Buying online...
crapshoot, or a
very smart idea?

My involvement with the Internets goes back to about 1992, when “chatting” was generally pervert-free, and buying things on the web was still pretty scary. Oh, what changes we have seen in those 15 years.

Today, we buy online, we bank online, we date online, and yes – dare I say it – some goofballs even have virtual sex online. I haven’t any plans to try that last one. Not even sure how it’s done…maybe it’s best I don’t know.

Somewhere along that wild and crazy trip through cyberspace, eBay came our way, and it’s become the gold standard online auction house for everything you can possibly imagine, including airplanes. I’ve bought and sold a few things on eBay, with great results. But buying an airplane? Come on, does anyone have that kind of trust anymore?

Yes, it turns out.

Just a couple of years ago, there were one a tiny handful of airplanes for sale on eBay – it was still far too weird a concept. Well, a quick visit to eBay Motors today revealed 113 listings, so if there were ever any sort of trepidations about buying your bird online, I guess they are officially past history.

Here's a taste of what I found:

• A 1984 WESTWIND II business jet, with a current bid of $1,800,100. There was a dogfight over this one, with 64 bidders waging war.

• 1999 Bombardier Challenger 604. No bidders yet, but it does have a “Buy It Now” price of $19,750,000 if you must have this one.

• A Dassault Falcon 50, in perfect condition, with a current bid of $11,900,000.

• Forty two bidders were killing each other over a 1966 HUGHES TH 55 269A helicopter, with a starting bid of $37,100. The reserve had not been met, so this one ought climb fast as the auction nears the end.

• Not all the items are plain Jane flyers either. How about a 1961 Broussard 6-place STOL Warbird with a starting bid of $33,100.00? If you want this one, you’re gonna have to battle 21 bidders who all have the same idea as you.

• If larger iron is your thing, how about a 1944 Douglas DC-3/C-47 Freighter with a current 135 certificate? Starting bid is only $75,000. I’d love to throw down on this one.

• There are at least 18 bidders who think this is a sweet deal – a 1974 Cessna Centurion II Turbo 210 with a current bid of only $58,100.00. This is not a basket job either, it has great avionics and decent times left on the powerplants.

I’m still one of those airplane buyers who has to see it, touch it and fly it before making a respectable offer. I want a fair A & P to give it a once over, even if it's on my dime. So buying a sight-unseen airplane off the Internets is still too far out there in riskland for me.

I'm not saying any of these airplanes listed here are risky purchases, and I suspect that you can make a serious offer on the high dollar ones persuant to them passing a pre-buy inspection. There may be some real bargains here, if you have the stomach to drop money on a plane you've never seen in person.

So if you see something on eBay that fits your mission plan for a new airplane, go for it, after all, it is your money. I personally would never, ever buy a car without first driving it and poking around under the hood, so how could I ever buy a plane without the same due diligence?

For now, I'll do my shopping in the real world. Give me Trade-a-Plane and a telephone, thank you very much.

ps: If you have an eBay success story about a great plane that was bought through an online auction, email me here and I'll post it.

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Dream Hangar,
Part Duex!

Yesterday, I posted part one of my Dream Hangar 2007 collection, the Top 10 airplanes that would be in my hangar, that is, if I had an Old Growth money tree out back in my forest producing crisp sheets of dead presidents thick on the limb.

In part one of this post, I presented these five, in descending order:

10. LoPresti Fury
9. Beechcraft Starship
8. Terrafugia Transition
7. The Space Shuttle
6. North American P-51 Mustang

So without a drum roll, here is the final five in this post, leading up to my favorite airplane of 2007:

5. Air Force One: The avionics it has up front can only be described as awesome, but they pale in comparison to the nifty defensive weaponry it must have hidden down where the luggage used to ride. Damn nice furniture too, and forget about TFRs, you can take this aircraft any damned place you want. Clearance…we don’t need no stinkin’ clearance!

4. Three-Eight Charlie: Jerrie Mock flew this highly-modified 1953 Cessna 180 from Columbus, Ohio, around the freakin’ world solo to be the first woman to make that trip since Amelia Earhart went missing with her old pal Fred. Corner me someday and I’ll tell you the long story of N1538C and why this plane is so special and sadly so ignored in aviation history. Shameless plug: Info on my screenplay about Jerrie and her historic trip can be found here.

3. The DC-3: What hasn’t the DC-3 done, except define the entire commercial aviation industry? Gooneys also served us well in WW2, hauling the mail (and reportedly a few live camels) over the Burma Hump a time or two. There is just something about this aircraft that makes me sweat when I am within 100 yards of one. And in the case of Duggy – the Smile in the Sky – I can’t help but grin when I'm near him. If you’ve ever been up close and personal with Duggy, then you know what I’m sayin’. It's been confirmed that all airplanes have personalities, and Duggy's is a hoot! Sure like to ask his daddy Mitch why Duggy is always smiling...

2. Pilatus PC-12: This wonderful airplane has moved up to No. 2 this year because over the years, I have grown to love the seriously ‘useful’ useful load and mondo cargo door of the PC–12. Yes, a Citation Mustang flies higher and faster, but as Dr. Phil says, let’s be real...I will never EVER get any insurance carrier to insure me to fly a Citation single pilot – regardless of premiums. But the Pilatus has a reputation as a safe, easy flier with a very low accident rate. And for some reason, when you attach a propeller to a turbine engine, premiums go down. If you've ever watched a PC-12 drop into an undeveloped patch so short that it'd feel just about right to a Piper Cub driver, then you know the short field capabilities of a Pilatus. Sign me up for one...it has it all.

