FAA Posts

The recent announcement that the American Bonanza Society and its ABS Air Safety Foundation had established the ABS Flight Instructor Academy was not only good news, it was a surprise. For some reason I’d thought that it had been around as lon…

Not long ago, the periodic newsgram from my alma mater reported the birth of a new course at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, Science Investigative Reporting/Drone Journalism. The nation’s first J school, now more than a centur…

Since the FAA issued the list of contract towers it will close to satisfy the self-inflicted sequester, I’ve been reading a lot of wailing and gnashing and incredulous screeds of how could they? Common to everything I’ve read so far is t…

Most pilots know that the test of an airplane’s dynamic stability is to trim for a specific hands-off speed, increase or decrease pitch to a faster or slower speed, then let go of the stick and measure the time it takes to resume the hands-off…

Still Time to Save Some Towers — Straight off the massive printing presses at the General Aviation Airport Coalition in Washington comes late word that a deal is in the works to pull some cash from one place and send it somewhere else. What…

Realizing that I wouldn’t be able to attend the annual Air Charter Safety Foundation’s Safety Symposium (ACSF) in Washington last week got me thinking about how little publiscize charter jets at a transportation assett. For those unfamil…

As the official keeper of US aviation world records, the National Aeronautic Association each year lists the previous year’s most memorable records ratified by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI). Most years the most memorable …

I was reading NATCA President Paul Rinaldi‘s remarks yesterday from his luncheon talk at the Washington Aero Club in advance of Friday’s “end of the world” or “no big deal” sequestration day depending on whom you …

The 1.8 gigapixel looks at 20 square miles at once.Comments on last week’s post on UAVs focused on safety and privacy, and rightly so. Most offered valid examples of why UAVs won’t work today, and I won’t argue because I agree.…

Sometimes the best action is to take none, which is precisely the route I chose last week when many people were falling over themselves to tell outgoing Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood how much they appreciated his past four years on the job.…

Many would not expect a prediction of aviation’s future on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, but there it was on January 23. The guest, Missy Cummings, one of the Navy’s first female F-18 drivers and now an association professor of aerona…

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, fractiona…

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 resour…

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 …

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 …

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…

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 …

Until the other day, I thought a troll was one of those horrid little creatures living under bridges just waiting for the chance to reach up and scare the dickens out of some little kid. But lo and behold, as a reader told me, a troll in the Interne…

Discussing the dismal number of student starts in the 1990s, my Flight Training magazine coworkers and I wondered how flight schools located where the nonflying public congregate, like shopping malls, might fare. Learning about two new aviation educ…

Since I started attending EAA AirVenture professionally, as an exhibitor in 1989, and then an employee, and now as a journalist, my greatest joy is covering the site from the North 40 to ultralights, and just letting what’s new rise up and gra…

Boeing released its periodic Pilot & Technician Outlook at Farnborough on July 11. In hours the global media started producing stories of future doom because of the shortage and said that the new pilots trained over the next 20 years would be le…

Bird strikes have been one of my passing interests ever since I watched the head-on confrontation between a seagull and A landing A-6 during a wheels’ watch at NAS Alameda in the early 1970s. (The seagull lost, by the way.) Somewhere over the …

Unless they are directly involved, either as a daily job or when something’s broken, maintenance isn’t a top-of-mind topic for most aviators. So it took me awhile to wonder who’s going to maintain and fix the burgeoning number of c…

I’ve been dreading this summer … for the first time in my life though actually. That’s because next month the final French BEA report on the Air France 447 crash will be released.Most professional pilots have a pretty good idea wh…