FAA Posts

The service delivered by some ATC facilities today is just not what it used to be in the old days before the PATCO strike. There, I said it.Having been around in the old days — like the 70s – when traffic at most towers was insane by today&…

Introduced in Fixing Flight Training: What You Can Do Now!, the flight training individual education plan, or FT-IEP, can be initiated by students, instructors, or flight schools. It has the potential to alleviate three of the four dropout motivator…

In the overwhelming number of comments to last week’s Aviation Has the CFIs it Deserves, pilots, instructors, and flight school owners clearly confirmed the veracity of AOPA’s survey that identified the leading causes of aviation’s…

Don’t feel bad if you don’t find the acronym FAAC jumping right to the head of your aviation conversations these days. It’s not exactly front page news to anyone in the aviation industry, except perhaps the few dozen hand-picked p…

Called with the dawn of Veteran’s Day to substitute for a middle school special education teacher, I missed the online AOPA Aviation Summit presentation that conveyed the results of its survey of flight training dropouts. I haven’t found…

Now that I have your attention, temper your excitement with the understanding that this cost-saving opportunity may only benefit infrequent fliers, those who feel lucky to afford 30 or 40 hours a year. As a lifetime member of this fraternity, every …

Like any pilot who’s lugged a bag heavy with thousands of pages of instrument approach procedures, SIDs, STARs, airport diagrams, and ancillary information, my aching back really likes the idea of the paperless cockpit served by an electronic …

Reading that AOPA has commissioned an ambitious research project to diagnose the ills that have been decimating the American pilot population for decades, a visceral first reaction was “finally!”The project’s announcement rightly…

US flight schools that cater to students from members of the European Union should be aware this source of students may soon dry up. The October IAOPA (Europe) e-newsletter reports that EASA is proposing that pilots will need a JAA/EASA license to …

Not long ago the FAA brought the number of fatal accidents in amateur-built experimental aircraft to the attention of the aviation community. It got more specific about the problem—and its solutions—in its Aviation Safety business plan for fiscal ye…

Subbing for the middle school gym teacher the other day, I reported for lunch duty at the conjoined cafeteria it shares with Omro High School. There I saw OHS Principal Brett Steffen, who acted on his aviation interest and earned his private pilot c…

When it comes to the future of flight training in America, I have some good news, and some not so good news. The good news is that given the attendance at the panel discussion of this subject, held the Saturday of EAA AirVenture, flight instructors…

Like many pilots, I still haven’t gotten my head around all the details related to the Next Generation National Airspace System. EAA AirVenture Oshkosh, I figured, would be the perfect place to learn more about its components, like ADS-B, the …

On many levels the 2010 Electric Aircraft World Symposium was a surprise. Sponsored by GE Aviation and held at the EAA museum on AirVenture Friday, I expected a geek fest with a small audience of a hundred or less, because that’s the space av…

Sometimes we bloggers simply talk too much trying to express how we feel about something like AirVenture when simply letting the story tell itself works much better. With that clever insight in mind, may I present for your review, a few photos that…

As I write this, the start of EAA AirVenture Oshkosh is five days away. Between the daily rain showers and afternoon thunderstorms (yes, it’s pretty soggy here) the air is growing increasingly alive with the sound of engines I seldom hear duri…

It seems that the capabilities of unmanned aerial vehicles will soon be complete. On July 1, DARPA announced a $33 million dollar contract for Northrop Grumman to demonstrate autonomous aerial refueling using two NASA Global Hawks. The company wil…

Flight instructors who can remember the answers that returned a passing score on the Fundamentals of Instruction test they had to take should be able to tell you that Rote is the first of four levels of learning. If they possess a good memory (or th…

Last weekend I had the honor of being a guest on Airplane Geeks, thanks to my JetWhine.com co-conspirator Rob Mark, who is one of the quartet of regulars. It was my inaugural podcast (Episode 101), and I greatly enjoyed the wide ranging aviation con…

Is it karma that led NPR to broadcast a story on the dwindling number of student pilots in June? It reported an FAA estimate that this year’s number of student pilot certificates would total less than 60,000, a “10 year low.” If yo…

Pilots earn their certificates for many reasons, but it’s been my experience that they only keep flying after the checkride if they have a goal, a purpose for being airborne more satisfying and fulfilling than the empty aeronautical nourishmen…

Reflection is an unintended consequence of a wide interest in aviation, and connecting past with present is the EAA AirVenture Oshkosh reunion of the iconic airplane that earns its keep still, even as it approaches its 75th birthday. Some call it t…

Discussion over the state of professional pilot training is continuing several weeks after we posted Pro Pilot Training Evolving to Industry Needs.  Proficiency-based training has been a central theme, as has educating pilots past the bare mini…

On October 11, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Assembly Bill 48, the California Private Postsecondary Education Act of 2009. To summarize the act’s 57 pages of tiny type, it gives students a financial parachute should the priv…