Seaplane Travel Represents the True Meaning of Luxury “Flying to Islands – Always to Islands” In an age where private jets and mega-cruise ships are marketed as the ultimate in exclusive travel, the real luxury lies in places you cannot reach by runway or pier. Ariara Island Resort in Linapacan, Philippines, exemplifies this paradox....
Telling Your Stories in Song- Putting Poems to Music For over 25 years, I have been trying to get someone to put my Woodsmoke & Perfume poetry into music. A helicopter pilot working in Escravos, Nigeria, and a friend of Kris Kristofferson, volunteered. His musical style was acoustic guitar and Western. After weeks of...
The Seaplane’s Sustainability Promise: A Case for the Amphibious Cessna C208B-EX As global eco-tourism expands into remote and environmentally sensitive regions, the aviation industry faces growing scrutiny over its ecological footprint. Among the solutions emerging from this evolving dialogue is the Cessna C208B-EX Caravan equipped with Wipline 8750 amphibious floats. Initially conceived in the...
Landing a Seaplane inside the Rinjani Volcano is equivalent to Indonesia landing a Man on the Moon. Mount Rinjani is an active volcano that built the island of Lombok. That is a realistic way of looking at a volcano’s role. When anyone mentions Mount Rinjani, they say it is on the island of Lombok....
An Alternative to Crowded Airports How do you cope as an ad-hoc charter operator when faced with long delays at a crowded airport with limited take-off and landing slots that must be booked days in advance? You need someone who can think outside the traffic pattern to answer this question. I was asked to...
Introduction to Life as a Seaplane Pilot In the world of aviation, pilots rely on strict procedures, detailed flight plans, and sophisticated technology to ensure each journey is completed safely and efficiently. When you’re in the cockpit of a seaplane, for instance, the combination of flight plans, checklists, and real-time analysis of wind, weather,...
High inside the Arctic Circle. 1966. The captain taxied the immense, majestic Canso flying boat into the frigid Foxe Basin arctic waters. We were leaving Igloolic, a fragile-looking settlement perched tenuously, like a tern’s egg, on a rocky island between the giant Baffin Island and the mainland Melville Peninsula. I would most likely never...
The Potential of Seaplanes: Reaching Out to Remote Regions. One of the more questionable quotes I hear seaplane promoters use is that 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water, suggesting that we need more seaplanes to fly to more places. While there’s a certain appeal to the notion that our planet’s vast...
Seaplane seaworthiness and how flying boats and amphibians can make a difference. The Pan Am Clippers are revered by those who care and are mostly forgotten by those who do not care about the flying boats. The Clippers, named after the tremendous romantic sailing ships of the early 19th century, were not one aircraft...