1. Cirrus SR22-GTS: For the money, the best new airplane sold today. Any more glass in its spacious cockpit and you’d think you were at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. This plane used to be No. 4 on the list, but now claims the top spot since I've flown one and fell farther in love. In all honesty, I have never flown the Columbia 400, which I suspect is very nice. But I was so impressed with the SR22-GTS, I cannot imagine how a four-place composite GA personal airliner could be any nicer than the Cirrus.

There you have it boyz and grrls. Again, I am asking my readers to drop me an email here and tell me your personal Top 10…I’ll publish them in the future if I can. Some lists are already coming in, and it is tons of fun to look into the minds of other pilots and view their dream hangar.

UPDATE #1: 0409Z: I might have found out why Duggy is smiling...Mitch Carley, Duggy's creator writes to tell me the Dugster will have a bit part in this movie.

UPDATE #2: 12/28, 00:45Z – A couple of readers have thrown in their two cents worth on this topic. The Pelican says his top five would be a Lockheed Super Connie (in T-Dub colors), a Grumman Goose, a DeHaviland Beaver (on floats), a North American B-25 Mitchell Bomber and “absolutely” a DC-3.

Adam V from Salina, Kansas lists his top 10 single-engine picks as (10) Aviat Husky; (9) Maule MX-7-180B/C; (8) Cessna 210; (7) AOPAs Win-a-Six Cherokee 6 260 or Piper 6XT; (6) Beechcraft A-36; (5) Piper PA-46 Malibu Mirage; (4) Pilatus PC-12; (3) Cirrus SR-22 GTS; (2) Lancair IV-P and his top choice, a Socata TBM-850. He also lists a Piaggio Avanti II on his list of Top 10 multi-Engine/jet, which has a Boeing 737-800 BBJ2 in the top spot.

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New, new, new!

This is a post I have ran before, but I update it every year about this time, squeezing a few more smiles out of it. So my new readers can enjoy this time-consuming game we pilots all play, here is the New Year’s 2007 version:

Filling the Hanger of Your Dreams

Every pilot is the same when it comes to these flying machines…we’ve never met one we didn’t like. But when we really stop and think about it, exactly which ones are more dear to us than all the others? If you are a true-blue aviator, it will be very, very hard to pick your personal “Top 10” favorite aircraft of all time.

Compiling your own list of 10 favorite aircraft can be fun, and if you are like me, this will be a great way to amuse yourself for hours. It should not be a list of what you can actually ever afford, but a “dream list” of what 10 airplanes would be in your hanger if money were an unlimited resource.

With that said, here is “Part One” of my personal “Top 10” list in descending order…enjoy:

10. LoPresti Fury: This great new certified airplane is the dream of notorious speed merchant Roy LoPresti, and it's fast, sexy and did I mention fast? It jumps into my Top 10 because I believe it is one of the most exciting new projects about to come out way in years. It is designed for those who define “car” as anything built by Ferrari.

9. Beechcraft Starship: Because I’d want something designed by Burt Rutan in the dream hangar. This rare beauty was panned as having horrible fuel economy, but that is completely mitigated by its museum-quality sex appeal. Sure, they are all in scrap heaps now, but friends, this is fantasyland here, so anything is possible.

8. Terrafugia Transition: Speaking of exciting projects, this “roadable airplane” from the fertile minds at MIT should be a huge hit if/when if comes to market. As an airplane, it delivers LSA performance, so don’t expect this to be a serious cross-country vehicle. But when you factor in the capability to suck in your wings, switch power to the drive wheels, and cruise out of the airport gate to your destination, there is nothing in the air that will even come close to this breathtaking and daring concept. I have flown the transition in X-plane, and it is smooth and stable. I want one…

7. The Space Shuttle: Sure, you'll need a set of big, honkin’ rockets to punch out through the stratosphere, and sure, it has the glide characteristics of a brick, but man, what a view after you get it trimmed out at it’s usual cruising altitude of about a gazillion feet AGL. Plus, the Shuttle fleet is getting close to retirement, so you might be able to soon pick one up cheap on eBay.

6. North American P-51: What red-blooded pilot wouldn’t have one of these V-12 powered monsters in his/her dream hanger? And nothing shouts “ramp appeal” quite like a Mustang…and I’m not talking about the one made by Cessna either. The newest Citation is very cool, but the first time a Citation 'Mustang' parks next to a real Mustang, you can bet the P-51 will walk over and kick it’s ass for "borrowing" it's name.

Tune in tomorrow for part two of this post...and in the meantime, try to make up your own list. You can then email it to me here, and I'll try to post some reader lists soon.

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C-ya next week.

World of Flying is taking a short Christmas break while we chow down on Julie's world-famous lasagne, tear into a mountain of presents, build fires and enjoy the warmth with family that we only seem to see during the holidays.

Unless something huge happens in the aviation world, we'll be back in a few days.

In the meantime, if you wish to learn more about how NORAD tracks Santa, Avweb has a great podcast available...it's an interview with "NORAD Tracks Santa Project" Officer Maj. Stacia Reddish that will entertain as well as educate.

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Emirates Airlines
is now officially on
my “No Fly” list

CNN was reporting Thursday that as of January, 2007, Emirates Airlines plans to launch mobile phone usage in its planes, making it the first airline to allow passengers to make cell phone calls on its flights.

Oh great. So along with crying babies, tiny morsels of snack food, cranky passengers, high fares, people kicking the back of your seat, now airline travelers – at least on one carrier – will have to endure some dude sitting next to them barking loudly into his cell, telling his mistress lies about his girlfriend.

