Airline passengers and tumbleweeds in the airport of the future

Early on in my career as an aviation writer, I was amused by the insider characterization of airline passengers as “self-loading cargo” This was years ago, okay, maybe people were no longer dressing up for a flight, and meals were still being served - even on domestic routes - but this less than adoring view of passengers was in my estimation still far in the future.
Well ladies and gentlemen, the future is now.

Congressman talks frankly about education, energy in Greenwich

Saturday night I attended a “meet the congressman” gathering at the Greenwich home of Chicken Soup for the Soul publisher Amy Newmark and her husband Bill Rouhana. Amy was quite specific that this was to be a bi-partisian event to meet Congressman Jim Himes - though checks for the freshman’s lawmaker’s upcoming re-election bid would not be unwelcome.

What Flying Can Teach the Oil Industry

Last night I dreamed I was floating on a raft on a lovely pond I know in northern Connecticut. I was thrilled because the water was so clear I anticipated seeing lots of animals. But the first thing to appear was a dead whale, its snout protruding from the water like a boulder.

Mapping the intersection of mind and computer

Well my inbox is filling up again with emails, as it did last month when I reported this story for The New York Times on pilot complacency and cockpit automation.

New Thoughts about Old Planes on Memorial Day

This Memorial day the family went to the Corsairs over Connecticut Wheels and Wings show at the Sikorsky Memorial Airport in Stratford. We had my mother-in-law, Mary Schembari, along because when she was teenager, she worked at the Chance Vought factory which produced the Corsair for the Navy during World War II. The single engine, gull wing airplane took its first flight 70 years ago and without stretching the point, I can tell you - that event happened in concert with a time in the life of my mother-in-law when she herself had wings.