Some of  America’s most active business airports would be – should be, having one of their most active weekends on this, the last weekend before the Labor Day holiday. Instead they look like this desolate scene at Westchester County Airport in White Plains, New York. In anticipation of Hurricane Irene, Westchester, Republic and Teterboro are reporting airfields that have become ghost towns. My friend, Chuck Allen, a pilot and member of the Westchester Flying Club spend part of Saturday afternoon watching a lot of takeoffs…and no landings…as people moved their airplanes out of the path of the hurricane. “When it comes to weather, pilots usually… Read More…

What’s the difference between a pilot and a jet engine? The engine stops whining when the plane is parked at the gate. Just because airline pilots are prone to complain, doesn’t mean that sometimes they don’t have a legitimate beef.  When it comes to the merger of American Airlines and TWA 10 years ago, a federal jury has determined that the TWA pilots were indeed done wrong by their union, the Air Line Pilots Association. Just how the union sold its members down the river is described in court documents.  But in brief, the TWA pilots claimed that ALPA betrayed them by promising not to fight… Read More…

Even not-so-frequent air travelers know about the hub and spoke system by now – the technique airlines use to funnel passengers through large central transfer points and on to their destinations. This gives people the opportunity to be in – but not necessarily to get out and enjoy such destinations as Frankfurt, Chicago, Hong Kong, Amsterdam and London. Recently, while traveling on Emirates from New Zealand to Dubai  I realized my flight stopped in Bangkok so I decided to get off the plane, spend a day seeing the city and continue my journey to the UAE a day later. Narita’s Jet Lag Cafe I stumbled… Read More…

Sometimes romance

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The best place to see an air show is on the ground and this is where several hundred thousand New Yorkers will be for the Bethpage Air Show at Jones Beach on Memorial Day weekend. The best place to sit for the air show, however has to be the seat in front of Lieutenant Colonel John Klatt, on the aerobatic plane he flies for the Air National Guard. When performing at shows across America, John flies in a Panzl S330  a 1,200 pound single seater – which makes it an inappropriate choice to invite a guest to ride along. So today, stunt pilot and John… Read More…

Storms in the so-called Golden Triangle, the corners of which are New York, Atlanta and Chicago have caused a lot of air travelers to hunker down at the airport, or return to wherever they came from with plans to try to fly tomorrow. Meanwhile, here in the heart of it all, I’m happy as the proverbial pig. Why? Because I’m coming off a week-long airplane extravaganza in Oklahoma and now I am stranded at Chicago O’Hare International Airport. On arrival this afternoon, I learned my onward flight to New York was canceled due to weather with no chance to get out of town until Friday… Read More…

I have this image in my brain and I can’t shake it. There’s a man seated at a giant pipe organ, he’s wearing morning coat with tails and he is pounding furiously. His fingers fly across all three levels of the keyboard. He’s pumping the pedals with his feet, turning the pages on the sheet music, the music swells, the room is shaking. It’s sooooo scary. This is what it feels like to be me. Here I sit at my keyboard and I am remembering the days when aviation news was an occasional thing. When, in between accidents or pilot strikes or fare wars, we… Read More…

See the update on this post here Before and after photos are a universal technique for showing what words can only attempt to convey and the official photograph of beautiful Sendai Airport in Miyagi Prefecture in northeast Japan is the classic “before“. It has been replaced in the minds of aviation aficionados by the heartbreaking image of “after”; after March 11, 2011, after the tsunami flooded the airfield, after it swept service equipment, airplanes and cars around like toys, after seawater raced through the terminal sending travelers and airport workers fleeing to the roof of the building. Photo courtesy USAF by J.G. Buzanowski T The… Read More…

Its like a scene from those old movies where monsters invade Tokyo, only these photos are real. Tokyo residents watch with horror as a construction crane sways “like a big metronome” over the Tokyo station. Photos by Jim Karsh This photo and the others in this post were were taken by my friend, Jim Karsh, a 747 pilot who frequently flies to Japan and had the misfortune to be playing tourist in the city of Tokyo when the earthquake hit on Friday. I say misfortune, but of course that is relative. With the death toll rising, Jim’s scary afternoon and uncomfortable evening sleeping on the… Read More…