And while this is only being allowed on one foreign airline far, far away from U.S. airspace, the FAA has taken notice:

U.S. carriers don't allow in-flight cell phone calls, although the FAA is reviewing the safety concerns associated with mobile calls made in the air. The regulatory agency has asked a committee to conduct a study looking at whether portable electronic devices like cell phones interfere with aircraft navigation systems. Findings of the study are due at the end of December.

The use of cell phones anywhere can be annoying on so many levels. I still cringe when I’m sitting in a quiet restaurant and I hear someone’s phone blurting out a very poor quality Motley Crue, Jessica Simpson or Flintstones ringtone that they downloaded off the Internets. WTF, can't phones just RING? And as I walk through most any airport, I often wonder who really is schizophrenic and who's just using one of those whizbang Bluetooth earpieces – a device I am somehow managing to live without.

So now in addition to all that we have to endure to fly commercial, the day may be coming as soon as 2008 when we will be seated next to Chatty Cathy as she argues with her ‘tweenage daughter that YES, she does have to wear underwear, no matter what Britney Spears does. In such close confines as an aircraft cabin, do we really need to be that up close and personal with a couple of hundred strangers and their cell phone conversations?

Cell phones on airliners…really bad idea. This trend is just one more reason for travelers to loathe flying commercially. And if the full-fare U.S. carriers decide to allow this, I really hope the low cost airlines like Southwest, Jetblue and Airtran avoid the urge to follow suit, giving smart ticket buyers just one more reason to pay less to get more by avoiding the legacy carriers.

When airliner cell phone use comes to the U.S., the days of sleeping during a flight – which is next to impossible now – will be gone forever. If that happens, buy stock in Bose, ‘cause every frequent flyer will need a set of noise-canceling headphones, just to get some peace and quiet.

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Past History…
...or a Sleeping Giant?

Beginning sometime in 1998, Burt Rutan and Scaled Composites secretly worked with 40 aerospace engineers (many hired away from Boeing and Raytheon) to launch what I think was one of general aviation’s most important test flights.

The Mojave operation – which looked a little like Lockheed’s Skunk Works – lasted four years, and produced the Toyota TA-1, a four-seat, single-engine piston plane with a carbon fiber/resin composite fuselage. And on May 31, 2001 at California's Mojave Airport, Toyota’s entry into the GA market took flight for what is known to be its only flight, lasting about an hour.

Articles and information about the plane and Toyota’s ambitions for manufacturing the TA-1 are hard to find. The most complete article I could find was one in Embry Riddle Aeronautical University’s archives. The writer, Peter Pae, said this:

The short flight marked a major turning point for Toyota's ambitious goal of building airplanes that would be as simple to fly as driving a car, cost significantly less than the current generation of private airplanes and eventually be as ubiquitous as the automobile. The flight raised eyebrows within the aviation industry as Japan's largest auto manufacturer signaled it was making a significant move forward with its long-held but little-known plans to build light airplanes.

So let’s fast forward to today, with the calendar about to drop us into 2007. I wonder out loud what ever became of the Toyota project, is it still alive or DOA forever? Maybe it’s like the Hondajet – rumors flew for years before Honda actually admitted to designing the plane, and now here we are on the doorstep of welcoming their beautiful jet into our world.

I make no apologies for my love of Toyota products. I drive a 1995 Toyota T100 truck not because it is a chick magnet (it isn’t), not because it’s fast (with a 4-banger in a full-sized truck, it’s on the anemic side), but because it is unbelievably dependable.

When Toyota decided to build a full-sized truck to compete head-to-head with the American makers, they over-engineered the T100 far beyond what was required. You want proof? As I write this, I have yet to do a brake job on my truck, with 208,000 miles on the odo. That is not a typo. Each time I go in for tires, they tell me the brakes are fine. Go figure. It is my third vehicle since 1977, all have been Toyota trucks, and all have been bulletproof.

So I've always been dismayed that Toyota never pushed on with the TA-1 project. If they could have married the luxury interior of their Lexus line to a composite airframe with performance to match a Cirrus or Columbia, you don’t need to be Burt Rutan to figure out they might have sold several boatloads of airplanes. I can promise you I would have been one of the buyers.

And while we may never know what could have been, this we do know: The damn thing would have been tough as nails and would have never left you stranded. After all, it would have been a Toyota, and if the engine was built to their usual high standards, could we have seen a 4,000 hour TBO?

Damn straight.

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How about a
little Hot Rod
with your Tafelspitz?

Over in Wiener Neustadt, Austria, Diamond Aircraft builds some very nice airplanes. Unless you've been camping on Mars, surely you’ve seen the really, really awesome jet-A powered DA42 Twin Star, and their entry into the VLJ horse race, the D-Jet.

Diamond is on a roll right now, and is showing no signs of resting.

The Austrian planemaker certainly appears to have enough on their plate to keep the employees knee deep in Kaiserschmarrn (a dessert of shredded pancake and stewed fruit invented for Emperor Franz Joseph), but at the company Christmas party recently, news dropped that Diamond has something coming at us that may grab the attention of future Cirrus and Columbia buyers:

Word is just now leaking out about the DA50 “Super Star”, a five-seat, 350 hp low-wing composite airplane, said to be powered by “various” gasoline and diesel engines. The planform is very similar to their DA40, but the cabin seems to be punched out to create what Diamond is calling “the most spacious in the new generation of single-engine aircraft in General Aviation”. The fixed-gear, T-tail design sports a horizontal stabilizer with anhedral tips and a close-cowled powerplant spinning a fat four-blade MT prop.

Diamond is tight-lipped on the Super Star here in the States, but they do have a press release posted on their Austrian site. So expect to see more news and specifications released on this design soon after the first of the year.

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And you thought
the U.S. market
was hot.

