Oh, the irony of progress.

In 2005, the FAA issued its first Safety Alert for Operators, “an information tool that alerts, educates, and makes recommendations to the aviation community [that] includes air carrier certificate holders, fractional ownership program managers, and 14 CFR Part 142 training centers.” There’s no irony in this, or the next paragraph:

“Each SAFO contains important safety information and may contain recommended actions. SAFO content should be especially valuable to air carriers in meeting their statutory duty to provide service with the highest possible degree of safety in the public interest. The information and recommendations in a SAFO are often time critical.”

Here’s the irony: SAFO 13002 (released last week) is dedicated to Manual Flight Operations. Why? I’ll let the FAA explain: “A recent analysis of flight operations data (including normal flight operations, incidents, and accidents) identified an increase in manual handling errors. The [FAA] believes maintaining and improving the knowledge and skills for manual flight operations is necessary for safe flight operations.”

In other words, the FAA is saying that failure of the flight management system and autopilot is now a critical in-flight emergency that demands special training and practice: flying an airplane by hand. Many are aghast at this recommendation, but they shouldn’t be. Technology has so infiltrated flight that “manual flight” is only the latest of a number of similar recommendations the FAA has made since it created SAFOs in 2005.

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In discussing a wide range of subjects starting with flight training, much has been said about the dilatory and disaffecting consequences of aviation’s financial requirements. But in order of importance, money must follow time, a finite resource that can never be renewed, only used efficiently.

If not effectively and efficiently guided by a well thought out curriculum designed for the student’s particular needs and acted upon by a teacher and student committed to its goals, learning to fly can squander vast amounts of both time and money if either member of this educational team is not prepared, on-time, and ready to work.

No matter how well designed and delivered a flight training program may be, preparation is key to mitigating the waste that can result when unplanned variables threaten a scheduled lesson. A proactive maintenance and inspection program reduces the chances of a mechanical cancellation, and another aircraft of short wait for a returning trainer can often salvage the already committed investment of time.

Dealing with Mother Nature isn’t so easy when she makes it clear that real airplane flying is not a safe educational pursuit. Canceling the lesson shouldn’t be seen as a waste of time when safety is at stake. The value gained or lost should be measured by how the teacher and school reinvest the time.

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There’s no denying that flying clubs make aviation affordable by sharing the fixed costs of airplane operation among a number of people. Active pilots are the obvious benefactors, as are lapsed pilots looking for a way to resume flying. In focusing on their immediate needs, members of many clubs have, without realizing it, created a closed society. Without new members to propagate the pilot species, their number will dwindle with time, adding to the survivor’s financial responsibilities.

This observation is brought to you by Tim Lemke, president of the Winnebago Flying Club, in a conversation we had after his presentation at a recent AM Oshkosh, a monthly chamber of commerce networking breakfast. Before his 10-minute talk on the benefits of flying for fun and personal transportation he set up a small display and neatly stacked flyers that itemized the benefits of club membership, which includes learning to fly. A flight instructor, Tim is the perfect presenter, and he never turns down an opportunity to promote the club and flying.

Not relying on face-to-face opportunities, the club has also been extending its reach with social media to invite prospective pilots and others to its monthly meetings, which always include an appropriate presentation. In December it was a refresher on winter flying, and the information also shows newcomers that they won’t need to hibernate if they learn to fly. Honestly, the club’s efforts to recruit new members, either lapsed pilots or those who want to become a pilot, is to sustain its existence, which also helps aviation as a whole.

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At the risk of garnering the wrath of my buddy Scott Spangler who wondered here last week whether technology was really making us more goon-like than aviator, I present yet another piece of technology. This one functions much like a Swiss Army Knife for pilots flying both in and out of the clouds.

Generically labeled a Heads Up Display, the particular version in today’s story belongs to Cedar Rapids-based Rockwell Collins that calls it a Heads Up Guidance system or HGS.

