Category: Flying

Stories about flying planes and helicopters, discussions of technique and teaching.

Celebration of the B-1 Bomber (BONE) at Oshkosh

by philg

One of the talks at Oshkosh (EAA AirVenture) that we enjoyed was by Kenneth Katz, author of The Supersonic Bone: A Development and Operational History of the B-1 Bomber, John Chilstrom (B-1 pilot), and Fred Swan (B-1 Wizzo).

They reminded us that the B-52, which first flew in 1952, was considered a temporary aircraft that would hold us until we had a full fleet of supersonic bombers. The requirements that turned into the B-1 (“B-ONE” or “Bone”) were first set forth in 1955. The B-1 evolved so slowly, changing from a very fast high-altitude machine to a barely-supersonic low-altitude machine, that Jimmy Carter, running for office in 1976, was able to promise to strangle it in its crib. During the Carter administration, the USAF managed to continue some testing of the prototype B-1s against Russian radar systems that Israel had captured in the 1973 Yom Kippur war. (Oshkosh is pretty much the opposite of New York City; speakers referred to “our friends in Israel” when mentioning various forms of military cooperation, e.g., Israel providing the U.S. with MiG fighters to seed a secret training and testing squadron in Nevada. Nobody enthuses about river-to-the-sea liberation, Queers for Palestine, or anything else that is sacred in the Mamdani Caliphate.) The B-1s got through much better than the B-52s.

The machine that first flew in 1974 (more than 50 years ago) is still in use today, e.g., as part of our gradual surrender to the Islamic Republic of Iran (maybe Jimmy Carter was right; he surrendered to Iran in 1979 and if our foreign policy is to surrender to anyone tougher than Grenada then why do we need the B-1 or, indeed, an air force?).

The WSO (“Wizzo”) talked about bombing Iraq in 1973. Bombs and missiles are loaded into a rotating carousel and if conditions change, e.g., someone thinks there is a chance to drop a particular bomb on Saddam’s head, it is necessary to jettison other items in order to get to the desired munition. Here’s how this is loaded up:

A couple of B-1s made low passes, but none stopped to visit this year (2018 was the last time?).

It was common in airshows and talks at Oshkosh for those who’ve served in our military to be praised. Of course, a percentage of these folks exhibited remarkable bravery and took significant risks. Guess who didn’t receive any praise, though? The taxpayers who made it possible for the machines on display to be designed, built, and operated! Eighty percent of federal income tax receipts come from roughly 20 million tax returns (Tax Foundation). Even assuming that over half of these are joint returns, that’s just 10 percent of the U.S. population that is dumb enough to work and pay significant tax. Would it be so difficult to say “If you paid tax on more than $150,000 in income last year, thank you for your service and for enabling us to have F-35s, F-22s, B-1s, aircraft carriers, and all of the other amazing stuff that we’ve been using as part of our surrender to the Islamic Republic of Iran”? Speaking of the F-22, here’s one parked at the FBO:

Circling back, so to speak, to the B-1… what is a likely role for the aircraft in a world of ever-more-advanced drones?

How much do attendees at Oshkosh love bombers? Have a look at the simulated bombs that are an essential part of every airshow at EAA AirVenture:

Somewhat related,

“The destruction of Germany’s great war industries was accomplished almost entirely from the air. No one can stand among their ruins without a feeling of awe for the devastating power of such attacks. The courage and skill of our pilots and their crews in these operations is legendary. They deserve the highest tribute of our people.”

— The Honorable Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War

Found on the cover of a book about the B-24 at the Aeromart within EAA AirVenture:

(We seem to have chosen the opposite approach with the Islamic Republic of Iran, i.e., allow them to continue as an industrial power and ask them nicely not to use their industy to make weapons.)

Boeing now takes credit for the B-1B, which was entirely developed and built by North American Rockwell. Boeing lost the design competition circa 1970 and acquired Rockwell in 1996, 22 years after the B-1’s first flight. What else does Boeing take credit for? At the Boeing pavilion’s gift shop, the Black Americans who won World War II:

ChatGPT, regarding the Tuskegee Airmen:

  • the display in your photograph is best understood as modern corporate and cultural messaging
  • they did not fly Boeing aircraft operationally (the Stearman was used for primary training, though)
  • No Tuskegee Airman officially qualified as an ace during World War II (vs. 1,279 non-Tuskegee pilots)
  • The group encountered enemy aircraft on only 35 of its 179 Fifteenth Air Force bomber-escort missions, partly because it entered that campaign relatively late, as German fighter opposition was declining.

