition, the valet company could wash or detail my car while I was traveling, a valuable convenience for busy travelers.
The day before departure, another text message gave me the tail number of the aircraft I would fly to Cabo. On FlightAware, I learned my ERJ-135 was initially delivered to American Airlines in 2006. You would never know any of their ERJ-135s were not brand-new. It’s not uncommon for these planes to move from airline to airline, being completely refurbished in between. Additionally, Aero flies the smaller Legacy 600, which is laid out in a more traditional private jet configuration with seats facing each other.
At Van Nuys
When I arrived at Van Nuys airport, I easily reached the exclusive terminal for Aero passengers at Signature Aviation. Awaiting me on the tarmac were four ERJ-135 aircraft beautifully painted in a deep black livery. They oozed elegance. There was also a smiling valet ready to take my car for its much-needed spa treatment.
In the well-appointed terminal building, Aero provides a private, luxurious atmosphere, with efficient and courteous staff ensuring a smooth check-in process. The waiting area, while comfortable and well lit, could<img alt="" loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-11105" src="https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Brian-2-239x300.jpg" sizes="auto, (max-width: 178px) 100vw, 178px" srcset="https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Brian-2-239x300.jpg 239w, https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Brian-2.jpg 512w" alt="" width="178" height="223" /> benefit from a few more amenities. However, there were some delicious fresh pastries, cold drinks in a self-serve refrigerator, and a team member was offering Veuve Clicquot Champagne and a non-alcoholic sparkling wine. As you would imagine, all of this was provided free of charge. Sadly, it didn’t look like any of the other passengers touched the yummy pastries.
Aero’s fleet of ERJ-135 jets, includes all-forward-facing seats across eight rows of 1-1 seating, ensuring everyone gets both an aisle and a window seat. They are very similar to domestic first-class seats but with much larger seat pitch. While I didn’t have a tape measure with, I imagine the seat pitch was at least 45 inches. The over wing exit row pitch was even larger. With this spacing, there is plenty of room for everyone. When flying as a regular regional jet, the ERJ-135 is typically configured for up to 37 seats.
An Ontime Departure
Our scheduled takeoff time was 9:30 AM. We were fully boarded in 4 minutes. The captain pushed back … actually, we taxied forward at 9:40 and were in the air four minutes later. Oh the joy of flying out of a non-commercial airport. The flight was scheduled for two and a half hours. The in-flight experience was exceptional, with a modern cabin design, spacious seating, and an attentive flight attendant who ensured all passengers’ needs were promptly met.
<img alt="" loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft wp-image-11110" src="https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Brian-8-300x221.jpg" sizes="auto, (max-width: 222px) 100vw, 222px" srcset="https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Brian-8-300x221.jpg 300w, https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Brian-8-768x565.jpg 768w, https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Brian-8.jpg 778w" alt="" width="222" height="163" />
There is no inflight entertainment on Aero, but no one seemed to mind as everyone seemed to be using their phone, tablet or computer. I have been wondering for a while now how important IFE is, especially on short flights when everyone has a phone or tablet with hours of content preloaded? All Aero aircraft are equipped with <a href="http://www.starlink.com/">Starlink</a> satellite service which I found to be surprisingly fast and reliable. Running SpeedTest, I consistently received 22 Mbps download and 10Mbps upload speeds with a ping of 4 milliseconds. Very impressive for travel at 40,000 feet in an aluminum tube. Aero also beefed up their fleet with additional soundproofing, so the jets are very quiet, making the journey even more enjoyable.
The complimentary gourmet food offerings provided by <a href="https://erewhon.com/">Erewhon</a>, an upscale grocery store, were a delightful touch. While the selections were all tasty, the portions were somewhat small. But no one seemed to care but me. The menu offered a choice of Banana Bread Bites with Seasonal Berries, Strawberry Overnight Oats, and Smoked Salmon Tartine. As the flight was almost full, 15 of the 16 seats were occupied, I told the flight attendant to take everyone’s order first and give me whatever remained. I knew I’d be happy with any of the choices. I ended up with a delicious Smoked Salmon Tartine. There were complimentary pre-packaged snacks available as more Veuve Clicquot and other cocktails and soft drinks were offered further enhancing the in-flight dining experience. I’d rate the comfort and service on this flight as excellent.
