Bob Collins
The Wright Brothers flew for the first time 110 years ago today. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Tag: Aviation
Dora Dougherty Strother McKeown has died. The Saint Paul native was the first woman to fly a B-29 Superfortress during World War II because the men were afraid to. Read more →
Update 12:57 p.m. – Watch the Dreamliner attempt to take off. (KIRO) Update 1:18 p.m. – It had no problem taking off with room to spare. A few years ago, I took an MPR News website producer for a ride in an airplane to show him his colleague’s outstanding airmanship. This is our approach to Read more →
The skydiver plane crash reveals only one change is needed in air safety. Read more →
Some close call airplane collisions go unnoticed. Here’s one. Read more →
The government reportedly is considering getting out of the air traffic control business and turning it over to private industry. Read more →
Remember this? It’s a jetpack that debuted in 2008 at the big airshow in Oshkosh, which I wrote about at the time, and was so intrigued by it that I spent the company’s cash and called inventor Glen Martin in New Zealand for the late Future Tense program. It was a really great interview. You Read more →
What would you do if you owned the MLK speech, whose house will MSP jets fly over, why Millennials hate the telephone, the ‘mind meld’ is real, and why you could be liable for texting someone who is driving. Read more →
Paul TostoPaul Poberezny, founder of the Experimental Aircraft Association and one of the great American tinkerers, died Thursday. Read more →
The National Transportation Safety Board says the pilot of a small plane that crashed last summer near Brainerd was probably stoned while flying. The NTSB has posted the findings of its investigation into the crash on Upper Whitefish Lake near Crosslake. It said the medical examiner found drug paraphernalia in the shirt pocked of the Read more →
Whatever happened to the sequester, the loudmouths at kids’ baseball games, a fortune in assisted living, should Reddit be held responsible for a smear, and what Northfield’s got that your town doesn’t. Read more →
A question of race. Or not. What kids know that adults don’t. The electric Lindbergh. Tales of the Frankenstein rabbit. And the new bamboo menace in the Northland. Read more →
The NTSB just released this picture of the interior or the jet that crashed in San Francisco last week. The pilots had initially told people to stay in their seats after the plane landed. The picture confirms that it was pretty poor advice.
Is the American Dream dead? Forgetting how to fly. The creeping corruption. Before I did. The urinal sink. Read more →
It’ll be a year before the National Transportation Safety Board releases a full report into what caused the weekend crash of an airliner approaching San Francisco. But there’s not a lot of mystery about the substandard approach, a plane that was allowed to get too slow and “behind the power curve,” the point at which Read more →