Quite simply, an HGS takes all the really important bits of instrument flying data — heading, airspeed, altitude, course, wind, glideslope, terrain … and puts them all in a single location right in front of the pilot’s eyes. That means an HGS eliminates many of those vertigo-inducing head movements down to the instruments, back up to look out the window and back down again to the panel … over and over. It also reduces landing and takeoff minimums in IFR conditions and can even keep pilots from smacking into things in the dark or clouds while flying since it can incorporate synthetic vision into the display. But wait there’s more … much more. Read the rest of this entry »

HGS Interview Play Now | Download

When he passes through town, a friend, a long-time CFI and designated pilot examiner, calls so we can catch up over coffee. Like many people today, pilots or not, an iPad seems permanently attached to my friend. Curious, I asked how many applicants flew with iPads. Many of them, and their number is growing, he said. His first checkride question to them was about their backup for the digital charts. If they don’t have one, the checkride is over. His backup? His iPhone, which runs the same software on the smaller screen.

Overwhelmed by his enthusiastic itemization of the iPad’s aeronautical benefits, an important question did not occur to me until I was halfway home. How has this technology affected the new pilot’s mastery of the art of flight? Certainly, all who pass stay within the parameters specified by the appropriate practical test standards. But I’m curious to know whether pilots are bouncing between these limits like a tumbling numbered globe in the Powerball barrel or fly a specified altitude, course, and speed with variations of plus-or-minus nothing?

Technology can be a wonderful tool, but seduced by its reliable perfections, too often people, not just pilots, surrender their responsibilities to it.  And therein lies the problem. Mastery of the aviation arts relies more on how pilots think, how they combine information from every available information source and bodily sense, than it does the control inputs derived from this metaphysical process. Technology is only as “smart” as the people who programmed it. It tells us what to think, not how to think. Perhaps it’s time to resurrect, with a modification, an admonition from my youth: Question Technology!

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The day after Thanksgiving, Sporty’s Academy shared news of a week that any flight school would love to have, four first solos, two new private pilots, two new commercial pilots, and a new flight instructor. The cooperation of Mother Nature made it possible, said Eric Radtke, academy president and chief flight instructor.

Radtke summarized the secret to Sporty’s success in the release’s second paragraph: “The fact that so many of our customers and staff were able to participate in the cutting of the shirt tails and other celebrations made it that much more special and created a wonderful sense of community.” The italics are mine.

Community, Radtke continues, has consistently provided three-quarters of of the school’s new customers since it opened in 1987. They come from personal, word-of-mouth referrals Sporty’s earned by delivering a good product to their customers. First-class flight training is, obviously, a big part of the product, but another critical component is building community by eagerly and honestly welcoming the newcomers into aviation society.

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Beyond the kids, one of the pleasures of substitute teaching at Omro High School is talking with its principal, Brett Steffen. Infected in adulthood, he’s got a chronic case of aviation passion. I like it when he stops by during my student-free planning period because our airplane conversations are almost always thought provoking.

In the course of a conversation just before the Thanksgiving break, logbook tallies of total flight time and the number of different aircraft makes and models flown came up in some context now forgotten. Although he didn’t say it, I got the feeling that as a new pilot still building these aviation measurements, that he felt not quite equal to those with more experience. But he shouldn’t feel that way, nor should any pilot at any stage of their life in aviation.

What matters more to me is participation, and sharing what we’ve learned with others who share our interest in flight. The numbers in my logbook are inconsequential to the scores of aviators and enthusiasts who have taken the time to inspire, to influence, to teach, to reteach, to mentor, and to share the educational moments of their lives and, in the process, to change the course of my life.

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When a single trip to the bargain matinee equals my monthly Netflix subscription, for most movies my frugality partners with patience and we add the title to our queue. On a 1997 date night, my wife and I saw Air Force One, and she didn’t really enjoy dinner afterwards because I was still ranting about its impossibilities.

Since then, she’s gotten pretty good at gauging my interest in seeing movies either about aviation or that employ it in the story line. A fan of Denzel Washington, she had hopes for his new film, Flight. And then the trailer showed a MD-something-or-other flying inverted at low level and its and its blended right wingtip slicing through the statue on top of some dome. She looked at me, didn’t say a word, and then reached for her laptop.