Elsewhere on the field, we are informed that the “fearless” pilots who fly the B-29, an actual Boeing plane, were not the men who plowed through 16 hours of thunderstorms round-trip to Japan, but rather “fearless women” who operated the B-29 over the Continental U.S.

ChatGPT:

Many male test pilots, instructors and crews were already flying the B-29. [Enola Gay pilot Paul] Tibbets himself trained the women, and a male instructor or aircraft commander was involved in their qualification. The aircraft could not have been developed, tested and fielded otherwise.

The reluctance concerned a troublesome new aircraft, not a universal refusal by men to undertake danger.

The women were selected partly because Tibbets expected the gender comparison to embarrass reluctant male crews. The stunt depended upon the period’s assumption that a man ought to be ashamed if a woman undertook a flying risk he avoided.

Full post, including comments

Elizabeth Warren’s Stinson at Oshkosh

by philg

Here’s a Stinson that was disabled by an engine failure over the Red Lake Nation, a dream environment for a progressive (“the only fully “closed reservation” in the United States of America. In a closed reservation, all land is held in common by the tribe and there is no private property.”). The plane belonged for about seven months to Elizabeth Warren before AOPA and the FAA finally persuaded the tribe to return it to Darrin Smedsmo, below:

Here’s the AOPA story:

Smedsmo says he called AOPA “within minutes,” and connected with Deputy General Counsel Jared Allen, who started working immediately to help Smedsmo navigate the situation. … Allen met with Smedsmo and his attorneys at least once a week for months, and shared updates with the FAA. Meanwhile, in December, AOPA sent a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy urging them to intervene.

If you want to preserve access to airports and, apparently, emergency landing areas, this would be a great time to sign up for lifetime AOPA membership!

Full post, including comments

The most beautiful warbird at Oshkosh this year (PBY Catalina)

by philg

Fresh out of a 7-year restoration in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, this sub-killing PBY Catalina is my pick for the most beautiful warbird of EAA AirVenture 2026:

(Also a very welcome sight in 1945 for sailors from the USS Indianapolis who were abandoned to exposure in the Pacific Ocean.)

The 35,000+ lb. plane belongs to the American Heritage Museum in Maskachusetts (their press release), but will live for a year at the EAA Museum in Oshkosh. Some details on the plane’s history:

Credit to the folks in New Smyra Beach, Florida who handled the 7-year restoration:

In other seaplane news, as soon as we got to the EAA Seaplane Base, a 30,000+ lb. Grumman Albatross flew over our heads and splashed down. A bit later, a Grumman Mallard took off and then did a fly-by:

We encountered the plane on wheels a few hours later, back at KOSH, and the owner invited our boys to climb up into the cockpit and then down through a tunnel into the bow:

Any other fun warbirds? A Boeing B-52 in Boeing Plaza next to the Boeing pavilion:

A couple of B-1s flew by. Some additional aggression, but apparently not enough to stave off surrender to the Islamic Republic of Iran:

The A-26 Invader and Al Franken:

EAA AirVenture also has some hardware related to potential civil war. Suppose, for example, that Ayatollah Mamdani’s Red Guards come to your house to arrest you for being part of the bourgeoisie. You might be able to flee down I-95 in the $465,000 BEC Defense Renegade APC, built on a Ford F-600 4×4 chassis:

It’s perfect for “family protection”:

If you prefer speed to armor, Piper is ready with a Corvette:

(Parked in front of the “Fury” makes sense since anyone in South Florida would be furious that this isn’t at least a Z06 version. 495 horsepower is insufficient for the trip to Publix.)

Just don’t try to flee the Mamdani Caliphate in a Joby. As in previous years, they showed up with something that does everything except fly:

Full post, including comments

Will Amazon be the dominant commercial drone company?

by philg

“EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2026 introduces Vertical Lift Center, offering focal point for rotorcraft and vertical lift technology”:

Rotorcraft and vertical lift technology will be the featured highlights at the new EAA Vertical Lift Center to be unveiled during EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2026. The 73rd Experimental Aircraft Association fly-in convention is July 20-26 at Wittman Regional Airport.

