Opinion

The FAA announced earlier this week that the Part 23 Rewrite has taken effect. This means that the rule, which gives manufacturers leeway to employ what are known as consensus standards to meet airworthiness standards instead of the FAA’s prescriptive rules. Those rules have been set in stone for decades now, and the oddest thing […]

When it comes to fighting against FBOs that overcharge for fuel, it always seemed like a fight the little guys like us couldn’t win. Good news. Sometimes member organizations make a fuss about something because it makes the members happy, and sometimes they do because they think it will encourage change, even if the growling […]

It looks and sounds good, but what do the numbers really mean. Earlier this week, the AOPA Air Safety Institute released its Joseph T. Nall Report, which details the safety picture of the most recent year for which there is complete data. This year it was 2104, and the news is good. Accidents were down […]

Earlier this year when the FAA adopted the BasicMed path to FAA medication certification, we were skeptical that this mixed bag approach to what we’d expected to be a “drivers license medical” would do much. We were wrong. It’s been a real success in its own way. According to the FAA, more than 15,000 pilots […]

When you get familiar with something important to you, it’s easy to forget its substance and focus on its form. That’s true with brands like ours, Plane & Pilot. It’s probably not something you think about beyond the fact that it’s a name you know and hopefully trust and maybe even love. I know that’s […]

AOPA aims to fight the good fight. We’re behind them all the way, but here’s why we’re not holding our breath. We have our occasional disagreements, but as is usually the case, AOPA’s Mark Baker is hitting the nail on the head with his organization’s efforts to slow down questionable fuel pricing practices at airports […]

The emotional appeal of the flying car is something I don’t understand. Airplanes have been around for a long time, and they’re really good at doing what they do. Cars have been around even longer, and they’re even better at doing what they do, better, to explain, in that cars are supposed to stay firmly […]

I’ve been to a lot of EAA airshows in Oshkosh, but this one was special for me for me in one big way. For the past couple of decades and change, I’ve been happily trekking to Oshkosh in late July come rain or come shine—it’s been a lot more shine than rain, luckily. Lord knows […]

EAA’s Jack Pelton spells out the potential issues with putting on the world’s biggest airshow under a privatized ATC and what it could mean to all of GA. There are a small number of people in the GA community, pilots and even a very few industry insiders, who are sympathetic to the idea of privatizing […]

The sighting is the most recent in a series stretching back 80 years. For those of you who don’t believe in ghosts, please don’t stop reading quite yet. The most recent sighting of the ghost of Amelia Earhart was perhaps the most moving one yet. By now you’ve surely read the analysis of the major […]