Search Results for: general aviation inc

A House-Senate Conference Committee has reached agreement on a long-term FAA reauthorization bill that would provide funding and program direction for the agency through fiscal 2015. A final vote on the measure is expected soon. The FAA has been operating under 23 short-term funding extensions since 2007. The long-term bill, if passed, would authorize $63.4 […]

As those lucky enough to see the Giants take on the Patriots in this year’s Super Bowl rematch prepare to make the trip to Indy, a number of FBOs are taking extra steps to vie for the large increase in private aircraft traffic. One FBO kicking off the festivities in a big way is Million […]

Properly managing risk is essential to successfully pursuing life’s more exciting adventures. Activities such as scuba diving, downhill skiing, motorcycling, mountaineering and, of course, flying, all entail elements of risk which we must consider and manage if the thrills we seek are to be experienced more than once. But risk management often is poorly understood: While most people believe themselves to be prudent, the reality is large risks are often ignored and minor dangers grossly exaggerated. In general aviation, our inability to assess risk properly is evidenced by the number of weather-related accidents consistently gracing NTSB logs, even in the face of widely available near-real-time meteorological data on the ground and in the cockpit.

In a perfect world, all flight instructors would be smiling, retired airline captains who would patiently and benevolently impart the benefit of thousands of hours of safe aircraft operation to the eager minds of the less experienced. Unfortunately, ours is not a perfect world. Most Aviation Safety readers are already certificated pilots, but we all need a CFI for recurrent training and required flight reviews.

They say flying is hours and hours of boredom punctuated by a few fleeting moments of occasional terror. For the pilot flying a single, maybe it starts as a vibration you’re pretty sure you’ve never felt before, or as a slight pulse of the engine, a muffled thump, popping or a stumble. Maybe your airspeed has dropped off, and the gauges aren’t indicating what they should, or where you left them. The good news is engines rarely stop completely without warning. The bad news? Odds are, if it gets this far into the process of trying to get your attention about a fuel-related issue, things are poised to get more interesting rapidly.

One of the year-end rituals in which most of us engage is looking back on what was and thinking of ways we can make improvements during the next 365 days. Although the official NTSB statistics aren’t yet available, there’s enough available evidence to say certain civil aviation segments are wrapping up a pretty good year. Others, not so much.

Remember that online petition asking the White House to abandon its $100 per flight user fee proposal? More than 9,000 of you signed it, prompting the government to consider the issue and write a response. Authored by Dana Hyde, a Washington bureaucrat with the bureaucratic-sounding job title Associate Director for General Government Programs for the […]

(January 2012) The news cycle is like a carousel whose riders are ever changing. For a brief moment in September, the Green Flight Challenge swept past: NASA handed a prize of $1.35 million to an airplane that had achieved an efficiency of 400 passenger-miles per gallon. Huh? said the world — and then along came […]

(January 2012) Some time back, Congress decided that the FAA’s goals were just downright incompatible. How could a federally mandated regulatory agency “encourage and develop civil aeronautics” while enforcing the regulations and exercising its authority to levy fines and suspend or revoke certificates? So guess which functions were eliminated? Washington also reminded the agency that […]

Eric Radtke is an airline transport pilot, Gold Seal flight instructor, advanced ground instructor and NAFI-accredited Master Flight Instructor. Eric has been involved in aviation education since 1998 and currently serves as president and chief instructor of Sporty’s Academy — the educational arm of Sporty’s Pilot Shop. He says: I’d recommend a recreational or sport […]