As announced at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2025, this area will feature an emphasis on helicopters and VTOL aircraft as part of a partnership with the Robinson Helicopter Company and Vertical Aviation International (VAI), a membership organization dedicated to supporting the vertical lift industry. The dedicated space within AirVenture’s Aviation Gateway Park will display aircraft as well as promote rotorcraft education, industry recruitment, and innovative technology in the vertical lift industry.

“The future of flight is vertical, and EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh is an ideal stage to sponsor and showcase the innovation happening across our industry, from traditional rotorcraft to the next generation of piloted, remotely piloted and unmanned systems,” said David Smith, President and CEO of Robinson Helicopter and sponsor of the inaugural Vertical Lift Center at AirVenture 2026. “As the demand for skilled engineers, A&P mechanics, and test pilots reaches an all-time high, Robinson is committed to supporting education and careers across vertical lift. We encourage everyone to visit the Vertical Lift Center to discover how these advancements are shaping the next era of flight and how they can become a part of it.”

Robinson, under new MIT-educated leadership, seems to be making dramatic project in autonomous aircraft. Who’s going even faster, though? The hurry-up-and-deliver crew at Amazon Prime Air (Wokipedia seems to be understating the scale of this enterprise):

All of the FAA regulatory hurdles that are impossible to surmount Amazon seems to have surmounted, e.g., operating Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS, for which Amazon got approval in 2024). The company is building its own airframes, its own engines, its own software, and then is operating its own Part 135 cargo airline. This is a throwback to the old days of Boeing, before President FDR broke it up into airframes (Boeing), engines (Pratt), and airline (United). (Bill Boeing quit at this point and became a developer of racially segregated suburban real estate.) The FAA seems to be trying to encourage a whole industry in this area, but among the vendors at Oshkosh, Amazon appeared to be way out in front. The guys in the booth said more than 1,000 drones were currently in operation and that the assembly line is capable of producing mroe than 1,000 additional drones per year.

Could a human pilot do what the Amazon drone does? It would be unfair to ask a human to drop a Blackhawk into a driveway surrounded by trees, but suppose that we gave a Robinson R44 pilot the same amount of open space relative to machine size. Could the R44 pilot go straight down, avoiding obstacles and vortex ring state, push a package out the side, and lift back up? Theoretically, yes, but to do it 50 times per day every day would require a remarkably high level of proficiency, not to mention a ton of power! (Helicopters are most efficient when taking off and landing like airplanes, ironically.)

What’s the planned scale for Amazon? April 2026 article:

Jassy said Prime Air service will be able to serve communities with 30 million customers by the end of the year, with a much wider catalog of goods to choose from, and is expected to annually deliver 500 million packages by the end of the decade in under 30 minutes. The ability to scale up drone deliveries is possible now because of more than 85 same-day fulfillment centers that carry Amazon’s top 90,000 products and serve as launch pads for the autonomous delivery vehicles.

Does anyone need this? Consumers in China already experience something similar, though delivery is mostly by scooter. I was surprised during a 2019 visit to Shanghai at the lack of any stores like CVS and also at the absence of supermarkets. It turned out that everyone was getting everything delivered in about the same amount of time that it would have taken them to walk to CVS and back.

Amazon has competition in this area, of course. Zipline is one and they’ve supposedly done a couple of million deliveries, but the product that they brought to Oshkosh didn’t seem as finished as Amazon’s. Wing, part of Alphabet/Google, has a similar system to Zipline’s in that the main drone stays up in the sky while a sub-drone is lowered by cable. The Amazon solution seems cleaner and a better fit for suburban American life. The “longline” idea does seem to open up the possibility of deliveries to tighter spaces, e.g., within the Mamdani Caliphate or San Francisco, but how can it work to deliver high-value packages autonomously in those places given the number of package thieves?

The barriers to entry for creating human-occupied eVTOL “super drones” seem to be remarkably low right now. Some truly tiny companies, e.g., with only 10 engineers, were exhibiting. Below is a sampling of some of the human lifters.

Here’s a hybrid from France (reclaiming the country’s early leadership in aviation!) with two hours of flight time:

Here’s one from Korea, apparently sized for Koreans:

We’re informed that everything good that happens in Britain is thanks to non-British immigrants, but the team at Skyfly has a distinctly pale appearance:

Their product had an encouraging finished look (the potential customer in the red pants, however, like she might be a better fit for a Cirrus SR22):

Jump Aero was exhibiting in a separate tent. This company, founded by a co-founder of Terrafugia (a flying car), offers a practical use case for human-occupied eVTOL: deliver a paramedic to the scene of an accident.