It’s no secret that you can almost roast marshmallows over the heat emanating from the U.S. private aircraft market. Everywhere you look, makers are running their assembly lines full out, and if ever there was a “heyday” in modern aircraft manufacturing, we are living in it right now.

Companies like Raytheon, Cessna and Bombardier are glowing they are so fired up, and very soon, Eclipse, Honda, Piper, Diamond and yes, even Cirrus, will be cranking out very light and light jets. But if you think all if these aircraft are headed to the U.S. market, you would be very wrong.

An article in the Wichita Eagle is the best source I have found recently to explain how this wave of jet activity is truly a worldwide phenomenon. Since they are located at one of the epicenters of U.S. aviation manufacturing, this article proves that not all mainstream newspapers and journalists are brain dead when it comes to reporting about airplanes:

The use of business jets in mainland China is limited -- only 40 corporate jets are based in the entire country. But that figure is expected to grow to about 300, according to Bombardier Aerospace. Worldwide, demand for business jets is surging, especially in Europe. Russia and India are also emerging markets and will eventually be major contributors to overall demand.

The Eagle reports that the number of business aircraft deliveries internationally grew to 45 percent so far this year. The actual number of international deliveries is higher at Bombardier, where sales to non-U.S. customers totaled 59 percent of its business.

Across the Internets, reports are everywhere suggesting that the article out of Kansas is right on…growth in the bizjet sector worldwide is surging, and will continue that surge in the near future. But flying those jets in counties outside the good old USA seems like a chore:

The biggest challenges are government regulations, which control the air space. When corporate jet operators want to fly, they have to file an application well in advance of the trip. In addition, China has less than 200 airports. By comparison, the United States has close to 5,000 airports regularly used by business aircraft.

All this talk of rich worldwide sales is great news for the aviation sector overall, because as the makers send finished birds out the factory door, their “just in time” parts inventory systems will be ordering nuts, bolts, seats, avionics and coffee urns from thousands of small and large U.S. companies who will gladly enjoy the increase in business.

Man oh man, this is one exciting great time to be blogging about airplanes.

BTW: The Eagle’s Molly McMillin is all over the Raytheon sale story. Click here if you want to sample how a newspaper ought to write an accurate aviation story. This coverage is proof that the mainstream media can cover our world if they just devote the time and energy to accuracy, as McMillin obviously has.

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Bloggers using
Blogs to Blog
on Bloggers.

Editorial note: This post is not about airplanes. Please excuse World of Flying while we divert…

Anyone who has ever posted seriously to their blog and considered themselves a “blogger” knows the crap we must endure from people who are confused about the true nature of the blogosphere. I get it all the time when I tell someone I consider myself a blogger: “Oh, you mean all those kids on myspace?” Or, “yes, I read blogs, that’s like The Google, right?”

Uh huh.

Now in the royal scheme of things in the blogosphere, I am more of a user than a producer. Throughout the last election, I visited a number of real blogs every day, sites like DailyKos, AmericaBlog, Crooksandliars.com and The Huffington Post. It was those people – comrades like Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, Jerome Armstrong, John Aravosis and Arianna Huffington – who fired up the electorate to get out there and vote the clowns out of office. It is the work of these fine bloggers that has earned all of us the title of Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year.”

Those on the outside of the blogosphere looking in with confused gazes don’t know what we know inside the biodome of mass information distribution. That is, through the use of blogs, regular people can now make a difference. No longer is it true that the guy with the most ink has all the power.

The power of the blogosphere is calculated as 1+1+1+1 extended out into the millions. It is one person passing along something pertinent to someone else through their blog. Person #2 picks up the info, adds a link of their own, pastes in a quote from someone who matters, posts it on their blog, and a couple of more people pick that up. Every day, this scenario is played out across the Internets, and it is about time that the mainstream media admitted our importance.

So if you are a blogger or blog reader, I salute you as does Time Magazine’s Editorial Board. Keep it up…we are effecting change at the purest of grass roots levels.

Editorializing over, it is now safe to return to the world of aviation…

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Making Lemonade.

I remember a conversation I had this past summer at Oshkosh with a guy who was waiting in line like me to order a bratwurst cooked on the “World’s Largest Grill”, which happened to be as big as a semi-truck. Maybe it’s because the grill is 45 feet long, or maybe because it’s Oshkosh, but the sausages just taste perfect back there. I’ve had the same exact tubes of delight here, cooked on my grill, and they do not compare.

After I mentioned to the guy in line about the large number of Light Sport airplanes on display over at the LSA Mall, he started a surprisingly heated rant about how Sport Pilot will only create half-trained wannabe pilots that will be a danger to the “real” (his words) pilots up there.

I tried to tell him in a polite way he was wrong, but he quickly got that look in his eye like he’d really like to cram his CAT DIESEL POWER cap down my liberal Oregonian throat. So I backed off, and figured maybe he was the guy driving the semi-truck sized grill around, or was just plain ornery.

But the conversation stuck with me. I’ll admit that I was late to jump the Sport Pilot train too, but am now on board 150 percent. A large part of my conversion has to do with my CFI.

About the same time I was back there in Cheese Country USA, my CFI, Dorothy Schick, was also roaming Wittman Regional Airport, test flying some LSA planes and learning all she could about the new (to her) types of powerplants, including the Rotax 912. She was planning to soon take delivery of an Icarus C42 LSA, and is throwing everything she has at promoting Sport Pilot. I believe it is starting to pay off.

If anyone is doing all they can to turn public opinion around about Sport Pilot, it is Dorothy, along with Paul King, the other CFI at TakeWing Flying Club in tiny Creswell, Oregon. If there were in fact any lemons in Light Sport, Dorothy and Paul are making lemonade.

