Reprieve for an Historic Airport

A confederacy of monied aviators and aviation enthusiasts comprising in part Seattle businessman, entrepreneur, and cellular telephone industry pioneer Craig McCaw; actor and celebrity aviator John Travolta; golf legend and Gulfstream G550 owner/pilot Phil Mickelson; and unnamed parties within the Paul Allen, Jack Northrop, and Howard Hughes Estates has pooled its considerable resources and influence for purpose of acquiring the SMO airport in a private transaction with the U.S. federal government.

Covet Not Thy Neighbor’s Fighter Jet

EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2023 attendees will be party to an historic and unprecedented undertaking alternately characterized by its proponents and critics as “brilliant” and “suicidally moronic” respectively. Stated plainly, the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels and U.S. Air Force’s Thunderbirds flight demonstration squadrons will swap aircraft ...

Trap Chuting

On 01 April 2023, Cirrus Aircraft—citing a disproportionately high instance of fires, runway overruns, acts of God, and generally lackluster luck—announced that SF-50 Vision Jets built after serial number 449 will feature not one, but two independent CAPS installations.

American Consortium Challenges Convention

In a surprising, if not intuitively sound move certain to occasion acrimony among the world’s established producers of Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) a consortium comprising McDonald’s, Burger King, and Wendy’s announced on 01 April 2023 that it had entered into a partnership with Washington D.C.-based Alder Fuels to create and market a new brand of SAF from biomass deriving of the aforementioned fast-food giants’ collective greases and unsold food-stuffs.

Possession is 9/10 …

The US Department of Defense has set forth that—owing to the chaotic manner in which U.S. troops were withdrawn from Afghanistan and the bedlam that ensued their departure—the Taliban is currently in possession of at least 168 U.S.-supplied military aircraft. The de facto Taliban Air Force comprises ...

Dogs Allegedly Traumatized

On Tuesday 15 November 2022 at approximately 09:00 CST, an Ameriflight Fairchild SA227-AT Expediter (N247DH) operating as Ameriflight flight 7141 made an emergency landing on the links of the Western Lakes Golf Club in Pewaukee, Wisconsin. Notwithstanding the total loss of the 37-year-old Metroliner, its three crewmembers and cargo of 56 dogs survived the accident with only minor injuries. In December 2022, the Waukesha, Wisconsin chapter of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals—colloquially, PETA—filed suit in Waukesha County Circuit Court against Ameriflight; the Waukesha Humane Animal Welfare Society (HAWS), to which the dogs were being transported; and Lake County, Wisconsin Fire a

Terrifying Program to Streamline, Automate Pilot Deviation Process Begins April 1st

An overworked FAA has announced the full automation of legal enforcement actions using a combination of OpenAI's ChatGPT and the ADS-B flight tracking system. Under the scheme, OpenAI will allow the FAA to automatically oversee the issuance of enforcement and certificate actions without a single glance from a real human. The move is expected to clear more than 4.8 billion dollars in fines throughout the first 6 months of the pilot program. Starting April 1st, the FAA will set up a specially modified ChatGPT system to oversee all aircraft track data filtering through ADS-B, which will then evaluate, assess, and even punish offenders that stray too

Back After 28 Years of Would, Could, and Should Haves

The relatively short-lived confluence of the Beechcraft and Hawker marques under the Raytheon banner has—a full decade after its 2013 bankruptcy—yielded strange fruit. On 01 April 2023, Beechcraft—now a subsidiary of Textron Aviation—announced prototyping of an updated iteration of the company’s iconic, if not altogether successful, Starship business aircraft would commence in early 2024. The decision to resurrect Beechcraft’s startlingly-gorgeous, famously-flopped, twin-turboprop—which will ostensibly compete directly with the company’s highly-successful King-Air family of aircraft—derives primarily of vast improvements in

In A Word ... No

Every year on the first of April, people all around the country pause for a few minutes to see if they can tickle the funny bone of the folks they like. And believe me, there's nobody ANN likes better than you, our readers.