What about Robinson, the sponsor of all of the above? If we ever decide that we want to win a war, rather than almost immediately surrendering, Robinson is there with an autonomous R66 that can deliver ammo to a beleagured hilltop.

Full post, including comments

A Navy of seaplanes for a world of drones and hypersonic missiles

by philg

One of the many interesting talks at EAA AirVenture (“Oshkosh”) 2026 was by James Schreiber, a U.S. Navy veteran-turned-IBM-patent-lawyer with a passion for seaplanes.

First, there is no reason that seaplanes can’t be part of a modern navy. The ShinMaywa US-2 is a four-engine monster with tremendous range in service with Japan (source):

Here’s the radius of search and rescue action:

Contrary to what we tell MIT students, a seaplane actually can land in real waves (up to about 10′ in this case):

(If the Canadians weren’t sending so many of their tax dollars to Hamas, they could have purchased water bombing versions of this magnificent 120,000+ lb. beast and preserved U.S. air quality.)

We learned that one of the most interesting periods of our U.S. Navy was the 1950s. The USAF had gained ascendancy in government and the doctrine was to destroy our enemies via strategic bombing from land-based airplanes, such as the then-new B-52 (considered a short-term solution at the time, a stopgap until the glorious age of supersonic bombers), and ballistic missiles. The Navy’s funding requests for new aircraft carriers were denied and, thus, the Navy tacked (so to speak) toward submarines and sea-based airplanes. The Navy had designs for jet-powered fighters, bombers, and transport seaplanes. The Convair F2Y Sea Dart is the most famous example, a supersonic fighter that first flew in 1953. For raining down destruction on our enemies (back when we actually wanted to win wars!), the Martin P6M SeaMaster first flew in 1955. For moving troops and vehicles from harbor to harbor, the Convair R3Y Tradewind, which first flew in 1954 (a little heavier than the above-mentioned Japanese seaplane and, therefore, potentially even better for our brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters trying to fight fires in Canada with whatever funding scraps they have left over from serving as the Palestinians’ logistics arm).

Part of the 1950s rationale for a fleet of sea-based aircraft was that they’d be more challenging for the enemy to find and target than runways and monster-sized aircraft carriers. Perhaps that rationale is even more, uh, rational today? Let’s consider our gradual surrender to the Islamic Republic of Iran (can’t be called a “war” because we apparently don’t have any ambition of winning, in which winning would be defined as destroying the Islamic Republic’s oil and electricity industries so that they wouldn’t be able to rebuild and run weapons factories). The ships of the Iranian Navy that were larger than an aircraft were quickly destroyed by the U.S. On our side, our fixed bases, such as Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, have proved vulnerable to Iranian missiles.

Readers: What do you think about resurrecting the 1950s idea?

An awesome T-shirt from the Seaplane Pilots Association (not in their online shop yet):

Full post, including comments

Family aviation limps into the turbine era (Carbon Cub with TurboTech engine)

by philg

One year ago… The revolution in oil-powered general aviation is at least three years away

There has never been any significant progress in aviation without first an improvement in engines. A low-power high-efficiency turbine engine, for example, would enable the creation of all kinds of dramatically superior aircraft. But none of the kit companies or even the certified four-seat aircraft companies can readily afford to invest what is required.

Enter Turbotech, a startup in the Islamic Republic of France. They say that they have a 140 hp turboprop engine that burns fuel at approximately the same rate as a 140 hp Rotax (piston) engine

How long before this can be dropped into a certified airframe? The founders said that if everything goes perfect and nothing at all has to be changed in their current design, the engine could be EASA/FAA-certified in three years.

I hope to proved wrong about the 2028 date (three years from 2025), but it seems that the engine is more or less available in a more-or-less-certified airplane, the Carbon Cub:

It’s $690,000 as a “builder-assist” kit airplane (the owner doesn’t do anything challenging!):

A factory-built version (“light sport”) is “coming soon”. Note that this plane will be delivered with the awesome new Garmin AXIS panel.

It looks as though this is about $350,000 more expensive than the piston (Rotax) version, adjusted for comparable avionics.

There’s an $1,800 Starlink option, but that is perhaps best skipped given that SpaceX/Starlink have recently discovered how to charge Rockwell Collins- and Honeywell-style prices for subscriptions that work at aircraft speeds.

