FAA Posts

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 civilian unmanned a…

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 what it’s going to s…

The Icon A5’s spin resistance show & tell When I hit the play button on this video, I was ready to pounce on every syllable of marketing hyperbole. Instead of half-told truths, I got a concise, comprehensive show & tell on what makes an airplane …

Taking “A fresh look at the many roles General Aviation Airport play in the National Air Transportation System,” the FAA recently released the 34-page report of its in-depth, 18-month study of roughly 3,000 airports, General Aviation Airports: A Nat…

Evelyn Bryan Johnson died May 10, 2012 in her 102nd year. She was a flight instructor. She stopped counting the number of people she’d taught to fly when the number passed 3,000. A designated pilot examiner since 1952, when I met her in 1997 at her …

Last week, the middle school where I am a substitute teacher held its annual career and hobby day, where students sign up for presentations  that interest them. I was on duty as a student wrangler, not a speaker, and it was happenstance that I ended…

I was trying to explain some of the subtleties behind the word altruism to my daughter this morning at breakfast, and it made me think about the fight against aviation user fees. And yes, we have a few truly interesting family meals around our house…

On April 24, the e-mail edition of Callback arrived in my in box. It proudly announced that the NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System had processed its one millionth safety incident report on March 21, 2012. Three days later I received the NTSB rele…

At the World Aviation Training Symposium, held last week in Orlando, Boeing’s chief test & evaluation pilot for new airplane development, Mike Carriker, said the industry must modernize its educational methods and technology if it hopes to prepare p…

Back in the paper era I was filled with two-part dread every time the FAA’s Airman Testing Standards Branch had updated its practical test standards (PTS) and aviation training handbooks. Part I was the expense of keeping my training library up to d…

It’s been too many years since I was last pilot in command of an airplane, and even longer since I’ve made a cross-country flight. The AOPA Air Safety Institute must have known that flying may well be part of my life in the near future because in an…

In an attempt to keep current with all aspects of aviation, I subscribe to all manner of e-mail updates. In this arena, the FAA is prolifically focused. My latest discovery is the InFO, short for Information For Operators. Produced by the FAA’s Flig…

Word of Mouth marketing (WOM) is a bit like the Superman of campaigns. Nothing can stop it. That’s because the company the campaign focuses on has little or nothing to do with the effort. It’s all customer driven. People recommending products they l…

First thing last Monday morning I read that US Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was scheduled to hold an hour-long meeting with aviation officials from Boeing, Honeywell, and United Airlines later that day at Boeing HQ. The announced …

Last Saturday was not a good day for transportation, but for once the bad news was not about aviation. An immense cruise ship — the Costa Concordia — capsized in the Mediterranean Sea off the west coast of Italy where rocks near the shore sliced op…

A college professor of mine told me a story years ago — OK … MANY years ago — about how solving one problem often creates another. Boy … did our switch from Feedburner to Mail Chimp subscriber software — not to mention my recent post about the chang…

In a general sense, I knew that NextGen would be the end of the VORs that have reliably led aviators for decades. But 10 days before Christmas, the retirement of these familiar white cones is much more real. That’s when the FAA published its request…

A recent issue of AOPA’s Flight School Business included this story: FAA Updates CFI Renewal Clinic Guidelines. It referenced the updated advisory circular that covers FIRCs and noted that the FAA added angle of attack (AoA) to the list of core subj…

Serving the military in Afghanistan According to the The Daily Planet, the blog of Air & Space Smithsonian, in November troops in Afghanistan will likely be resupplied by the K-Max, an automated cargo helicopter. The video is from a test earlier …

Test pilots and flight test engineers are an amazing and interesting group of people. But they are deadly serious about their work because focus and attention to detail preserves not only their lives, but those who go aloft in the aircraft they are …

Some functions come naturally to most humans, eating, sleeping, even defending ourselves … at least most of the time. But the message the House of Representatives just sent FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt with passage of the European Emissions Tradi…

September started with an AP story that revealed the cost of airline cockpit automation, atrophied stick and rudder skills. As one might expect, there’s been a lot of comment on both sides of the argument. Some GA types have been, without justificat…

Given its  more than half century of tradition unimpeded by progress, I’ve always been cynical about the future of general aviation and its life’s blood, the flight training industry that educates new pilots. Then I attended the next-to-last regiona…

Throughout its life, now 75 years and counting, millions of words have been written about the iconic DC-3/C-47/R4D/Dakota. I’ve written some of them, and read most of them. So I cracked the cover on Together We Fly: Voices from the DC-3 with some tr…