This past week, I received an email from Dorothy announcing that a new Sport Pilot student had signed up…from Portland, Oregon. That is what happens when you put your flight school out there as one that embraces Sport Pilot in a big way…people from all around your region take notice. Not everyone is training students to earn their Sport Pilot certificate, and by drawing from 120 miles away, it confirms that word is spreading about TakeWing’s Sport Pilot Program.

And about those guys who still think that Sport Pilots will be a danger, I have one question: Do they actually think Dorothy – OR ANY CFI – is going to sign off anyone to go take their FAA Proficiency flight without knowing that he or she can safely fly? In order for that goofball Sport Pilot to get up there and be a “danger”, they first have to buffalo Dorothy into believing they can operate an LSA, which I can promise will never happen. You don’t get to be a “Master” CFI by accident…she does not miss a thing, trust me.

But even if you somehow bamboozle your way past Dorothy or Paul, you still have to demonstrate to the FAA examiner that you can fly safely. The chances of anyone dangerous sliding through those checks and balances is almost a mathematical impossibility. It will not happen, case closed.

When TakeWing and other flight schools start sending these new Sport Pilots skyward, they will be welcome in my sky. The reason is simple: Without new flight students, the GA pilot population will continue to shrink as the senior sticks lose their medicals. Sport Pilot gets people started, and I predict (as does Dorothy) that quite a few of these new LSA aviators will eventually push onward to obtain their private certificates and even an instrument rating.

BTW, this post was not intended to be a commercial, but it IS my blog, so I'll promote someone when they deserve it. If you want to learn Sport Pilot from one of the most progressive Sport Pilot Schools in the Northwest, contact Dorothy Schick at (541) 510-7049 or dorothy@flyingd.net. Another great resource for information is found here on EAA’s web site.

And if you see Bratwurst line guy any time soon, offer to take him flying with your freshly-minted Sport Pilot license in your sparkling new Light Sport plane. Only one thing though – he might have to lose a couple of hundred pounds to keep you under gross takeoff weight.

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Riding a tricycle can
be a safety risk too.

In my nightly RSS news scour of the Internets, I ran across this story which is today’s best example of how journalists that appear to know little about aviation try to piece together enough words to write a story about airplanes.

The headline read:

Private plane convenient but can be a safety risk

At face value, that head shouts to me that those darned little planes must really be dangerous. The story tells of a “wave” of fatal air crashes in the Midwest has claimed several lives in 2006, and concludes that even though the causes of most of the crashes have not officially been determined, pilot error “historically” is among the top causes.

The cutline that was under a generic photo of Teterboro, New Jersey’s ramp seems to indicate that when the pilot is not to blame, maybe the public ought to blame the AIRPORT:

Teterboro Airport in New Jersey is home base for a number of small planes. Earlier this year, New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle took off from Teterboro in a small plane that crashed into a New York City building, killing him and a passenger.

Why use a photo of an airport that happened to launch a high-profile fatal flight when there are thousands of other airports you could have shown that did not? One guess is that the pic has more shock value when you know it is a shot of TEB.

The story continues to say that between 1986 and 2005, the number of plane crashes dropped 35 percent and fatal crashes fell 32 percent, according to NTSB. But in the ‘graph that followed, a General Aviation Manufacturers Association statistic shows the number of piston-powered planes grew by more than 300 percent since the mid-1990s.

So let’s connect the dots. Sales are through the roof, while crashes are down by roughly a third. That doesn’t sound to me like flying by private plane "can be a safety risk", as the headline implies – it sounds like a very sound safety record that is proof positive that we pilots work hard at staying alive. But, of course, a headline that says GA airplanes are really efficient, really safe and a real gas to fly might not sell papers.

There is a solution to this kind of confusing mainstream media reporting. I wish that more reporters would visit the great resources found at AOPA.org.

It is truly our loss when they do not.

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Can’t tell the players without a program.

In this week’s depressing episode of the new reality show “Last Airline Flying”, the rumor mill is again cranking big time, spitting out the news that United and Continental are exploring a possible “combination” as is being reported today by Associated Press.

The story says this recent flurry of talks among airlines may signal “merger mania” within the struggling industry. And now analysts all over seem to be questioning whether consolidation is a good thing.

Here’s a sample of what's out there today:

The airline industry has been weakened in recent years by low-fare competition and soaring fuel prices. Many experts say the key to prosperity for airlines is to cut capacity -- the number of seats for sale -- in order to gain more leverage over fares. Airline mergers can result in capacity reductions where the routes and services of merging airlines overlap. Major carriers have managed to cut capacity this year and have implemented several lasting fare increases.

This looks like the airlines are taking lessons from Big Oil…purposely decrease supply to force higher prices due to increased demand. I guess since we all keep paying three bucks for gas, the legacy airlines assume we’ll just go ahead and pay these increased fares too. But they would be wrong.

These swirling rumors and stories about airline consolidation has pumped up airline stocks – investors seem to like the prospect of a smaller and more competitive field. UAL Corp. rose 5.1% to $45.34 per share in early NASDAQ trading, while Continental spiked 5.2% to $45.09 per share on the NYSE.

This tells me the savvy investor thinks that once the dust settles and one huge mega-airline is left flying, they’ll be able to hose down passengers with higher fares, giving their profit margin a serious boost, further inflating stock prices. What crap.

All this “merger mania” is making the public more friendly to the low cost carriers. Amen to that, brother…why fly Humongous Airways, when you can let Southwest or Jetblue get you there for what might eventually turn out to be about half the cost?

Conclusion: With GA and business aviation enjoying record sales and personal aircraft makers sitting on thick order books, 2007 and beyond looks to be the largest growth period for aviation in decades. Add to that a public that will be really pissed at the merged mega-carriers, and you’ll see more Boomer-aged travelers doing the flying themselves.