The sound and the fury:

July 23, 2026 update: the plane has already slipped a year. The web site still says 2027:

The sales guys at Oshkosh say “2028”. They brought one to the event, though:

Full post, including comments

After 17 years, something new from Garmin in retrofit glass panels

by philg

Seventeen years ago:

These low-resolution (1280×768) displays were tweaked during coronapanic by adding touch sensitvity (a mixed blessing in a machine that is subject to turbulence), but essentially Garmin has been offering the same system for 17 years… until today. The web site for Garmin AXIS doesn’t offer any resolution spec in pixels, which is disturbing, and it continues to mention panning and zooming (not the best activity for a pilot trying to control aircraft attitude!). Maybe Garmin actually hasn’t caught up to 1080p, a place that HTC managed to get for its Android phones in 2012.

Why does an airplane need box after box of avionics given that a modern smartphone has an AHRS, a GPS, multiple radios, a high-res display, a massive database of charts, and nearly everything else that anyone would want in an aircraft panel? I haven’t made it all the way through the 23-minute launch video, but I don’t think resolution is mentioned:

For those of us limping along with late-1990s Garmin 430s, the beauty of this new Garmin system is that the capabilities of the insanely expensive and absurdly low-res GTN750Xi nav/com (about $25,000 installed; offers to show approach plates, but they’re unreadable) are folded into the back of the display. It looks as though the financial savings could be significant. The PFD with all of the features of the GTN750Xi is priced at roughly the same cost as the GTN750Xi. From Sarasota:

Presumably two of these “fattened displays” would be required for a Cirrus or similar “real IFR” aircraft so as to have a backup GPS, 2nd COM, etc.

This is, of course, ugly news for Brand A. Avidyne only a year ago got its retrofit reasonably-modern larger-but-low-res PFD/MFD certified. The Avidyne system needs high-cost high-bulk connector-rich separate nav/coms, which Garmin has now folded into the backs of their PFD/MFD.

Update: I found the resolution in pixels in the manual. It is 1080p, 1920×1080 pixels, a huge upgrade from the G500TXi and also much higher resolution than Avidyne’s Vantage. If 1080p has arrived in $60,000 aircraft panels 21 years after arriving in consumer living rooms and 14 years after arriving in consumers’ pockets (HTC Android phone), does that mean the dawn of 8K TVs is near? It’s tough to imagine that aviation isn’t at least two generations behind what consumers can buy for $500.

Amazon will deliver an 8K TV right now for $2300:

If we consider $1,000 to be the post-Bidenflation equivalent of $500, maybe it will be 2027 before 8K TVs, two generations ahead of these $20,000 Garmin displays, have come down enough to create a conventional split in price. (How much more general and video-related computing power do we think an 8K TV has compared to all of the computers in a glass panel aircraft put together?)

Full post, including comments

Seattle’s Museum of Flight

by philg

Happy IPO Day to SpaceX, which its investors presumably hope will be the future of space travel. Via this post, we can also look at the past of space travel.

Most air and space museums, including the Smithsonian, are primarily about showing artifacts and make little attempt to educate visitors. Seattle’s Museum of Flight is a notable exception and, thus, could easily occupy a nerdy family for a day. Here are some snapshots from an early June 2026 visit.

The SR-71, the world’s fastest airplane and one that reached the edge of space (85,000′), with the world’s slowest, Gossamer Albatross II, ironically placed just above it (in real life, the Albatross II flew mostly at 5-15′ in order to take advantage of ground effect).

How did the SR-71’s engines, designed for slower aircraft, function? A sign explains:

Maintenance might not be simple…

Notice that there is an aircraft on top of the SR-71. This is thoroughly explained (also sadly, since Roy Torick was killed in testing for the D-21B drone):

How about the camera? The museum displays the 30-inch Itek lens:

The Museum avoids American chauvinism, pointing out that modern rocketry was developed independently in three countries and that, before Goddard, there was Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in Russia.

(There is a big section on the Apollo program and the role of Boeing, and companies later acquired by Boeing, building equipment for it, but the photos aren’t too exciting.)