When it comes to movies, I get it. Unrealistic, often impossible action makes the film more exciting, to those who don’t know any better. Perhaps I’m overly anal, I can only surrender only so much of my disbelief. And I wonder what affect such impossible action has on people with a  real interest in flight? And how do they compare to old movies that portrayed flying more honestly and realistically?

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One of the first things I learned as a graduate student at Northwestern’s Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) program 20 years ago and years later as a teacher in that same program was the value of a brand. Managing a brand is so important people earning college degrees focused entirely on how to protect this important asset. A brand like McDonald’s is much more than its golden arches however, as Apple’s is more than its intriguing white fruit logo.

While a brand is really an intangible, its value to any successful company is immense. In the most simple of terms, a brand is really all about a company’s reputation in the marketplace. How reliable are its products? How clever are employees at developing fresh solutions to old problems? Just as important is the faith a corporation’s name conjures in the minds of consumers ready to hand over their money. Would iPod’s have become household words if Apple had turned their back on customers when a unit failed? Not a chance. A brand then is everything a company does that makes consumers return for more … the employees, the products, the service. Screw any of these up and the brand’s in peril.

Case in Point

Hawker Beechcraft’s troubles aren’t new since the 90-year old aircraft builder’s been wallowing in Chapter 11 bankruptcy since May. No surprise that investors Goldman Sachs and Onex wanted out after struggling with HBC’s $2.5 billion debt, but when the Chinese deal with Superior Aviation fell apart a few weeks ago, on the eve of the industry’s biggest show at NBAA in Orlando, Hawker was trapped between a rock and a hard spot. Read the rest of this entry »

Given the rapid pace of change in cockpit technology, it’s really sad in a self-destructive way at how slowly change has come to the training paradigm that puts new pilots in those cockpits. With few exceptions, the way an instructor educates a new pilot hasn’t changed in nearly a century. The training duo talks a bit, maybe draws some diagrams, and then climbs into the noisy non-stop classroom that is the training airplane of your choice.

Certainly it was coincidence that sent me related e-mails on the same day. One was from Redbird Flight Simulation. In its first year, Redbird’s Skyport laboratory fledged 20 new private pilots for a flat fee of $9,500. More important, the simulator-based program took 38 hours, two-thirds the time of the national average time invested in the traditional training paradigm.

A contributing factor is GIFT, Guided Independent Flight Training, which introduces students to new maneuvers in the sim and automatically scores their performance. It works in concert with Parrot, Redbird’s communication training software, which coaches students until they are ready to fly for a CFI with a pulse, who is a mentor and coach rather than a primary instructor.

The second e-mail reported that the professional pilot program at the Fox Valley Technical College in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, had its two new Redbird FMX full-motion sims up and running. I responded not with if I’d visit, but when? I’d have to wait until noon.

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When you live in Wisconsin, where this October day never really dawned under thick ominous clouds and the temperature is struggling to reach the 40s, an e-mail about flying to the Bahamas really gets a pilot’s attention. And by doing so, earning a chance to win 23 hotel nights at top resorts on various islands makes it that much more appealing.

The Bahamas Ministry of Tourism debuted its Pilot Challenge during the just concluded AOPA Aviation Summit in Palm Springs (ah, more warm and sunny skies). The goal is two-fold, said Neil Glazer, one of 11 Bahamas Flying Ambassadors in the US, and president of PilotMall.com, which is administering the challenge. The first is to attract new pilots to the island chain that starts about 60 miles from the Florida coast; if they’ve already made the flight, it’s cause to explore islands not already visited.

Pilots who document landings at 12 of the 20 Bahamas airports of entry before November 30, 2013 are eligible for one of four hotel-night prizes. Winners will be selected at random and announced in December 2013. Registering at www.bahamaspilotchallenge.com gets pilots the official challenge passport that customs officials must validate at qualifying airports. (It’s also where you’ll find FAQs, rules, and other info.)

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Those with a proclivity for cynicism might judge this headline an oxymoron equal to military intelligence. But before you snigger and stop reading, consider this:  under its Center of Excellence banner, the FAA has selected a team of universities with renowned aviation programs to conduct general aviation research and test things that will enhance its safety, accessibility, and sustainability into the future.

