Five Things That Pilots Got Wrong

Today, one of the biggest risks we face is our shared sense that we have achieved some kind of pinnacle in light plane aviation or, worse yet, we’re well along the way on a downward slide. There is, unfortunately, plenty of data to support these notions. Prices of all things aviation, from planes to insurance […]

It’s an attitude that’s closely connected to the myth of the hero pilot, the notion that no matter what happens in the course of any given flight, a “real” pilot will be able to handle it, summoning up the special something needed to right the wrong and save the day. With that thought came a […]

The post-World War II boom in light aviation was both huge and, as it turned out, unsupportable, at least for a while and at the levels imagined by manufacturers in the days after V-J Day. The problem was optimism. After the war, America began emerging from the privations made necessary by that conflict and the Depression. So, […]

It wasn’t until the late 1920s that small and fairly flyable designs by companies like Aeronca, with its C-3 flying bathtub, and Taylor Aircraft, with its Cub, were introduced that made sense for the average person to own and that they could go flying in and reasonably be expected to return, both plane and occupants, […]

The notion that you have to be a special kind of human being to be a pilot, which persists to this day with some folks, was a huge obstacle in the way of the creation of a sensible, accessible aviation segment. How it happened is clear: For 20 or 30 years, the world of aviation […]

It’s important to remember, before and for a time after the Wrights launched down their sandy path, that how people perceived flying and what its future might be were far different from how we understand it today. There were no Federal Aviation Regulations (FARs), no FAA to guide development. No concept of shared airspace. Even […]