The World War II exhibit gives reasonable space to allied and enemy aircraft, e.g., a Yakovlev and a Nakajima:

Equal space is accorded to female pilots who ferried aircraft over friendly skies and male pilots who flew in combat. Nancy Nordhoff Dunnam served in the U.S. between February 1944 and December 1944, most of which was spent in training. She lived until 2017. Richard Bong spent about two years in combat in the Pacific, shooting down 28 heavily armed Japanese planes, and died in 1945 while helping to bring the U.S. military into the jet age.

Were there any male pilots in WWII who did the same jobs as these heroic females, i.e., ferrying airplanes? ChatGPT:

In the U.S., aircraft ferrying was run mainly through the Army Air Forces Ferrying Command, later part of the Air Transport Command (ATC). Its Ferrying Division delivered newly built aircraft from factories to training bases and ports of embarkation. That system used AAF military pilots, civilian pilots, airline pilots, and women pilots including WAFS/WASP. The Air Force history page for the Twenty-Second Air Force says the Domestic Wing/Ferrying Division moved newly produced aircraft using “AAF pilots, civilian pilots, and women pilots” from the WAFS/WASP. The male civilian pilots came from several pools: airline pilots, commercial/private pilots, bush pilots, air-taxi pilots, crop dusters, business pilots, and pleasure pilots. … 27 male pilots per female pilot.

So… the gender that did 27/28ths of the work gets no credit in the museum. Congress and President Obama awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2009 to the civilian female pilots. Did the civilian male pilots who performed similar jobs get a similar honor? ChatGPT says “no”.

The Museum’s outdoor-but-covered exhibits include most of Boeing’s greatest hits, including the 747, an Air Force One 707, a 787, a B-17, and a B-29.

The 727 on display is accompanied by a D.B. Cooper sign:

There is a sobering Vietnam memorial, displaying a beautiful B-52 and also reminding us of the cost of war, nothing that we lost 10,000 aircraft in the war.

A notable omission from the plaques of names of men who were held as POWs: Robert L. Stirm. AP:

Stirm, a decorated pilot, was serving with the 333rd Tactical Fighter Squadron based in Thailand in 1967. During a bombing mission over North Vietnam that Oct. 27, his F-105 Thunderchief was hit and he was shot three times while parachuting. He was captured immediately upon landing.

He was held captive for 1,966 days in five different POW camps in Hanoi and North Vietnam, including the notorious “Hanoi Hilton,” known for torturing and starving its captives, primarily American pilots shot down during bombing raids. Its most famous prisoner was the late U.S. Sen. John McCain, who also was shot down in 1967.

Stirm became famous for this photo of his family welcoming him home:

As Wikipedia notes, however, the principal welcome that he received was being sued for divorce, under the nation’s then-new no-fault divorce laws, by the wife who’d been having sex with various new friends while the pilot was held prisoner. She obtained the house and car that he’d purchased, a child support revenue stream, and 43 percent of his military pension for her service on the home front (maybe her name should be on the wall as the person who made the greater sacrifice during the Vietnam War? A judge decided that fairness required that she receive the majority of the money that Robert L. Stirm was paid during his USAF career (only 43 percent of the pension, but she got 100 percent of his pay while he was a POW)).

Circling back to the interior, the museum shows a seemingly crazy rescue apparatus for pulling downed pilots out of the jungle (now “rainforest”) by helicopter:

What about compliance with the Washington State religion? Employees at the front desk are fully masked:

The museum costs $29 to enter or $3 if you’ve been wise enough to get an EBT card for SNAP or have any other evidence of being on “any form of government or public assistance”:

Anyone on what used to be called “welfare” can also get a family membership for $29 that includes an unlimited number of children and grandchildren for one year (normally $140).

As one turns away from the masked ticket agents (6+ years after coronapanic they haven’t been able to find a job that won’t expose them to tens of thousands of potentially infected humans every year?), the gift shop reminds visitors to “Celebrate Pride”:

The front desk near the outdoor section displays the sacred Rainbow Flag along with a U.S. Navy flag.

Although Seattle is an oasis of tolerance amidst a country full of haters, the Museum has had to set up a segregated “All Gender Restroom” separated from the main restrooms.

The gift shop also reminds us that aircraft are primarily designed, built, and flown by people who identify as “women”:

Let’s close by reminding ourselves just how much of the aviation industry was once controlled by Bill Boeing. The United Aircraft and Transport Corporation owned Boeing, Pratt, and United Airlines, among other companies, until it was broken up the U.S. government in 1934. It would be interesting to imagine an alternative history in which the vertically integrated company had stayed together. For one thing, founder Bill Boeing might have stayed in aviation instead of devoting his time to horses and racially restricted real estate development (Mr. Boeing agreed with future Harvard research that diversity makes a community worse, not better).

