FAA Posts

The NTSB just published its top-10 Most Wanted improvements to transportation. Beware of Number  Three, Safety Management Systems, aka SMS. For newcomers, here’s the FAA definition: “SMS is the formal, top-down business approach to manag…

Am I the only one who missed the news in July 2010 that the FAA nearly doubled the life of a student pilot certificate (and the third-class medical certificate) for those 40 and younger, from 36 months to 60 months?This discovery came with a questi…

There’s no small amount of irony in the fact that Rockwell Collins announced it’s new “One Touch Safe Mode,” button at the Paris Air Show this week … at least it was ironic to me.The button, integrated into the avioni…

Reading government documents isn’t very much fun sometimes, but it often reveals informative tidbits, such as this table found on page 43 of the FAA’s NextGen Implementation Plan of March 2011.It’s clear that GA is way behind the …

The Department of Transportation’s recent notice that it will dismantle most the Block Aircraft Registration Request (BARR) program, which hides corporate aircraft activity from online flight-tracking programs, has caused quite a stir.Aviatio…

In the last century, fly-in were about flying. Unlike today’s events, which cater to passive participants there to shop and watch other people fly, the pilots who flew in honed their skills by competing in takeoff and landing contests, flour b…

There is some good news to report as we approach the two year anniversary of the the Air France 447 accident in the South Atlantic during the late evening hours of May 31, 2009. An unmanned submarine exploration team headed by the Woods Hole Oceanog…

Air traffic control has been under the magnifying glass of late, with most recent incident being the loss of separation between Michelle Obama’s C-40 (Boeing 737) and a C-17 cargo plane. I’m puzzled. Numerous reports, including the story…

Mention the Next Generational Air Transportation System to pilots and the first thing that comes to mind is money and the pain resulting from complex changes. If you’re a GA flyer, add unkind words for the airlines, the primary beneficiary of …

Feedback, information on what students have done correctly, where they need work, and how to make the necessary improvements, is key to any educational program. Its quality and value depends on a flight instructor’s ability to immediately meas…

Department of TransportationWashington, DCReally nice to hear from you again and yes, the family are all doing fine, thanks for asking. I forgot to ask you in my last letter how that new government job is working out. DOT Secretary … prett…

The notices arrived in my in-box almost hand in hand.  Analyzing the previous year’s data, the AOPA Air Safety Institute’s Joseph T. Nall Report for 2010 gives the good and bad news about general aviation accidents. And the  2011 Safety…

Let’s be serious. When we fly on the airlines, we’re a captive audience. They can do pretty much whatever they’d like to us and we have to put up with it. But most of the time we also fly on the airlines because we must … for…

Upon reading  the National Association of Flight Instructors’ report on how a recent change in the FAA knowledge test question banks had increased the number of failures, my initial reaction sided with the FAA. Let me explain: When I was with …

Using FAA data provided by the General Aviation Manufacturers Association’s annual Statistical Databook, I’ve built a spreadsheet of pilot population data back to 1964. Updating it for 2010 revealed a new highpoint in pilot certification…

A number of Republican governors have been pegging the media’s popularity meters the past few weeks with talk of pouncing on the collective bargaining rights of public service employees, one of the last havens of solid unionism left in Americ…

Flight instructor pay and benefits are an integral component in creating a flight school faculty that reliably provides an education consistent with the investment made by the students they serve. Unfortunately, flight training is at the bitter end …

Regular Jetwhine readers know that a story posted here relating to the FAA is not unusual, nor is the fact that I tend not to be terribly supportive of some of the people who work there. Regular readers should know that I try — note the word try — …

A sure indication of age is the change in status of a profession once held in high regard. Embodied by the airline pilot, I’m talking about aviators who gets paid to transport people or cargo on a regular run. Once a respected and well-paid po…

The FAA Safety Hotline is a no-brainer of a customer-service tool built to offer users and aviation industry employees a chance to spill the beans about issues that affect all areas of flying safety. People can leave a name and phone number or t…

Immediate gratification is one of my guilty pleasures, especially when it comes to the interactive editions of Callback, the online publication of NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System. And there is some pilot ego involved as well, a chance …

Sometimes I think we have only ourselves to blame for this kind of publicity. Business aviation seems to still enjoy that low profile, even since the chaos of the Big Three auto guys denying their companies actually owned airplanes, much less used t…

As part of the conversation on the AOPA survey on why students drop out of aviation, we got an e-mail from Dr. Penny Rafferty Hamilton,  Ph.D. She had recently  completed a two-year research project that led to Teaching Women to Fly, which shares th…

When Janelle from CNN called for my opinion of the latest aviation security boondoggle, I had to admit I knew very little about the incident.The story focused on the Sacramento-based airline pilot who secretly recorded a security door in the termin…