Best Aviation Podcasts for Pilots and Fans

The aviation podcasts worth adding to your queue are the ones still releasing episodes in fall 2026. They split cleanly by audience: weekly news panels for enthusiasts, safety and flying talk for general aviation pilots, insider shows from airline crews and controllers, and training diaries for people working toward a certificate. Many favorites from the 2010s have stopped or gone irregular, so the release date matters as much as the reputation.

Weekly aviation news shows

These are the shows that turn a week of headlines into an hour of context, usually with a panel that includes pilots, analysts and data people.

AvTalk

Produced by Flightradar24, AvTalk covers the week’s airline, manufacturer and air traffic stories, with the tracking data behind them. The hosts are good at explaining what a flight path actually shows, which makes it a natural companion to the app. New episodes arrive weekly, and the latest was out on October 23, 2026. When the hosts discuss a specific flight, pull it up in the app’s playback while you listen.

Airplane Geeks

One of the longest-running shows in the genre, Airplane Geeks mixes industry news with interviews: airline executives, engineers, museum curators, authors. The tone is relaxed and the panel knows the history, so a story about a new engine program will come with a reference to the last time something similar happened.

Check 6 and Airline Weekly Lounge

Aviation Week’s Check 6 brings the magazine’s editors on air for defense, space and commercial aerospace topics, with the depth you would expect from a trade newsroom. Skift’s Airline Weekly Lounge is the business-school version: earnings, route strategy, alliances and pricing. Both are ideal if you read The Air Current and want the audio equivalent.

General aviation flying and safety

For pilots renting or owning small airplanes, these shows focus on decision-making, regulation and the kind of stories that make you double-check your fuel.

• Aviation News Talk covers GA news, pilot stories and safety tips from a flight instructor’s perspective. Its spin-off NTSB News Talk walks through accident reports and investigations, with new episodes as recently as October 2026.
• I Learned About Flying From That turns FLYING magazine’s classic column into audio: pilots telling, in their own words, how they got into trouble and out of it. Short, gripping and full of lessons.
• Uncontrolled Airspace is a GA conversation show with two experienced hosts, one of them a longtime safety editor. Episodes are less frequent than they used to be, with the most recent released in August 2026, but the back catalog is deep.
• Stuck Mic AvCast brings a rotating panel of pilots together for news, opinions and listener questions, with GA and airline voices in the same room.

Airline crews and air traffic controllers

Insider shows answer the questions passengers and aspiring pros ask: how scheduling works, what a reserve month feels like, why a controller sequenced you behind a slower airplane.

• Airline Pilot Guy is hosted by an airline captain and a cast of regulars, mixing news with long listener Q&A sessions. If you are thinking about the airline pilot path, the call-in segments cover seniority, training events and lifestyle with candor.
• Opposing Bases: Air Traffic Talk is made by and for controllers. It covers staffing, procedures, equipment and the job from the scope side. Anyone considering a career as an air traffic controller should listen to a dozen episodes before applying.
• Pilot to Pilot interviews pilots across airline, cargo, corporate and military careers, with a focus on how each one got there and what they would change. It posts often and the guests are varied.

Student pilots and training

The Student Pilot Cast follows the training process from the learner’s seat: checkride nerves, long evenings with the books, weather cancellations, the slow climb in confidence. It released a new episode in October 2026. Pair it with a show that features instructors, and you get both sides of the lesson. I would have liked this format during my own training, mostly to know that stalling out on landings around hour 20 was normal.

Outside the US: Plane Talking UK

Plane Talking UK is a long-running British news panel with a strong enthusiast following. It covers European airlines, airports and regulators that US shows mention only in passing, and it publishes regularly. Useful if you fly on European carriers or follow Airbus closely. The time difference also helps: episodes recorded on a UK weekend land in US feeds early Sunday, ready for a morning run or a drive to the field.

Shows that slowed down

A podcast can stay at the top of “best of” lists years after its last upload. The Finer Points, a long-running training show with hundreds of episodes, had no new release between May and late October 2026; the archive is still excellent for maneuvers and instrument topics, just not for news. Before you subscribe to anything recommended in an older forum thread, scroll the feed and look at the last three dates. Monthly or better means the hosts are still engaged; a six-month gap usually means the show is on pause.

The same check applies to spin-offs. Several networks now split one brand into a news show, a safety show and a helicopter or career show, and only one of them may be updated weekly. Aviation News Talk, for instance, runs separate NTSB and rotary-wing feeds with different rhythms.

Shows compared

Building a listening rotation

Most listeners do best with three shows: one news panel, one show tied to their own flying, and one that teaches something new. A weekend pilot might run AvTalk, Aviation News Talk and I Learned About Flying From That. Someone eyeing an airline job might swap in Pilot to Pilot and Airline Pilot Guy.

• Use a player with speed and skip controls. Overcast, Pocket Casts, Apple Podcasts and Spotify all handle 1.2x playback and trimmed silences, which takes a 75-minute panel down to about an hour.
• Check the release feed before subscribing. A show with a gap of several months may still be worth the archive, but you will not get news from it.
• Follow up on what you hear. When a host mentions an accident report or a new FAA rule, look it up. Podcasts are great at context and weaker at exact numbers.

For the visual side of the same stories, many of these hosts also appear on aviation YouTube channels, where accident analyses and cockpit footage fill in what audio cannot show.