We talk with pilot and journalist MayCay Beeler about her book Buccaneer: The Provocative Odyssey of Jack Reed, Adventurer, Drug Smuggler and Pilot Extraordinaire. As the personal biographer for the late Jack Reed, she brings us some insights into this unique man. We also take a look at MayCay’s Diva Flight program, which puts women in the pilot’s seat at the controls to help them discover their inner strength.

Find MayCay on Twitter, Facebook, or her home page. You can purchase the book directly from publisher Strategic Media Books, or from Amazon.com (be sure to leave a review!), or from bookstores.

Photo above: MayCay (left) takes Tabitha (right) up in the TAA Flight Training Cessna 172 for her first flight, as Tabitha’s husband looks on from the rear.

The week’s aviation news:

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• Airline Earnings Roundup: Where Delta Soared United Continental, JetBlue Sink
  

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• Coming soon to a television near you…
  

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• Dutch fighter jets intercept 2 Russian bombers in their airspace
  

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• Park Service Grants Landmark Status to 1956 midair collision Site
  

David Vanderhoof’s Aircraft of the Week:  From Failure to Success, Part 4, The weird, the wacky, and the wonderful P-3 Orion variants.

In this week’s Australia Desk:

The boys are back in the studio and wishing they could be back flying again. Meanwhile, they missed out on a bit of important news from last week:

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• Badgerys Creek announced as site for 2nd Sydney airport and work is to begin immediately. You can get the history of Sydney’s 2nd airport at Wikipedia and a great time line from the ABC.
  

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• They also chat about the hijacking that wasn’t - a Virgin Australia 737 squarks 7500 on approach to Bali but it turns out it was a disoriented passenger banging on the cockpit door thinking it was the toilet. Ooops.
  

Find more from Grant and Steve at the Plane Crazy Down Under podcast, and follow the show on Twitter at @pcdu. Steve’s at @stevevisscher and Grant at @falcon124.

Rob Mark’s Aviation Minute:  Rob talks about the College Training Institute (CTI) program to train new air traffic controllers.

Photo Courtesy of KLM

In this week’s Across the Pond segment:

This week Pieter talks to Frenchez Pietersz from Aviation Platform about the KLM Air France Group. From investing in airlines in Brazil through to Code Sharing in Germany the KLM AF Group seems to be turning a corner.

Find Aviation Platform Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Find Pieter on Twitter as @Nascothornet, on Facebook at XTPMedia, and at the Aviation Xtended podcast.

Mentioned:

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• Forensic Ballistics: How Apollo 12 Helped Solve the Skydiver Meteorite Mystery
  

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• Skyball jump with a Vladiball, Skydive Utah
  

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• Lockheed Martin X-35B STOVL
  

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• Vapes on a Plane
  

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• What is Vaping? (From GrimGreen.com, a website dedicated to vaping.)
  

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• Pilot’s career stalls after criticizing oxygen system
  

Russian Tupolev Tu-95MS

Listen to the NBAA Flight Plan podcast from the National Business Aviation Association.

Opening and closing music courtesy Brother Love from the Album Of The Year CD. You can find his great music at www.brotherloverocks.com.