And can anyone blame them?

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Oh baby,
a 787 BBJ?

There are charter operations, and then there’s PrivatAir, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. They recently became the first commercial business aviation specialist to offer the Boeing 787 Dreamliner to its customers.

PrivatAir had quite a notable fleet already, including a newly acquired 767, one 757, three BBJs, one BBJ2, Airbus A319 and A319LRs, a Global 5000, two Gulfstream IV-SPs, five Gulfstream IVs, six Gulfstream IIIs, a long list of Challengers, Citations and Lears, one Embraer Legacy, and a couple of Falcons and Hawkers.

But what really stood out in last week’s Boeing press release on the PrivatAir acquisition was this tidbit:

The order – valued at $153 million at today's list prices – is accounted for on Boeing's Orders and Deliveries website, identified as a 787 BBJ VIP customer.

So just when you thought that the uber-luxurious BBJ line – based on the venerable 737 airframe – was the top of the airliner food chain, this paragraph on Boeing’s site indicates it’s not just PrivatAir that’s thinking big when it comes to ultimate personal jets:

Boeing Business Jets announced it has won a total of 19 new airplane orders within the last 11 months. The announcement was made during the 2006 NBAA Convention & Exhibition in Orlando. The orders, which are valued at $2.25 billion at list prices, include 10 BBJs, two BBJ 3s and a total of seven widebody airplanes. The widebody orders include one 787-8, three 787-9 and three 747-8 airplanes specifically designated for the VIP market.

I’m not sure if the average pilot can even wrap his or her brain around the concept of a personal Dreamliner. It’s like this: You win Powerball and drag down about $50 million in winnings. Cash value is half that, so they cut you a $25 million check. You pay Uncle Sam about 40 percent of that, and end up with about $15 million to spend. A wild amount of green for sure, but that’s not even the DOWN PAYMENT on a $153 million airplane.

O.K., so I’ve convinced myself I will not be owning a customized personal Dreamliner, at least not one assembled by Boeing in Everett. But when the Gods bestow upon me the Cirrus of my dreams, you can bet the farm that the SR22 will be just as nice, at least to this aviator.

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A New Generation Dawns

At the Fort Worth facility of Lockheed Martin this coming week, military aviation history is about to be made when the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Force fighter takes flight.

This past Thursday afternoon, after final ground systems were checked, the F-35 moved under its own power for the first time for low speed taxi tests and testing of the brakes and nosewheel steering in advance of next week’s highly anticipated first flight. Taxi tests will increase in speed to 80 knots before the Lightning II rockets skyward for its inaugural flight.

And oh what a flight it will be:

The F-35 Lightning II is powered by the Pratt & Whitney F135 turbofan, the most powerful engine ever installed in a fighter aircraft, producing a top speed of Mach 1.8 (1,370 mph). The stealthy F-35 is designed to replace a wide range of existing aircraft, including AV-8B Harriers, A-10s, F-16s, F/A-18 Hornets and United Kingdom Harrier GR.7s and Sea Harriers.

The JSF program is slated to produce a total of 2,593 F-35 aircraft for the United States' and United Kingdom's armed forces. Three variants will be built, including the F-35 A (Conventional Takeoff and Landing), the F-35 B (Short Takeoff and Vertical Landing ) and F-35 C (Carrier-based). Delivery of the aircraft is scheduled to begin in 2009.

Each one of us aviators has our niche that we watch, and mine is GA and business aviation – I never spend much time thinking about the next great fighter jet. But in reading the Lockheed Martin brochure (download it here) on the F-35, it becomes clear that this is one bad-ass flying machine.

The USA has had air superiority on this planet for generations, and nobody else in the world can touch us in a wartime sky. With the F-35 locked and loaded, it will add another highly effective element to our nation’s strategic defense system.

But as things go south by the day in Iraq, I sincerely hope that the leaders of our country use such a lethal airworthy killing machine as the F-35 to keep our borders secure and our children safe, instead of as an offensive tool to shove some future President’s agenda down the throat of another third world country who has no viable means of defending themselves, but does have lots of oil under their caves.

Then again, I wonder if Osama could get his hands on a jet that could actually fly. If so, I'd spring for pay-per-view to watch that dogfight as the F-35 ships a thousand pounds of attitude up his tailpipe.

Update #1 12/11 930A: You might think that all details are set in stone between the United States and the United Kingdom regarding the U.K’s purchase of 138 JSF fighters, but you’d be wrong. This article in the Financial Times reveals a serious rift on both sides of the Pond, and it needs to be resolved ASAP:

Britain must seek an alternative to buying the Joint Strike Fighter if the US does not agree to share sensitive technology on the USD $276 billion project by the end of the year, the parliamentary defense committee warns today.

Lord Drayson, U.K. defense procurement minister has scheduled a visit to Washington next week in an attempt to break the deadlock and help the Brits decide if they are going with their “Plan A” to buy the JSF fighters, or “Plan B” which is still “undisclosed” according to the article. Sounds like a very high stakes game of jet fighter poker to me.

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Lopresti Fury Updates “live” on ANN Podcasts

As promised, I am still following the development of the awesome LoPresti Fury, that God-awfully fast Certified two-seater that will soon be built just south of Albuquerque.

This is one unbelievable aircraft…how about 215 MPH on 10.5 GPH? So along with being white-hot fast, the Fury sips fuel like a Prius. Too cool.

I could tell you all about it, but you really need to hear this right from LoPresti VP/Operations, RJ Siegel. He just completed two extensive podcast interviews on Aero-News Network, which can be downloaded in MP3 format, or enjoyed as streaming audio online.

