FAA

The FAA has launched a major review of general aviation airports across the U.S. to better promote “the many roles and functions” these airports serve in their respective communities. The review, which began last fall, is focusing on infrastructure needs and, the agency says, could lead to reclassifications for many airports.** ** In recent years, […]

Senator James Inhofe (R.- Okla.) introduced legislation on Wednesday mandating changes to the FAA’s enforcement process to make it “more fair to pilots” who are often left in the dark as to what they are being investigated for and the nature of the evidence against them. ** ** Last year Inhofe had an enforcement action […]

(May 2011) DID WE ACTUALLY MAKE a better pilot out of anybody, save any lives or keep any bent airplanes from littering the landscape? Who knows, but we sure had a good time putting on Wings Weekend at Hogan Field or, more properly, Butler County Regional Airport in Hamilton, Ohio. It started with me (and […]

DO YOU REMEMBER THE Venn diagrams used in math and logic classes to illustrate relationships between sets? That is what comes to my mind when trying to understand who can and can’t fly light-sport aircraft … well, actually there is no “can’t.” Most of us in aviation know that six years into the Sport Pilot/LSA […]

(April 2011) WEIGHT MATTERS. EVEN in the light-sport aircraft world. As I wrote in last month’s column about the LSA categories, the maximum gross weight is one of the key factors in determining whether or not an aircraft meets the FAA’s LSA definition. How did the FAA come to that final 1,320-pound figure? Well, it […]

On Monday FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt announced a plan to reduce general aviation accidents substantially and incrementally over the next 10 years with a 10 percent improvement as the target. At Sun ‘n Fun, the FAA will host the first of nearly 100 meetings across the country designed to let pilots and the FAA work […]

A letter was issued to the FAA last week by the National Association of Flight Instructors (NAFI) and AOPA criticizing the recent unannounced but significant changes to the FAA knowledge test question database. Noticeable changes have appeared for the airline transport pilot (ATP), flight engineer (FE) and fundamentals of instruction (FOI) tests, and others may […]

No doubt you’ve heard by now that Congress has ordered the FAA to add photos and biometric data to all pilot certificates, which would have to be renewed every eight years with a new photo at an out-of-pocket cost to you of $22. Or maybe it’s $50. Or maybe it’s more than that. Nobody’s really […]

(February 2011) — We got an e-mail last month from a reader taking Peter Garrison to task for suggesting in his Technicalities column that, if the FAA did a thorough review of the Light Sport Aircraft industry, it would find a lot of discrepancies in the certification process for light-sport airplanes. It seemed like a […]

The FAA’s aircraft re-registration initiative has caught the attention of headline writers in the general media. “FAA loses track of 190,000 planes” was one. Naturally, the emphasis in the stories was on the potential threat to security. In fact, the larger concern is one of administrative housekeeping. Under the new rules, aircraft owners will have […]