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Fly by Wire by Stephen Pope

About Stephen Pope

Stephen Pope is a longtime aviation journalist and pilot. He grew up in northern New Jersey, where he started taking flying lessons at the age of 15 at small grass strip in a Piper J-3 Cub. While in high school he worked as a line boy at the East 60th Street Heliport in New York City and First Aviation Services at New Jersey's Teterboro Airport, as well as a stringer writing for several local community newspapers. Read full bio >
Who Should Pay for AirVenture Controllers?
EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin
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By now you’ve probably heard that the FAA wants the Experimental Aircraft Association to foot the cost for air traffic controllers at this summer’s EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin – to the tune of about $500,000. Not surprisingly, EAA is hopping mad. In a normal year this request would be ludicrous. After all, pilots who buy fuel to fly to Oshkosh pay for ATC services in the form of the 19.4-cent-per-gallon tax on avgas.

Should the FAA Grant Icon A5's Weight Increase?
Icon's A5 sport amphibian.
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No doubt you’ve heard by now that Icon Aircraft is asking the FAA for an exemption to LSA weight rules for the company’s sleek Icon A5 light sport amphibian. Specifically, the company is seeking a 250-pound max gross weight increase above the LSA limit of 1,430 pounds. Without the exemption, it’s unlikely the A5 can enter production in its current form, at least anytime soon.

Does the FAA Care about the Little Guy?
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The FAA’s handling of a variety of prickly issues from the planned closures of scores of contract control towers to the hotly anticipated Part 23 rewrite to the up-in-the-air fate of leaded aviation gasoline will affect general aviation in important ways for years to come. Get the Part 23 rewrite right, and we could witness a resurgence in GA flying; get it wrong, and we might inadvertently put the industry into a graveyard spiral.

A Rough Day for Huerta
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FAA Administrator Michael Huerta got the chance to experience what it feels like to be raked over the coals yesterday as lawmakers at a House hearing expressed their mounting frustration over his agency’s handling of sequester-related controller furloughs. It was uncomfortable to watch as House members bluntly told Huerta he did a poor job of preparing for the furloughs – first by not sharing information with airlines sooner and second by applying the furloughs blindly across the co

President Obama's $100 User Fee Plan is DOA: Here's Why
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Once again the White House’s annual budget proposal calls for a $100 per-flight user fee on certain general aviation aircraft. While talk of user fees used to send chills through the industry, this time around the reaction has been one of confident resolve rather than fear. Here’s what's changed.

Who's Really To Blame for the FAA's Tower Closure Mess?
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In the FAA’s rush to shut down scores of the nation’s contract control towers, nobody within the agency saw it necessary to perform a thorough analysis of the potential safety ramifications. Nor did the agency conduct a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis to consider, among other things, the millions of dollars it took to build the towers at the airports that will now lose them. Perhaps worst of all, there is no long-term plan in place for resuming services at affected towers.

Are You a Safe Pilot?
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The NTSB this week issued five GA Safety Alerts aimed at preventing the most common fatal general aviation accidents. The big question centers on whether the Board’s action will have any discernable impact in moving the safety needle. My guess is no, it won't.

Is a 3-D Printed Airplane in Your Future?
3-D printers can create objects of virtually any shape.
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You’ve no doubt heard and read a lot about 3-D printing in the last couple of years. Known as “additive manufacturing” in industrial-design circles, the process is used to produce three-dimensional solid objects of virtually any shape from a digital model fed into a special kind of printer.

The Economics of DiamondShare
The Diamond DA40 XLS I fly, in its hangar at KCDW.
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As many of you already know, I recently started flying a new Diamond DA40 XLS as one of the inaugural “members” to sign up with DiamondShare, a new concept in aircraft ownership that is seeking to dramatically alter the economic equation for buyers.

So Long, Hawker
Hawker Hurricane Mk.IIb
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If all goes according to plan, the famed Hawker name will all but cease to exist after bankrupt Hawker Beechcraft emerges from near financial death in the coming days under the Beechcraft name alone.

Just how long the storied Hawker brand remains dormant is anybody’s guess, but it’s hard to imagine it going away forever – if only because the Hawker name has been with us for so long.

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