Bob Collins
There are many regrets I have but none bigger than a flight in the plane I never got a chance to make a couple of weeks ago.
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MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Tag: Aviation
The NTSB cited the lack of guidance from the Federal Aviation Administration on how pilots should fly formation flights with skydivers. Consequently, the NTSB said, the owner of the skydiving company ‘did not provide its pilots skydiving formation flight training, and it did not keep records of pilot training nor was it required to do so by the FAA.’ Read more →
Jessica Cox, 32, was born without arms as a result of a rare birth defect. She’s earned a college degree, two martial arts black belts, drives a car and, flies an airplane anyway. Read more →
This was the last time we saw “That’s All, Brother”, the Douglas C-47 that led the D-Day invasion in World War II. The company that owned it was about to turn it into a more modern turboprop plane when someone researched its past and found it was the first plane of paratroopers into France. Read more →
An accident mars the third day of events at Wisconsin’s AirVenture aviation gathering. Read more →
For one week each year, the airport at Oshkosh, Wis., becomes the busiest airport in the world when the Experimental Aircraft Association’s annual AirVenture is underway. Read more →
Posting might be a little light today. I’m flying over to Oshkosh for the big air show, which started yesterday, and will be filing a few items from there.
Monday’s highlight was the appearance of the Airbus A350, which will start flying for Delta in 2017. It’s been on a tour of major airports. Read more →
The huge AirVenture aviation fly-in in Oshkosh doesn’t officially start until Monday but thousands of airplanes have already started arriving.
About every type of airplane ever flown has landed at the Wisconsin airport, which becomes the busiest airport in the world for a week every summer.
The gigantic B-52 Stratocruiser has never been one of them.
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Do you recall that Star Tribune story about South St. Paul’s Fleming Field being encroached upon by neighbors and the planned removal of two homes to create a safety zone at the end of a northwest-heading runway?
You may also recall a video I made, showing that the southeast-heading runway already had the safety zone.
And, as it turns out, it was a good thing over the weekend. Read more →
When a small airplane loses power, the laws of physic says there’s only one place to go — down. A pilot might only have a few seconds to decide on making the best of a bad situation.
Roads make a good choice, especially if it’s in a sparsely populated area. But the shore of New Jersey isn’t sparsely populated. Read more →
This video, from 2013, might be the most shocking video of an aviation disaster ever recorded.
A Boeing 747 crashed while taking off from Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Read more →
The Federal Aviation Administration has announced that it is changing navigation “fix” names that honor Donald Trump. When designing instrument approach “fix” points some years ago, an FAA controller made them Donald-Trump related. Fixes are just coordinates in the sky — points at which a plane has to be in order to be on course Read more →
It’s not unusual for airports to report instrument flight conditions, in which it’s legal to take off and land only if a flight is operated under instrumental flight rules. But it is unusual for the conditions to exist on an otherwise sunny day. Read more →
United Airlines will make a pretty significant announcement today. It will announce the first investment by a domestic airline in a company that will provide alternative fuel.
Fulcrum, a California-based company, turns household trash into jet fuel.
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A flight over S. St. Paul’s Fleming Field shows the challenges of a small airport coexisting with neighborhoods. Here’s the video. Read more →