Isabel Goyer

Probability and hype in the new airplane game. By now you might have heard about the new Boom supersonic jet, a “demonstrator” version that’s set to fly sometime in 2017. That’s what the company making the jet, Boom Technology, out of Denver, Colorado, says anyway. Um!okay. Now here’s what will really happen. Let me start […]

A non-partisan look at how the new president’s policies will affect pilots and manufacturers. It’s been said again and again, and here I am saying it, too. Donald Trump’s ascension to power is unlike any other individual’s in our nation’s history. There has, thank goodness, never, ever been a presidential election like this in the […]

On separate sides of the continent, a pair of oceanside municipalities are getting evil in their attempts to shut down historic airfields. You have to give a little credit to former Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley, who in March of 2003 ordered city crews to destroy Meigs Field, the iconic Chicago general aviation destination that […]

Why the war hero, test pilot and airshow great means so much to us pilots Was Bob Hoover the greatest pilot ever? I don’t know. He surely needs to be in that conversation, but when all is said and done, the result is discovering that the question is unanswerable. Truth is, it’s impossible to say […]

By the time you read this, there might not be quite as much buzz surrounding the remarkable film by Academy Award®-winning director Clint Eastwood and starring Academy Award®-winning actor Tom Hanks, which chronicles the so-called “Miracle on the Hudson.” Then, again, with award season getting underway, the film might be generating a different kind of […]

A court ruling puts the principle of FAA control at risk. Why that’s something aviation can’t live with. When the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on a liability suit by a pilot’s widow over an allegedly faulty engine that caused the crash that killed the woman’s husband, they opened a can of worms, angry, […]

Now that the new ACS testing standards are in effect, the good news is, it’s a whole new ballgame. This is a good thing, as the old ballgame, that is, the way the FAA administered tests, was, at best, useless, and, at worst, an abusive bureaucratic exercise that cost test applicants untold millions of dollars […]

Or!when really smart, successful aviation people propose really baffling things. When Elon Musk, founder of Tesla, the promising but challenged electric car company, and Space X, the promising but challenged commercial space company, unveiled at the International Astronautical Congress conference in Guadalajara, Mexico, his plans to go to Mars, well, really, for all of us […]

The passage into law of the 3rd class pilot medical certification just last week as I write has changed the way hundreds of thousands of pilots will get their medicals. It’s a fundamental change in regulations for private aviation that I’ve been pushing for these past 20 years, and it’s finally here. Victory for the […]

There’s nothing but bad and often disturbing news these days when it comes to the 2016 United States presidential race; neither major party candidate is exempt here. My question is at face value a simple one: What kind of effect will the election have on aircraft sales? The sales figures for the second quarter of […]