Bob Collins
No doubt there are legitimate terrorist threats to the world’s aviation system — that much is certainly obvious — but we’re going to suggest that this isn’t really one of them. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Tag: Aviation
It’s not going to take the National Transportation Safety Board long to figure out why a helicopter crashed in Osage, Minnesota, last month while it was spraying for mosquitoes. Read more →
A B-25 flying over to Oshkosh for the big aviation convention over the weekend went a little out of its way, picking up Dayton, Ohio, native Dick Cole, 98, who is one of four remaining “Doolittle Raiders.” Read more →
It might not look like it, but this might well be the greatest example of airmanship in the history of aviation. It was 25 years ago this weekend, that pilot Al Haines put United Flight 232 down in Sioux City, after losing most ability to control the plane earlier in the flight. By all accounts, Read more →
Theoretically, you should be twice as safe on an airplane today now that the tax — I’m sorry, “fee” — for providing security is doubling. Good one. It turns out — you might want to sit down for this — that it’s merely a money grab. Comparatively little of the extra money is going toward Read more →
It’s an aviation truism that when a pilot has a bad day and needs to make an emergency landing, it’s best to get right back on the horse. Frank Fierro, 75, had a bad day last week when he landed his single-engine ultralight Challenger plane on a highway on Long Island. It wasn’t a big Read more →
After the apparent shooting down of a civilian airliner over Ukraine today, many airlines are joining the directive to stay away from Ukraine. Read more →
Most of the publicity around small jets for people has focused on Duluth-based Cirrus, which has put a lot of its future in the hands of the VLJ, the very light jet concept. But at nearly $2 million apiece, that’s not an aircraft for typical people. That’s an aircraft for corporations and businesspeople who don’t Read more →
Don’t you just hate it when your flight is about to land and a whale surfaces on the “runway? (warning: obscenity) It happened late last week in Alaska, of course. (h/t: John Olson)
Matthew Guthmiller became the youngest to fly around the world alone but won’t hear much about it: NBC’s Today show has paid the family to be quiet.
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Some time this evening, South Dakota teen Matthew Guthmiller will fulfill his dream and become the youngest person ever to fly around the planet by himself. Read more →
Over a few dozen years watching the pilots for the mosquito control districts, I’ve concluded you have to be just a little bit of a daredevil to drop the mosquito bombs, at least watching them from afar. MPR’s Tim Post today has a different perspective on these people. Clearly, there’s not a lot of room Read more →
Let the word go forth, airline pilots: Captain Gerhard Brandner has raised the bar. His Frontier Airlines flight to Denver was diverted because of thunderstorms the other night and as he sat on the ground in Cheyenne, he decided to order some pizza for himself. He also ordered 49 more pizzas for all his passengers. Read more →
Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport isn’t the only place where the neighbors are upset about the noise. The Federal Aviation Administration today sent a notice to area pilots to stop flying low over the Lake Elmo area. Over the past few weeks, the Minneapolis Flight Standards District Office has received numerous complaints against low flying aircraft in the Read more →
There’s no bigger problem in all of aviation than runway incursions, in which a plane strays onto an active runway. In Barcelona this weekend, an Aerolineas Argentinas plane crossed a runway directly into the path of a landing Russian airliner. It could have been catastrophic. The captain of the jet on the ground likely missed Read more →