Finally, the 140 mph (supposedly!) Taylor Aerocar and the SR-71:

Full post, including comments

Could autonomous electric aircraft make life in Southeast Alaska more attractive?

by philg

Americans have collectively decided, through our elected representatives, to boost U.S. population to Chinese/Indian levels, mostly via low-skill immigration:

Democrats now agree with Republicans, apparently, that cheap oil/gas is desirable and that Climate Change (TM) need no longer be fought by cutting CO2 emissions.

If the heat in the Lower 48 becomes unbearable and the seas inundate Boston, New York City, DC, Miami, and other major coastal cities, Alaska seems like a natural evacuation destination. There is plenty of high ground in mountainous Alaska and the weather is pleasantly cool all year along the coast. The all-time record high for Juneau is 90 degrees, set in July 1975, and the average daily high temp for Juneau in July is 63.

One critical problem with life in the low-density parts of SE Alaska is transportation. Today’s airplanes typically can’t fly in the 0/0 foggy conditions that often plague this part of the country. There isn’t a high enough population density to support frequent nonstop flights among the various towns, nearly all of which are cut off from any road network, e.g., due to being on islands. The fabled Alaska Marine Highway (see Chapter XII of Travels with Samantha) is expensive and infrequent, perhaps partly due to the Jones Act that requires them to use U.S.-built vessels and that prevents an Asian-run company from offering competitive service. Below, the Alaskan-built MV Hubbard (cost $60 million in pre-Biden dollars; a “dayboat” that holds 53 cars; launched 2019):

What about a machine that can fly itself the 40-80 nm. legs that are required to get around this part of the world and that can navigate safely around terrain via reference to GPS and a database? That’s the autonomous electric aircraft (vertical takeoff and landing isn’t necessary, actually, since nearly all of these places have high-quality airports/runways, but eVTOL would work). Could that encourage more Americans (and “New Americans”) to settle in this part of the U.S.? Want to see a friend or shop? That will be a 20-minute flight. Need to see a medical specialist? The regional hospital in Juneau can be reached easily and you’ll be home in time for dinner. Need to be evacuated to Seattle or Anchorage for specialized hospital care? That’s done with a 20-minute electric air ambulance ride followed by a jet flight.

We’ve already seen this trend to some extent with islands for the rich. Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket weren’t beyond peasant means until private jet ownership became common. A house near ACK had no value to a rich Texas family until the rich Texans got their Gulfstream and could fly directly to ACK rather than flying commercial to Boston and taking a piston-powered airplane or the road+ferry.

Full post, including comments

Death of Spirit: a low-cost airline without the low costs (government should break up airport monopolies?)

by philg

Spirit is dead. I flew Spirit a few times and especially enjoyed their “Big Front Seat”. One flight out of FLL, I think, was delayed for hours due to a delay of the incoming plane on a perfect-weather day. Why can’t we have competition among airlines as they do in Europe and a wide range of low-cost carriers? First, Spirit was low cost to consumers, but it didn’t have low costs. Labor is the largest cost for an airline and Spirit’s union labor costs were similar to what the biggest airlines pay (ChatGPT):

ChatGPT on total cost for low-cost Ryanair vs. originally-low-cost JetBlue:

ChatGPT claims, incredibly, that Europe has more secondary airports:

I don’t think that this is correct, since the U.S. has tons of general aviation airports with long runways. Maybe the answer is that U.S. airports are monopolized, e.g., Massport owns both Logan Airport and Hanscom Field, the most obvious competitor for airline service to Boston. Massport isn’t going to undercut its own fees. A single port authority in NY/NJ owns LGA, JFK, EWR (Newark), TEB (the Teterboro airport for the Gulfstream crowd), and SWF (Stewart, too far from NYC unless a high-speed rail were built). There is more competition in Greater Los Angeles and the air carrier airports are owned by different agencies (LAX, LGB, BUR, SNA, and ONT are owned by their respective cities/counties).

