FAA Posts

Listen to this showBetween a Rock and a Hard Spot: Demands on air traffic controllersI’ve lost track of how many government shutdowns I’ve experienced during my life. Some under Democrat presidents, others under Republicans. During a shutdown, a s…

NTSB Hearing RoomIt’s understandable that even the geekiest of airplane geeks didn’t have enough time in their week to listen to the more than 30 hours of testimony created when the NTSB began its recent public investigation of the even…

Have you or someone you know ever considered becoming an air traffic controller for the FAA? I spent nearly 10 years of my aviation career working for the agency, and I loved the work. Coincidentally, the FAA just announced its latest recruiting dri…

Continuing my curiosity quest inspired by Can GPS Spoofing Fool a Flight Navigator?, it seems that the US Air Force and Navy are the only reliable sources of air navigator training available today. But in either case, it is not a dedicated aviation …

Pursuing my schooling on computer-aided flight plans, usually generated by an electronic flight bag (EFB—see Are You Current with the New Airman Certification Standards? for my ACS motivation), has led me to an FAA advisory circular, Use of Flight D…

It should go without saying that flying is a dynamic pursuit, so that means that learning and being able to proficiently perform the skills (and understand the knowledge that supports them) is not a one-and-done endeavor whose conclusion is the issu…

To get a good camping spot on the grounds of Wittman Regional Airport (OSH), many pilots head to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, for an early ETA at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh, which this year runs from July 22-28. But if you plan to transit Milwaukee’s airsp…

In the days before electronic flight bags, the duffels filled with the necessary performance, operational, and navigation paper were a weight and balance line item, especially with a full set of instrument approach plates. When formatted as electron…

Two stories reported near April 1 suggested a cruel prank. Just before 4/1 came news that the FY 2025 budget proposed to raise the per-gallon tax on business jet fuel nearly 400%, to $1.06 per gallon.As a reminder, aviation fuel taxes are how the g…

One week from today, on Monday April 8, as the moon’s shadow slides across the eastern third of the United States, the Great North American Eclipse will darken the skies over 458 US airports that are within 50 miles of the eclipse’s cent…

Given the state of the world, GPS spoofing has been in the news with unsettling frequency. Transmitting a counterfeit GPS signal to override the real deal serves the real purpose of guiding aerial, maritime, or terrestrial vehicles where someone oth…

It’s about trustI remember riding our crew bus with a bunch of other pilots, and flight attendants in the spring of 1991 not long after our employer Midway Airlines had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The old red and white school …

October kudos to the editors of NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) Callback for selecting atypical reports for their periodic “What Would You Have Done?” issue. In all the years I’ve been reading the selected scen…

With autumn’s annual bird migrations underway, on October 3, the FAA issued a 4-page Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin 21-17 addressing Rotorcraft Bird Strike Protection and Mitigation. It also introduces the voluntary Rotorcraft Safe…

In June 2023, the FAA published a 167-page document outlining the agency’s desire to replace dozens of 40-year-old airport control towers with new environmentally friendly brick-and-mortar structures. These towers are, of course, where hundred…

Back in the day, airports without air traffic controllers working to maintain order and predictable behavior from the pilots flying to and from it were often referred to as “uncontrolled” because they did not have an air traffic control …

For reasons unexplained, when perusing the FAA website to see what might be new and/or interesting in advisory circular land, discovering a draft AC 150/5200, Reporting Wildlife Aircraft Strikes, triggered my mental recording of Tom Jones singing &#…

Talking last week to a 30-something professional pilot about his journey to a Gulfstream cockpit, he brought my interrogation to a dead silent stop with his answer to one question. After he summarized the chronology of his pilot certificates and rat…

During the State of the Union Address, President Joe Biden said he wanted to crack down on airline “junk fees” that airlines added to their ticket prices. Given the motivation for the ever expanding menu of these fees, I’m not hold…

Right after pounding the final words of Reading the Weather into my computer, I opened the Aviation Weather Handbook, FAA-H-8083-28 and scrolled to Chapter 23. At first glance, space weather stands tall as a meteorological oxymoron. How can weather—…

Each of us has a flying family related not by blood or marriage but by the spirit of flight. Recognizing the contribution of an eligible flight instructor, maintenance technician, or FAA Safety Team teacher can be a challenge. So why not nominate th…

If traveling from stockyard to stockyard on winged cattle cars is a fate just shy of death, drop what your are doing right now and click this link to the Federal Register: Request for Comments in Minimum Seat Dimensions Necessary for Safety of Air P…

For an unincorporated community in the Town of Utica and Winnebago County, Fisk, Wisconsin, is without a doubt the most well-known small town in the world of aviation. Also known as Fisk Corners, its concise Wikipedia page explains its notoriety in …

Some may say the transition to Daylight Savings Time is the harbinger of warmer weather, but depending on where you reside (and Mother Nature’s unpredictable climate), this is little more than a chronological tease that primes the wanton emoti…