I recently wrote about Colgan Air Flight 3407's tragic accident. Although Colgan themselves seem to think they're fine and it's good enough to blame their pilots, the FAA has thankfully taken a better approach. As mentioned by the AOPA, the FAA has issued "an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM)" about airline pilot qualifications. As I see it, the document is basically saying, "We know something is wrong and we want to fix it, but we're not 100% sure how to start. Here are some ideas, please let us know what you think."

What an opportunity for us! Whether you hope to fly for a living under the policies that will come out of this, or you just want to make sure you are safe as an airline passenger, this is the best chance you'll ever get to put in your two cents on how airline pilot qualifications should work.

Ok, so this probably doesn't qualify as good aviation news or even marginal news for that matter but if you've spent any time in the back of an airliner you know this publication well. Yup, SkyMall home to some of the most ridiculous items I've ever seen. Some so ridiculous that they bear mention in a top 35 listing from the folks at BuzzFeed. My personal favorite is the wine necklace, because I never want that glass of vino too far away when I'm typing... hiccup...

We were all troubled this February when Flight 3407, run by Colgan Air, crashed killing all on board. As near as we can tell it happened due to tail plane icing...a less-familiar problem that requires counter-intuitive recovery procedures. An important result of the accident investigation is national focus on life for regional airline pilots. People are starting to look at the training, schedules and procedures used by the regionals. We stand to learn a lot from these investigations and lawmakers are brewing some legislation to apply these lessons. Unfortunately though, Colgan Air seems to be ignoring safety issues and blaming the pilots they failed to take care of.

I used to be a non believer... I honestly didn't think that major airlines would be able to get their acts together enough to implent a decent inflight connectivity service. Yet here I am posting to my website while cruising coast to coast on Virgin American! They might not be a major player, but they're certainly going to make the majors sit up and take notice. As I look around at least 10 people within the rows close to my own are surfing on laptops, and that doesn't account for the folks like myself hacking on phones or PDA's. The service is quick enough not to be frustrating and my email and tweetdeck accounts are syncing every bit as quickly as they do over 3G. So I say to you inflight wifi worth using has arrived! Now let's talk about how much I would pay for it...

Boeing made history this week with the first flight of their newest jet, the 787 Dreamliner. The three hour flight included flying up to 15,000 feet and 180 knots and appeared to be as close to perfect as it gets.

When Richard Branson flew a jet powered partially by biofuel nearly two years ago I wondered if he was just trying to follow a fad that would disappear when it got too expensive. Now it's starting to look like biofuel may be catching on. KLM recently flew a 747 with one engine using a 50/50 mix of biofuel. This flight was a big deal for two reasons: First, they claim their fuel is "sustainable." Second, they operated the flight with 40 of their execs as passengers.

The other significant part of this flight is it coincided with the formation of SkyEnergy, a consortium that aims to develop biofuel as a realistic and economical jet fuel alternative.

A story in today's LA Times reports that the FAA has issued fines totaling $175,000 to three airlines for stranding passengers on board aircraft overnight last August. Three aircraft from Continental, ExpressJet and Mesaba were forced to divert to Rochester, Minnesota, due to weather, but when they got there passengers were kept on the planes for an unreasonable amount of time.

I'm ecstatic to see the FAA trying to combat irrationality in airline practices and government regulations. Hopefully this will get us closer to a "Passengers' Bill of Rights," though we still have a way to go.

On Monday 19 October 2009, Delta Flight 60 was enroute to Atlanta’s Hartsfield airport (KATL) when a check pilot on board experienced a medical emergency in midflight. The crew decided to push on to Atlanta and were given clearance to land on Runway 27R. At just after 0600 eastern time the Boeing 767 landed on the parallel taxiway “Mike”, just north of runway 27R instead of runway 27R as directed. Not much has been heard about the taxiway landing incident because it was quickly overshadowed by two other airline pilots missing their destination airport by well over 100 miles because they were BOTH distracted on their laptops.