Air Travel
Commercial flight, including airlines and airports
Mind if I Smoke?
Remember when passengers used to toss lit cigarettes out the airplane window? Honest.
November 17, 2011 |
By Rebecca Maksel
Gremlin On the Wing
How do you define the fear of flying? Scientists think it might be the sum of other fears.
November 09, 2011 |
By Heather Goss
Lost in America
Airplanes that go missing are often untraceable. Why is effective tracking technology being ignored?
November 2011 |
By Michael Behar
Confessions of a Flight Engineer
Flashlights, timers, and breath mints required.
November 2011 |
By Andrea Eldridge
Heroes in the Tower
Stories about air traffic controllers that you probably didn’t see on the evening news.
September 2011 |
By Michael Klesius
Rural Airport Subsidies: How Far Is Too Far?
As the crow flies, the Hagerstown Regional Airport (HGR) in Maryland is 64 miles from the much busier runways of Baltimore Washington International (BWI), to its east. How far a drive is it, though? And more importantly, how far is it in political terms? Under the Essential Air Service program enacted in 1978, federal subsidies [...]
August 08, 2011 |
By Roger Mola
Ride-Sharing With the Rich
How fractional jet owners get out of flying coach.
August 2011 |
By David Freed
A & S Interview: Ron Davies
A former museum curator of air transport rallies for high-speed rail.
August 2011 |
By Pat Trenner
Stop That Stick Figure
The Transportation Security Administration has finally faced the naked truth. After the agency’s advanced imaging technology (AIT) airport scanners stirred controversy by exposing too much of a passenger’s human form, the TSA will switch to new software that makes the images less realistic. Screening agents—who had been isolated in a remote closet to view the [...]
July 25, 2011 |
By Roger Mola
Miracle on I-95
The US Airways Airbus A320 that figured in the January 2009 “Miracle on the Hudson” is headed (via highway) from New Jersey to its new home at the Carolinas Aviation Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina. The route will take it through Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, and North Carolina. Follow the airplane’s progress on Facebook or [...]
June 06, 2011 |
By Tony Reichhardt
Explanation: They Were Drunk
In the history of aviation, there were ideas that didn’t quite work out. Take the Avro VZ-9-AV Avrocar, one of ten odd aircraft profiled in the Smithsonian Channel film “Unbelievable Flying Objects.” (It’s number 5). The U.S. Air Force became interested in the Avrocar as an early “stealth” aircraft that could hover beneath radar, then [...]
May 17, 2011 |
By Rebecca Maksel
About Those Sleeping Air Traffic Controllers
Air traffic controllers have been in the news several times in the past month. First came the "asleep in the tower" stories at Washington National Airport and Reno, Nevada. Then the First Lady's airplane had to go around at Andrews AFB because it was too close to other traffic. The 24-hour news mon...
May 02, 2011 |
By Steve Satre
Inside Joke
Admit it: Sometimes you want to skip all the technical hoo-hah and get straight to the jokes. For your enjoyment, today we're resurrecting a bit of aircraft maintenance humor that has been roaming the Internet since 1997, and circulating on hard copies before that. The jokes have been attributed to...
April 21, 2011 |
By Rebecca Maksel
Surviving the Hindenburg
When the Hindenburg flew toward the the Naval Air Station in Lakehurst, New Jersey on May 6, 1937, it was the airship's eleventh voyage to the United States. The nearly 804-foot-long ship, the pride of Nazi Germany, had been carrying passengers on excursion flights since 1910 without a single injur...
April 15, 2011 |
By Rebecca Maksel
Found: Air France Flight 447
You've heard of the UAV (unmanned air vehicle). Now check out the AUV (autonomous underwater vehicle): The REMUS 6000. It looks like a yellow torpedo. It's a lot smarter. And it dives a lot deeper.Yesterday, the tenacious underwater 'bot located at long last the remains of Air France flight 447, w...
April 05, 2011 |
By Mike Klesius