Take a minute and listen to part 1 of Siegel’s interview here, and part 2 here.

You can read more about the Fury here.

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A ‘Bidding War’
for Delta?

Just when you thought the recent commercial airline merger news could not possibly get any weirder, now MSNBC (and others) are reporting that United Airlines parent UAL Corp. may be also making a move to scrape Delta up off the bankruptcy court floor.

UAL’s chief financial officer, Jake Brace, played his airline’s hand recently at a Citigroup investor conference when he said this:

“We believe mergers in the airline industry have significant synergies, and we believe the industry needs to consolidate. The industrial logic of mergers in the airline industry is so compelling. We’re going to do what makes sense for our company, and we’ll be interested to see what happens with US Air and Delta.”

Considering the competitive nature of the airlines, the $8 billion offer US Airways made for Delta could touch off a “bidding war” as one DePaul University analyst said.

Regardless of who ends up with Delta, analysts everywhere are saying the trend with large carriers will be towards further mergers and acquisitions. Whether this ends up being good for ticket buyers remains to be seen, but in general, I believe more airlines breeds lower fares, and less airlines means more of this garbage:

This holiday season, the jet fuel these guys burn hasn’t spiked in price, but their ticket prices sure have. We’ve been trying to get our son up here from Los Angeles for Christmas, and all airlines conveniently have jacked their prices to $500 or better – in the spirit of the season. This is for a route that can be ticketed for $275 the rest of the year.

That prompts me to ask – no, beg – Jetblue to please, please, please consider flying a route up and down the West Coast, maybe LAX (or maybe Burbank) to PDX.

When the major carriers morph into just a handful of mega-lines, expect to see more price gouging like this all year. This continues to be great news for the low cost guys, who are positioned to really look attractive compared to what will eventually be left of the legacy lines.

Or, we can all buy a Cirrus and do the flying ourselves. The only problem with that will be delay at the departure airport trying to somehow perform that TSA full cavity search...on yourself.

Ewwww.

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You can’t do
better than
the Blue Angels

For generations, there have always been Blue Angels, that tiny, select group of Navy pilots that are there at the very top of the aviator kingdom. And for anyone who has ever seen the Navy’s Flight Demonstration Squadron perform, you KNOW there can be no disputing that first sentence.

This coming year, the Blue Angels are scheduled to perform 66 demonstrations at 35 air show sites throughout the United States, celebrating 20 years of flying the Boeing F/A-18 Hornet.

The Navy’s top “Top Guns” have been around for decades now, and are quite possibly the most visible part of our armed forces. They provide key public exposure and work to create a positive image of military aviators in all branches.

A little history:

At the end of World War II, Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, ordered the formation of a flight demonstration team to showcase naval aviation. The team performed its first flight demonstration less than a year later, June 1946. Flight Leader, Lt. Cmdr. Roy "Butch" Voris led the team flying the at Craig Field at Naval Air Station (NAS) Jacksonville, Florida.

Since 1946, the Angels have flown these aircraft:

Grumman F6F Hellcat
Grumman F8F Bearcat
Grumman F9F-2 Panther
Grumman F9F-5 Panther
Grumman F9F-8 Cougar
Grumman F11F-1 Tiger
McDonnell Douglas F-4J Phantom II
McDonnell Douglas A-4F Skyhawk II
McDonnell Douglas/Boeing F/A-18 Hornet (current)

They are scheduled to perform at the following locations in 2007:

March:
* 10 Naval Air Facility El Centro, Calif.
* 17-18 Davis Monthan Air Force Base (AFB), Ariz.
* 24 Tyndall AFB, Fla.
* 31 MacDill AFB, Fla.

April:
* 01 MacDill AFB, Fla.
* 14-15 Naval Air Station (NAS) Corpus Christi, Texas
* 21-22 MCAS Beaufort, S.C.
* 28-29 Vidalia, Ga.

May:
* 05-06 Offutt AFB, Neb.
* 12 Seymour Johnson AFB, N.C.
* 19-20 La Crosse, Wis.
* 23 U.S. Naval Academy, Md.
* 26-27 Millville, N.J.

June:
* 02-03 Rockford, Ill.
* 09-10 Tinker AFB, Okla.
* 16-17 Fargo, N.D.
* 23-24 North Kingstown, R.I.
* 30 Battle Creek, Mich.

July:
* 01 Battle Creek, Mich.
* 07-08 Ypsilanti, Mich.
* 14-15 McConnell AFB, Kan.
* 21 Pensacola Beach, Fla.
* 28-29 Bozeman, Mont.

August:
* 04-05 Seattle, Wash.
* 11-12 Hillsboro, Ore.
* 25-26 Indianapolis, Ind.

September:
* 01-03 St. Louis, Mo.
* 08-09 NAS Oceana, Va.
* 15-16 NAS Brunswick, Maine
* 22-23 Millington, Tenn.
* 29-30 Salinas, Calif.

October:
* 06-07 San Francisco, Calif.
* 13-14 MCAS Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii
* 20-21 Fort Worth, Texas
* 27-28 Muskogee, Okla.

November:
* 03-04 Jacksonville Beach, Fla.
* 09-10 NAS Pensacola, Fla.

Since its inception in 1946, the team has flown for more than 393 million fans. You really ought to add yourself to that list in 2007 if you live near a city where they will fly.

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Moonbase November
Alpha Sierra Alpha: 2020

Last week, I watched “An Inconvenient Truth” and as a believer in global warming, I can say without reservation that 99% of what is in that movie is spot on. It sure delivers the point that we’ve pretty much trashed this planet, and now it also appears that the brain children at NASA have also been watching Al Gore’s slideshow.