No idle, unpaid for political promise, the FAA will invest at least $500,000 a year for the first half of the COE’s 10-year run. And this is not the only—or inaugural—COE. The FAA established the first GA Center of Excellence in 2001. During its decade run its participating universities researched and tested pilot training, human factors, ADS-B, remote airport lighting, and other facets of GA. And the FAA has established other COEs dedicated to other aspects of aerospace endeavors.

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There’s no small amount of irony in the fact that American Airlines axed the contracts of their pilots just a few hours past Labor Day last month. Kind of adds insult to injury. I feel for the pilots having been around to watch the ugliness of Midway 1′s disintegration after failed Chapter 11 attempt in 1991. On the other hand, as the owner of a small business, I’ve also been an American Advantage customer for decades. It’s a tough spot actually.

After the past few weeks of maintenance write up, pilots calling in sick and generally bad airline publicity, I was thinking about the point the pilots might be trying to make to the management people at DFW.

Certainly they were fed up with being asked to absorb more cuts. They were also saying there really still is a line in the sand, despite what the management people and customers on the outside might think. I don’t think this is going to be Eastern Airlines all over again where employees shut the company down for good, but I do think management everywhere might just have called the death of organized labor a bit early. There’s life in them yet … and that’s not all bad either. Read the rest of this entry »

Working my way around Lake Michigan last week, I passed a small airport in Northport. This village of 526 people is at ring-fingertip of lower Michigan’s left-handed mitten. The fieldstone terminal with a conical roof in bumble-bee colors on its open-air observation area was worth a closer look.

Nothing outside identified the airport or whom to call for assistance, but the payphone worked! The doors were locked. Window peeking, the building was empty, except for a few bicycles, a gas grill under a tarp, and a hand-painted sign leaning against a wall: Woolsey Memorial Airport.

Ready for a stroll after hours of sitting behind the wheel, I paced off the 2,600-foot north-south and 3,600-foot east west runways that meet at the windsock. Lights with clean, clear lenses poked out of yellow cones. Rocks with a recent coat of yellow paint spelled out the airport’s name. The grass was neatly trimmed and rolled smoother than my backyard.

As I walked toward three hangars at the west end of the runway, an eerie feeling that something wasn’t right grew stronger. Looking closely, it dawned on me that there were no signs of aeronautical life at this pristine little airport, no bald patches of grass at the runway approaches, no wheel ruts leading from the hangars. It was like being alone in a museum diorama showing what used to be.

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Certainly more details about its new Center to Advance the Pilot Community will be broadcast during October’s AOPA Aviation Summit in Palm Springs, but that doesn’t satisfy my need to know now. Ah, curiosity is an impatient task master, so I sat down with my buddy Google.

Having worked with him during my tenure at EAA, Adam Smith is an excellent choice to lead the new program. Attuned to pilots of every interest, he’s passionate and knowledgeable about not only aviation, but ferreting out the tangible and intangible things that lift their wings.

But the announcements of Adam’s appointment didn’t tell me a lot about how the new entity was going to Advance the Pilot Community. That I found further down Google’s list, in the position description of the now expired help wanted ad. By adding new initiatives to those already in place, the center stands a better chance of success than any previous effort I can think of thanks to its multifaceted approach.

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Here in Wisconsin, a swing state, we have been incessantly pummeled by political ads of both parties. This onslaught has been painfully punctuated almost daily by political surveys whose questions do little more than support the delusions of the person who paid for it. Add two weeks of intellectual drown proofing in the tsunami of lies and half-truths taken out of context that emanated from the thankfully ended conventions, and it’s hard to have a good mental outlook about anything, let alone aviation.

Try as I might, I could not escape the tentacles of cynical aviation apathy, the feeling that there was no place in aviation for people like me. This metaphysical predator ambushed me in, of all places, the travel section of the New York Times. The headline says it all: Space Tourism is Here! Wealthy Adventurers Wanted.

Reading about all the ways rich people can get into space was interesting. Yes, there’s some training involved, but in the article it seemed secondary to wining and dining with their economic peers at something akin to an aerospace spa. In the end, what matters more than acquiring a skill is the bragging rights, which is what they are really paying for.