Grok:

[in Europe] Many airports are privatized or compete aggressively for traffic, offering incentives to new carriers. US major airports have higher fees, complex slot controls (often grandfathered to legacies), and fewer viable low-cost alternatives near population centers. This raises barriers for new entrants or ultra-low-cost models

All publicly owned U.S. airports are paid for with federal tax dollars, e.g., from taxes on airline tickets, taxes on charters, and taxes on general aviation fuel (the one time that billionaires pay tax, according to Elizabeth Warren?). The Feds can’t seem to break up the airline oligopoly using antitrust laws and, in fact, may have contributed to our high-fare immiseration by blocking a JetBlue-Spirit merger (NYT: “JetBlue Airways and Spirit Airlines announced on Monday that they would not seek to overturn a court ruling that blocked their planned $3.8 billion merger. The decision is a big win for the Biden administration, which has sough to limit corporate consolidation.”; for the record, my first thought regarding the merger was that it shouldn’t be allowed because U.S. airlines were already far too concentrated). Maybe a good starting point would be to break up airport ownership. The five above-mentioned NY/NJ airports would have to be owned by separate competing government entities. Massport couldn’t own both Logan and Hanscom. Palm Beach County couldn’t own PBI/DJT and North County (F45; approved for a runway extension in 2024, but because the U.S. is incapable of working at Chinese speeds, construction isn’t even dreamed of before 2027). Miami-Dade County couldn’t own five airports (“Why do I own five airports? Because I couldn’t afford six.”).

Maybe robot 50-seater airliners would disrupt the market and enable some new carriers to thrive between city pairs in which a secondary airport isn’t owned by the same public agency that owns the main airport. But until “Big Airport” monopolies are broken up, it seems as though incumbent carriers could block most competition merely via a cozy relationship with each of the big airport authorities.

Meanwhile, let’s see how idiotic my investing advice has been. Back in 2010 I wrote “Unions and Airlines”, in which the take-away for investors is not to buy airline stocks because the unions will harvest any additional profits rather than the benefits flowing to investors.

Grok:

Airline stocks have significantly underperformed the S&P 500 since 2010 (roughly early 2010 through early May 2026, or ~16+ years). The S&P 500 (tracked via SPY total return, including dividends) delivered approximately +536% cumulative return, or roughly 12.0% annualized CAGR. In contrast, a broad airline index like the NYSE Arca Global Airline Index (^XAL) rose only about 70% on a price basis (from ~35.7 to ~60.5), equating to roughly 3.3% annualized price-only CAGR—and even adding typical dividends, the sector lagged dramatically behind the S&P 500’s total return (which compounded to roughly 7.8x your money). … Over a more recent ~10-year window (roughly 2015–2025), most major airline stocks delivered minimal gains or outright losses, while the broader market soared.

ChatGPT:

Since 2010, airline stocks have generally underperformed the S&P 500, despite some spectacular rebounds in individual years. … A cleaner “airlines as a sector” benchmark is JETS, the U.S. Global Jets ETF, but it only started in April 2015, so it cannot measure the full 2010 period. Its sponsor reports a 10-year annualized market-value return of only about 0.25% and a since-inception annualized return of about 0.38% as of March 31, 2026. That is dramatically worse than the S&P 500 over the same broad period. … If you cherry-picked Delta or United in 2010, you did pretty well, but still roughly trailed the S&P 500. If you bought airlines broadly, or bought Southwest, American, JetBlue, or JETS, you massively underperformed.

The investment story is consistent with the industry economics: airlines can have good earnings cycles, but shareholders have repeatedly been hit by fuel spikes, recessions, labor cost resets, aircraft shortages, fare wars, bankruptcies, pandemic shocks, and the need to constantly reinvest capital. As businesses, airlines can be necessary and sometimes profitable; as long-term compounders, they have mostly been inferior to owning the broad U.S. equity market.

Note “labor cost resets”!

Let’s close with a shout-out to Spirit for apparently having no serious accidents during its decades of operation, though one pilot may have died from toxic fumes, a known vulnerability with the Airbus. According to Wokipedia:

November 11, 2024 – Spirit Airlines Flight 951, an Airbus A320neo (registered as N966NK), was hit by multiple bullets on final approach into Port-au-Prince, Haiti after a flight from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. A flight attendant was grazed by a bullet and the flight diverted to Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic.

(This reminds us that (1) Haiti is a wonderful place and that only racism can explain Donald Trump’s negative attitude toward the nation, and (2) no migrant from Haiti can be sent back to Haiti due to the extreme risk of being killed.)

The last ACARS message:

Full post, including comments