This week, NASA announced plans to begin robotic and human exploration of the Moon – as part of a permanent effort to achieve a sustained, human presence there. As per usual, space.com is all over this story, and is the best source on the Internets for NASA news:

“We’re going to go after a lunar base,” said Scott Horowitz, NASA associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate. A key technology yet to be defined is a lunar lander – hardware that can be used in piloted or unpiloted mode to develop a capability on the Moon more rapidly. “The lander will be designed to touchdown anywhere on the Moon…likened to a lunar pickup truck,” Horowitz said.

The first base would be built with crews of four persons making week-long visits beginning in 2020. The bases would be designed to eventually support 180-day lunar stays. NASA is looking at a spot on the rim of Shackleton Crater, a location near the Moon’s South Pole that’s almost permanently sunlit, providing access to endless solar energy.

Now I’m going to go off on a bit of a rant, so strap yourself in: Only a fool could look at what the Human race has done to this planet and still think of spending our limited financial resources on building spacecamps on the Moon, on Mars, or up [on] Uranus. Hey, here’s an idea…how about we spend all that NASA money on cultivating renewable, clean energy technologies on this planet? You don’t have to live in Eugene, Oregon – voted the greenest city in America – to buy into that concept.

So before we go and plunder the Moon, let’s fix this planet first. Big oil is in the middle of losing their cronies in Washington, and with 2008 elections closing fast, the chance is finally here to actually do something positive towards stopping our global climate crisis.

Or, we can all continue to live with blinders on, looking forward to the day when our grandkids can live in a gated community at Tranquillity Base and drive nuclear-powered Hummers over to the dark side of the moon on Sunday with Pink Floyd blasting from their 16-speaker Bose audio system.

Now that would be one giant leap BACKWARDS for mankind.

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But can you FLY it?

In a matter of about a week, I will be a Windows machine owner for the first time in my computing life. That’s when our agency's new Macbook Pro arrives at the office.

But wait, this is no ordinary computer...This thing has a double life.

I’ve used Apple Macintosh machines my entire professional career. Nothing against PCs, I just choose to use Macs because back in the days of Photoshop V1, Macs seemed to be better at rendering graphics. PCs were – so I’m told – better at crunching numbers, but since I tend to avoid math, I’ve never witnessed the immense calculating powers of Windows.

If you haven’t been around the latest Macintosh computers lately, the chip inside them gives you a “twofer” because they’ll run either Windows or Mac OSX. I’m also installing an app called Parallels that will allow me to actually run both op systems simultaneously… that is really almost unbelievable.

But today I was thinking about what I will do now that I’ll have easy access to a PC, right there inside our Mac laptop. I could finally use AOPA’s flight planning features on their web site, or I could finally try out Microsoft Flight Simulator’s latest version X.

I have always been an X-Plane desk flyer, and all is well in that camp. X-Plane is as real as I need, but I have never been bowled over by the scenery. So with this new computing capability, maybe I should try MSFS X, because according to gamespy.com, the scenery is just nuts:

“From the moment our demo loaded, it instantly became clear that this isn't going to be your father's Flight Simulator. The demo took place in an eye-popping tropical paradise that featured sandy beaches, lush foliage, and crystal clear waters. One could seemingly see miles into the distance with perfect clarity. There's no denying that this will be one of the best looking PC games ever released.”

O.K., so maybe MSFS X might be pretty, but many questions still remain. How does it fly, I mean really fly. Is it a game or can it be a valuable training device? Can you fly a hard IFR approach and feel confident that the experience is as real as it gets? Can you tweak the planes like you can in X-Plane? I have never, ever been a “gamer”, so I have zero clue about MSFS.

So with that said, I am putting the word out to both the pilot and flight simulator communities to contact me with a report on the realism of MFSF X. Will a licensed pilot serious about training find the game real enough, or would it be best to stay with X-Plane, which I know is as accurate as I can afford without enrolling at Flightsafety.

You can contact me using the link at right below my profile.

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“Cold, frozen
water that’s
really heavy.”

That might as well be the FAA's Eastern Region counsel’s new interpretation of "known icing conditions", says AOPA, and it’s this new wording that might be serious cause for alarm, says Luis Gutierrez, AOPA’s director of regulatory and certification policy:

"This overly restrictive interpretation of 'known icing conditions,' if literally applied, would unnecessarily ground many safe general aviation flights and may negatively affect safety because many pilots would not be able to train nor maintain flying proficiency during the winter season."

Taken at face value, the new interpretation says that "high relative humidity" constitutes known icing conditions. This means that in high relative humidity conditions when the temperature is near or below freezing, pilots must fly an aircraft with deicing equipment.

Gutierrez has submitted a letter to FAA asking that the FAA Eastern Region's letter of interpretation be rescinded, mostly because it makes absolutely no sense:

AOPA pointed out that this restrictive interpretation is not consistent with other FAA publications, including the Aeronautical Information Manual, which state that visible moisture, along with freezing temperatures, is necessary for structural icing in flight. High relative humidity is not visible.

AOPA’s logic for questioning this move by FAA is right on:

The association further explained that relative humidity is not included in FAA or National Weather Service aviation weather reports or forecasts. "So how are pilots to know when high relative humidity would be a factor to their flight," Gutierrez challenged the FAA, "and how are pilots expected to know what constitutes high relative humidity since this is not defined anywhere?"

This is just one more example of why every licensed pilot in the land needs to be members of AOPA. Without them representing us in Washington, FAA and the people who fund them would be left to pummel us with whatever off-the-wall regulatory B.S. they could come up with.

If you are not AOPA, shame on you. Click here to fix that right now.

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