What pulled me under was the realization that, for the most part, rich people don’t invest the time and effort needed to truly accomplish something hard, like climbing Mount Everest or flying a plane. They hire someone to take them there by the hand or in the back seat. This confirmed a dark notion that’s been lurking in my subconscious, unless we revive the middle class and restore the economic vigor it exercised three or four decades ago, general aviation as we’ve known it is doomed.

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For the 34th year, the FAA has reached out to aircraft owners and Part 135 operators to take the pulse of general aviation. What’s sad is that over the years, many of my friends lucky enough to own an airplane rarely took the time to complete the survey because, they whined, responding on paper and snail-mailing it was just too demanding. This year they have no excuse: aircraft owners and operators who received the postcard invitation or survey by mail can respond online. Do it now at www.aviationsurvey.org!

The survey is the only source of information on general aviation activities, from hours flown and the reason for flying to the type of aircraft flown and the flying conditions (day, night, VFR, IFR). The FAA is collecting data for 2011, so, said the FAA, “Owners who did not fly their aircraft in 2011, have sold it, or are awaiting repairs should also respond to the survey.” A N-number access scheme ensures non-owners and operators don’t skew the data. And the FAA emphasized that  the “information will be used only for statistical purposes and will not be published or released in any form that would reveal an individual participant.”

Participation in the survey is voluntary, and with the online option removing that last little bit of hassle, why wouldn’t each of you not take a few minutes to help chart general aviation’s future? You see, after collating the data it uses this information to assess funding, infrastructure services, the affect of safety and regulatory changes, and to prepare safety stats and calculate GA accident rates. If we don’t care enough about general aviation to spend a few minutes filling out a survey, why should the FAA care any less than it does for the needs of GA? – Scott

Thanks to my comrades at The Airplane Geeks Show for staying way ahead of me and posting my annual Labor Day message. In case you don’t listen to our show — impossible as that might be — do give this link a quick click. Promise I don’t pontificate too much about what the labor movement and the aviation industry have lost over the past 10 years or so.

Airplane Geeks Episode 212.5 – Labor Day. Or if you prefer to read, here’s a link to a quick reprise to some other thoughts about why Labor Day should still be important to us here in the states.

Rob

Reading Neil Armstrong’s obit in the New York Times led to an unexpected epiphany: As the inaugural pioneers, the collective public faces of singular accomplishments achieved during the first century of powered flight pass, what events of equivalent magnitude will follow them in its second century? And will humans have a hands-on role equal to Armstrong’s?

Achieving a singular first during flight’s first century was comparatively easy because no one preceded the successful pioneer. The brothers, Wilbur and Orville Wright, powered their way skyward. Charles Lindbergh flew the Atlantic, solo and unrefueled. Jimmy Doolittle took off, flew a pattern, and landed without a way to look outside. Yuri Gagarin opened the door to space travel and Neil Armstrong walked through it on the moon.

The passage of time lists the pioneers who will be next. Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in 1947, Dick Rutan and Jeana Yager circled the globe without refueling the Voyager in 1986, and Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones repeated the voyage in an aerostat in 1999.

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Less than a decade ago, when the symptom’s of aviation’s decline were firmly manifested, a number of aviation’s alphabet organizations focused mostly on increasing their slice of a shrinking pie. With the number of active pilots and new pilots shrinking faster than Greenland’s glaciers, it seems that they have finally decided to put their individual interests in line and address the problems as a cooperative, unified front.

That’s a good start, because the the problems, from the pilot population to airspace challenges to user fees and other restrictive elements, are too many for one organization to battle on their own. During EAA AirVenture 2012, the heads of (in alphabetical order) Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA), Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA), General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA), Helicopter Association International (HAI), National Association of State Aviation Officials (NASAO), and National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) gathered on stage to discuss cooperative efforts.

EAA is clearly an active instigator in this effort, a point made clear at its AirVenture Learn to Fly Discovery Center. EAA and the National Association of Flight Instructors (NAFI) have some history, as does the Society of Aviation and Flight Educators (SAFE) and NAFI. Yet here are all three working together to present a pilot proficiency program every day during AirVenture.

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