Jetwhine

Aviation buzz and bold opinion

Rob Mark

The Aviation Minute Continues: Episodes Four & Five

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Jetwhine
Jetwhine
The Aviation Minute Continues: Episodes Four & Five
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It’s time to get our listeners caught up on The Aviation Minute.

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Seems that working the kinks out of our new podcast turned out to be a bit more time consuming than I’d at first thought. Now that the iTunes folks tell us The Aviation Minute has been added to to the approved list of shows, it seemed like just the right moment to bring people up to speed on episodes four and five. From this week forward, you can also expect a new episode of The Aviation Minute each and every Thursday.

Episode four speaks to women in aviation and why the percentage of ladies in this industry remains so dismally tiny, while episode five offers a few parting thoughts to outgoing NTSB Chairman Deb Hersman and her respected team of investigative personnel.

Subscribing to the Aviation Minute

Because a show’s value increases with the number of listeners, I wanted to be sure you knew the easy ways to follow us. Certainly people using smart phones might find following The Aviation Minute easier through iTunes, but there is another system word mentioning … RSS. Despite the meaning — Really Simple Syndication — my first attempts at hooking up through RSS were a dismal failure. It took me awhile to learn that you need a reader of some sort to act as the aggregator for your feeds … so much for the simple part … no one mentioned that.feedly

Google’s Feedly app has become my aggregator of choice, so much so that I’ve turned it into my default browser page. Now when I log on each morning, I can tell at a glance which of my favorite sites have created fresh content without the need to remember to continually check back at a dozens locations

So enjoy episodes four and five of The Aviation Minute … and of course be sure and tell your friends if you think the content’s worth 90 seconds of their time every week.

Thanks,

Rob Mark, Publisher

PS — Is there an issue in the aviation world that’s driving you crazy? Tell us about it and maybe we’ll use it for an upcoming episode. E-mail me directly at rob@jetwhine.com. And don’t forget to tell us the country you’re listening in from.

Understanding Air France 447’s Author Bill Palmer Talks to Jetwhine

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Jetwhine
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Understanding Air France 447's Author Bill Palmer Talks to Jetwhine
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collagecover3Regular Jetwhine readers might just remember a number of lively debates on this blog about what happened to Air France 447 over the South Atlantic in June 2009. A few of those conversations reached heated proportions too, with opinions … some from pilots, some not. One commentor here at Jetwhine always managed to sound informed yet cool through all the chatter. That man was Bill Palmer, an Airbus A330 captain and instructor pilot for one of the major airlines. 

We spent some time recently talking to Palmer about his new book, “Understanding Air France 447,” a volume focused on helping readers better understand what really happened that night, as well as to help separate the facts from the rumors and innuendos. One rumor claimed the tail fell of the A330 — false. Another that the “Stall, Stall,” audio warning message played in the cockpit for nearly a solid minute without anyone in the cockpit even mentioning the word stall — true.

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The book is chock full of detailed explanations about what happened on board the cockpit of this A330 that stormy June morning, as well as the inner workings of the BEA investigation of the crash. This book offers valuable lessons for any pilot, whether they’re airline or corporate pilots, or Piper and Cessna drivers. You’ll find Palmer’s book in paperback and e-book formats at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com, as well in eBook form at the iTunes store.

Grab a cup of coffee and for the next 10 minutes or so listen to Bill Palmer explain what happened aboard Air France 447 in June 2009 and exactly what this crash means for the rest of the aviation industry.

 

Happy Birthday Jetwhine

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7th birthdayGetting old isn’t really so bad, is it?

Sure a few more lines and sags stare back at you every morning in the mirror, but the upside to aging is wisdom.

Jetwhine’s 7th birthday is just around the corner and I like to think Scott Spangler and I are a lot wiser than in 2006 when Jetwhine’s first story ran. Heck, in dog years we’re almost 50.

I figure we must be smarter to have survived an onslaught of social media competitors that surfaced and also died over the past seven years. Of course a few of those forums really are, in Bill and Ted’s own words, “Most excellent,” and opened our eyes to viewpoints we’ve come to respect.

We bloggers till around can’t help but notice that time marching on can sometimes make us a bit too cozy with the way we’ve always conducted business, perhaps no longer stretching that envelope like in 2006 when we published a piece about the value of a blog for the aviation industry, or the piece on the value of a union for air traffic controllers. Of course there was that fun piece on the Top 10 reasons the Northwest Airlines pilots flew past MSP on arrival. Bet they never lived that one down. How could I forget Scott’s story about our industry getting the flight instructors it deserves. That one grabbed over a hundred comments. [Read more…] about Happy Birthday Jetwhine

Today is Labor Day

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Labor Day

Having been deeply involved with two major unions in my life … the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Association (PATCO) and finally for a short while, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA), my father and grandfather both would surely turn over in their graves if I let Labor Day pass without sharing my two cents about what it means to me.

Of course I do realize that support for labor these days means I’ve indeed become a dinosaur. I’m thinking I kind of like that T-Rex guy though …

For those of you with an interest in the old days and a look at how we arrived where we are today, especially in the airline industry, allow me to point you to the radio segment I produced last year for the Geeks. It’s as relevant today as a year ago. Airplane Geeks Episode 212.5 — Labor Day.

Or if you prefer to read, here’s a link to a quick to some thoughts about why Labor Day should still be important to us here in the states.

Rob Mark

Flying the Airbus A380

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Every so often work becomes fun. OK, admittedly, not very often. When the folks at Aviation International News asked me to check out the new Brake-to-Vacate system Airbus had designed, they mentioned I’d have a chance to see it in action since the technology was installed on a new Airbus model … an A380. Did I want to go fly it?

Fly the A380? Hmmmm. I had to think about it of course … for oh, maybe a quarter of a second. Next thing I knew, I was in Toulouse checking out the technology and driving the bus. And for the true airplane geeks, the Airbus A380 brake-to-vacate system allows the flying pilot to determine before landing precisely which taxiway turnoff the aircraft will be able to make using maximum reverse thrust and the most efficient use of wheel braking.

Ryan Dietz and I mixed the videos I shot with some B-roll footage the Airbus folks were nice enough to share and the end result is what you see here.

With AirVenture 2012 just around the corner, it seemed like just the right time to talk about the fun of flying airplanes. Hope you enjoy watching this as much as I did flying the biggest bus. BTW, how was my landing?

Now … I have to get back to work.

Rob Mark

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