Search Results for: general aviation inc

Anyone whos made it through primary training knows the importance of determining an airplanes weight and balance. From that training, we know there are real limitations on how much it can carry and where that weight-whether in fuel, cargo or passengers-can be. We also know a lighter airplane performs better than a heavy one, and that weight concentrated near the fore or aft limits can affect aircraft performance.

Along with most pilots, I have been following the battle to eliminate third class medicals for private pilots under certain circumstances. I have asked myself, what benefits this might offer to the aviation community, and the general public? The AOPA has been an advocate for these changes, stating it is an excessive cost and burden to pilots! Some have suggested that this will help increase the decreasing number of pilots. Is this really the direction we want to go? One might make an argument in the opposite direction, that older pilots need more medical supervision.

For the moment, well begin with a nickel tour of both the ATC and the national aviation weather systems. Naturally, theres some overlap between them. The FAA air traffic control system is one big ol network. The chain of command begins with the ATC System Command Center in Virginia, which provides oversight and coordination between the biggest ATC facilities, the Air Route Traffic Control Centers.

Loss of control in-flight (LOC-I) is the leading killer in GA, with more fatal accidents than the next six causes combined. The Colgan 3407 and Air France 447 crashes brought LOC-I to the forefront. Were forced to ask how we can lose control of perfectly good airplanes. The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics identified LOC-I as the most significant cause of commercial aviation fatalities worldwide.

The NTSB says general aviations loss-of-control accident rate is too high, and held a day-long Humans and Hardware forum on the issue in October, in Washington, D.C. As the FAA worked last year to develop new rules governing the use of small drones in the National Airspace System, a Google executive said the company plans to launch commercial drone home deliveries in 2017. NBAA called its 2015 convention, held in November in Las Vegas, enormously successful on a business and community level. A group of NASA engineers and private-sector partners working in California is creating an X-Plane demonstrator, based on a Tecnam 2006T, that they hope will prove the efficiency of using an array of small electric-powered propellers for general aviation aircraft. The nonprofit group working to get the B-29 Doc back in the air exceeded their Kickstarter goal, raising $159,151 from 1,007 backers, and said they now have the funds they need to complete the flight-test program. And Jet Pack Aviation, of Australia, introduced its lightweight jetpack with a flyby of the Statue of Liberty.

Theres perhaps some confusion among pilots about how a direct route gets handled and, potentially, mutated, as illustrated in one IFR-readers question: If you file direct, is your route planned by some poor guy at the local TRACON or a regional computer? To what extent does putting in a few fixes affect the route ATC gives you? Lets see if we can clear up that haziness.

For those of us flying IFR in locations with a high probability of a white Christmas each year, we often need to recalibrate our aeronautical mindset from summer. We have to switch our weather default from Where are the thunderstorms? to Where is the ice? Winter brings us more challenging preflights, engine starts and airport operations. Even though we are all experienced instrument pilots, its still worth taking a few minutes to think about cold weather operations as we head into the worst of the season.

If youve been following the general aviation industrys efforts to secure federal legislation deregulating FAA medical certification, you know its been a long, frustrating process (though not nearly as long or frustrating as some of the industrys other legislative efforts). The legislation is S. 571, the Pilots Bill of Rights 2 (PBOR2), introduced in the U.S. Senate by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.). A companion bill, H.R. 1086, was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.)

Continued VFR into IMC accidents have been part of the general aviation accident scene since before I started flying more than 50 years ago. Some headway in reducing these accidents was made when private pilot applicants were required to demonstrate basic instrument proficiency beginning in the early 1960s. Cockpit technology has also improved, with even basic training aircraft equipped for instrument flight and devices such as autopilots and weather data link becoming more prevalent. On the other hand, there is a much higher percentage of high performance aircraft in the general aviation fleet than 50 years ago, and more non-instrument-rated pilots are flying longer distances in higher performance aircraft. As a result, the prevalence of VFR-into-IMC accidents is still very high.

Weather-related accidents have always been a big issue for general aviation. Their number has not been declining appreciably, as demonstrated by the graph at right, adapted from the most-recent AOPA Air Safety Institute’s 24th Joseph T. Nall Report, which discusses general aviation accidents in 2012. During the eight-year period from 2005-2012, the number of fatal […]