My mother-in-law Mary Schembari could probably count on her arthritic fingers how many times she has flown on an airplane. In the 40 years she has been in my life, I don’t recall that she ever did.  Only stories of two trips to Europe led me to conclude that she probably boarded an airplane a few times in her long life. Still, she needs no frequent flyer miles to have her place sealed in aviation history. She welded airplane parts for the Corsair Navy fighter plane, putting her among the six million women in America who supported the defense industry during World War 2. These… Read More…

Today at a bank in Louisville, Kentucky, a man entered with a gun and soon, 5 people were dead and 8 injured. In Orlando, Florida on Sunday, eight people including 3 children were shot in two separate mass shootings. The day before, four people were killed at – get this – “a celebration of life” event in Houston, Texas. There was a mass shooting somewhere in America every.single.day in April. I do not know the circumstances of this most recent shooting.  It does not matter. What matters, is that America is the country where one of humankind’s greatest feats of ingenuity was imagined and accomplished… Read More…

Chinese authorities say they have found a piece of the China Eastern airliner, six miles from the area where the Boeing 737 NG crashed on Monday. While the main debris field is concentrated as a result of the plane’s near-vertical plummet from the sky, this separate piece, a distance away, indicates that prior to the crash the airplane was shedding parts. Whether the piece coming free of the plane triggered the disaster or if it was a consequence of the high-speed dive is not known but is certainly a question the investigators will try to answer. An airliner dropping nose down so dramatically and rapidly… Read More…

December 21st, the darkest day of the year in the northern hemisphere, has been a day of grief for 32 years for the people who lost loved ones  in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 on this day in 1988. While there were terror attacks on airliners before 1988 and there would be again, the loss of 270 people in the air and on the ground in Lockerbie, Scotland holds a unique place in aviation history. Today, US Attorney General William Barr announced that criminal charges will be brought against a third man, Abu Agila Muhammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi, referred to as Mas’ud.  Law… Read More…

Having survived combat and oftentimes years of neglect, flying warbirds in America and their owners may be headed into a new battle. Triggered by Wednesday’s fatal crash of the Collings Foundation B-17 Nine-O-Nine at Bradley International Airport, Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal says more scrutiny is needed for passenger flights on historic aircraft. Seven people were killed and six others on the airplane injured along with two people on the ground when the Nine-O-Nine crashed shortly after takeoff. The Flying Fortress was to make a 30-minute fly-around the area during the foundation’s Wings of Freedom Tour that started earlier in the week. Responding to a question… Read More…

What unites the first airliner to go missing in 1931 with the 2014 disappearance of Malaysia Flight 370 is simple geography. As big as today’s airliners are, they are infinitesimally small in comparison to the vast, often-uninhabited places over which they fly. The Australian National Airlines flight of the plane named the Southern Cloud departed Sydney for Melbourne on March 21, 1931 but never arrived. Eighty-three years later, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 left Kuala Lumpur for Beijing and likewise, was never seen again. In both events, mysteries seemed to multiply and unsubstantiated stories blended with likely possibilities until fact and fiction were inseparable. Much has changed… Read More…

Ask anyone about the Wright Brothers and for sure, they’ll mention flight and maybe even that before inventing their famous airplane, Orville & Wilber Wright built bikes. Even though they are arguably history’s most famous bike builders it still seems like an aside. But look closely at a Wright Brothers airplane and you’ll see the brothers borrowed chains and sprockets and incorporated the geometric shapes from bike frames to construct and test their flying machine. “We marvel at the airplane while overlooking the bicycle,” Ryan Qualls a National Park Service Ranger told me. At the time, the bike was, “one of the simplest machines with… Read More…

Investigators don’t know what caused the fatal plane crash last week of the new and highly-anticipated light-sport Icon A5, but in a statement on the company website, Icon’s director of flight, Shane Sullivan suggests pilot error was an issue. “We’re unsure why the plane flew into such a narrow canyon that had no outlet,” Sullivan wrote.  Such speculation by an interested party during the investigation is highly unusual and frowned upon by the National Transportation Safety Board. On May 8, aeronautical engineer and chief test pilot Jon Karkow was piloting the two seat amphibious A5 with Icon’s new director of engineering, Cagri Sever on board as a passenger…. Read More…

Full disclosure: The Crash Detectives, my own book on the mysterious disappearance of Malaysia Flight 370, will be published by Penguin in September. This may have colored my perception of Richard Quest’s new book, The Vanishing of Flight 370. Then again, maybe it really is a rehash of CNN’s original undisciplined coverage. Quest, CNN’s business correspondent, is well known for his out-sized personality and his “say anything” interview style. But in the book he has produced for Penguin Berkley and timed to the second anniversary of the disappearance of Malaysia 370, all his insouciant charm is gone. Without that, Quest’s demonstrated ego wears thin long… Read More…

Too often air travel is an antiseptic experience for the passenger as we sit in tile-floored, waiting rooms, our heads down and our minds in cyberspace. It is so rare and so thrilling to actually smell the jet fuel and hear the whine of the engines at the few airports that still encourage a love of the journey. Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport is one of them and it’s the perfect place to reflect on commercial aviation’s first century since KLM Royal Dutch is, at 96 years old, the oldest airline still in operation under its original name. (And what a nice name it is.)   Schiphol Airport… Read More…