Giving Cirrus and Diamond their due, “crashworthy” doesn’t immediately leap to mind when thinking about little airplanes. The vast majority of the fleet is old school, with little flail space, single diagonal seatbelts and many aircraft with non-energy-absorbing seats. Most of us just grit our teeth and fly on. Improved seatbelts are a plus as […]
There’s so much buzz around the emergence of electric airplanes that it’s easy to forget what animates most of the enterprise is press releases. New airplane announcements fly fast and furious; the airplanes themselves, not so much. Cutting through this background noise is the innovative Slovenian company, Pipistrel. Last year, as it promised it would, […]
Having skipped a year due to pandemic shutdowns in 2020, AirVenture came galloping back in 2021, with near-record attendance, more aircraft than ever on the field and, most impressive, strong sales for aircraft companies and vendors. EAA Chairman Jack Pelton said the showing was all the more impressive because as late as December 2020, with […]
There’s a certain mystique attached to tailwheel airplanes, as in only real pilots fly airplanes with the third wheel where it’s supposed to be. No modern aircraft company has exploited this more than CubCrafters, whose refinement of the sturdy Piper Super Cub has ushered in the era of the hot rod taildragger. That’s what the […]
The good thing about old airplanes is also the bad thing about old airplanes. Some airframes seem immortal, but the companies that built the instruments for them are anything but. Mid-Continent Instruments and Avionics sees market potential in that conundrum and its solution—like everything else—is driven by rapid advances in display and processing technology. As […]
Perhaps to no one’s particular surprise, in early September, Mooney announced that it’s under new management, the Chinese owners having abandoned the premises in Kerrville, Texas. The ownership status remains murky but at this juncture, having reported on a half-dozen resurrections, maybe the question to ask isn’t if Mooney can survive, but can anything succeed […]
At the Aero show in Friedrichshafen, in 2012, the undisputed star was a sleek and sexy four-place single from the innovative Slovenian company, Pipistrel. The Panthera surprised on several levels because Pipistrel was a player in the world of microlight/light sport aircraft, but wasn’t thought to harbor aspirations toward the mainstream certified market. But […]
When the dimensions of the COVID-19 pandemic emerged in mid-March 2020, airline bookings shortly fell off a cliff and the rest of the aviation industry held its breath. And sure enough, the phones stopped ringing in the finance offices where aircraft loans originate. Prospects seemed even grimmer than during the 2008 deep recession. But within […]
Every other summer, I torture myself with the $1500 biennial ELT switch flip. I install the required 24-month battery, wait for the minute hand to sweep past the top of the hour and press the test switch with bated breath. The crisp woop-woop of the truly ancient EBC 121.5 MHz beacon makes the Cub legal […]
What do pilots value in apps? The chart and comments at right provide a basic road map on how users evaluate what apps do and how they do it. The data was gathered from a survey returned by 984 users queried through our online sister publication, www.avweb.com. In the July 2020 edition of Aviation Consumer, […]
If the app market hasn’t quite reached stasis, it must be close to that. Our recent surveys suggest that only about 11 percent of pilots don’t fly with tablets or apps of any kind and that doesn’t leave much headroom for new entrants or for expansion of established players. So, buyers may be shifting from […]
Lost to the sands of time is the quaint notion that a mechanical E6B or—gasp!—an eraser-equipped pencil were cockpit essentials. Now, it’s not just a question of having a smartphone or a tablet for aviating, but how many. Not kidding here, some owners have and use several. But which are the best buys? Which platform […]