Using the Lav
A few thoughts on the plane’s lavatory. Although very spacious, the soap and lotion bottles were not secured and ended up in the sink. The flush button is VERY small an in a difficult location some passengers will find difficult to locate. I learned this the hard way since the previous passenger either did not find or chose not to use the flush button. I believe Aero custom-designed the lav or at least chose a different one than what was installed with American Airlines owned the aircraft. This oversight, however small, can lead to some interesting surprises.
Another item I found strange was the quality of the hand towels in the lav. They were very large and thick… a great quality product. However, I was surprised to see them because many passengers typically flush paper towels down the toilet which would clog the system. This is the main reason traditional commercial airlines don’t use regular towels and eventually switched to super thin and quick dissolving paper ones. Now I’m not complaining about having great towels. Again, I’m just surprised that Aero has such a nice product for their lavatories with its potential to disrupt their entire service.
Arrival in Cabo
It was a clear day and the sights going down the Baja peninsula were truly specular. I saw my most favorite town in all of Baja … Bahia de Los Angeles, a tiny village where I’ve been able to scuba dive many times. Its geography makes it super easy to spot from the air. With the Starlink satellite network aboard, I was able to snap a picture of the town and send it to my marine biologist friend, Dr. Hans Bertsch, with whom we have spent many hours underwater observing nudibranch.
After the quick 2.5-hour flight, we landed at 12:15 and taxied to the gate. A highlight of the Aero experience was the efficient and hassle-free arrival at Cabo San Lucas. One of the standout features was the expedited customs and immigration process just for Aero passengers. After landing, passengers were promptly guided through a separate, streamlined lane, significantly reducing wait times. The customs officers were professional and efficient, ensuring the entire process was quick and stress-free. This allowed all to start their vacations almost immediately after landing, without the usual delays associated with international travel. Assistance with luggage retrieval and transport was much appreciated by all the guests and well-organized on the part of Aero.
A travel podcaster’s job is never done. Despite the beautiful location, my real vacation in Cabo would need to wait for another time since I needed to return to Los Angeles on the next flight home, in about 45 minutes. Although Aero does not have a private terminal at Cabo, the waiting area was large and well lit. It included a small bar was where I purchased a drink and snack while waiting to board the flight home. While waiting to board, I engaged in a very pleasant conversation with the bar tender who was born and raised in Cabo. We talked about my experience flying down and my observations of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bah%C3%ADa_de_los_%C3%81ngeles">Bahia de Los Angeles</a>. With a big smile, he informed me that he also loves vacationing there. We had a laugh and then it was time to board the flight home.<img alt="" loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-11111" src="https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Brian-9-300x218.jpg" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" srcset="https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Brian-9-300x218.jpg 300w, https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Brian-9-768x559.jpg 768w, https://www.jetwhine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Brian-9.jpg 890w" alt="" width="300" height="218" />
The concierge in Mexico was originally from London and was awesome. Boarding started at 1:15PM and the door was closed at 1:20. The return flight mirrored the positive experience of the outbound journey. Two of the passengers were cold on this leg and asked for blankets. I thought the temperature was perfect, but the flight attendant adjusted the temperature a bit higher, and everyone was happy.
The food choices on the return flight were from their lunch menu again with items prepared by Erewhon. I had the roast beef sandwich from choices of Asian Chicken Salad and Tibetan Power Salad with Teriyaki Glazed Tofu. After finishing my sandwich, I was still hungry, so I asked the flight attendant if there were any other goodies. She told me there was an extra Asian Chicken Salad. She promptly delivered it to me with an ice-cold Coke.
We landed back at Van Nuys on time, at 3:54. We started deplaning at Signature by 3:56. Yes, only two minutes after touchdown the door was open where another Aero concierge met us. The valet had all the cars waiting and everyone was back to reality and enjoying LA traffic for their ride home or wherever they were headed.
Aero delivers on its promise of a premium flying experience characterized by the comfort, service, and efficient operations of private-jet travel. The airline offers a compelling alternative for discerning travelers seeking a luxurious and hassle-free travel experience. My flight with Aero was a positive experience overall, and I can’t wait to fly them again.
Maybe next time I can spend a few days on the ground and enjoy the destination as much as the flight on Aero.
Author Note: While Aero provided this flight at no cost to me, my opinions are my own. I can’t be bought.
__________________________
Brian Coleman, a lifetime IK United premium flyer, is co-host and producer of the popular travel podcast, <a href="https://thejourneyisthereward.org/">The Journey is the Reward</a>.
 
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