Think about it. A typical flight in the US can run anywhere from $299 to over $1000 depending on when and where you are flying too. The next time you think about taking a trip, see if you can get a group of people together and rent your own jet charter! If you all pool your money together you could get a private jet too send you off to your destination. Quiet, roomy, great food, and VIP service!

By flying via jet charters you are guaranteed the best flight of your life! So they next time you are going to book a flight, think about renting a jet charter and fly there in style!

Check out our friends at www.nycjetcharter.com and learn more about travelling in Private Jet Charters.

And now the first AirVenture Blogger Fest is just a week away.

If you’re in Oshkosh for the show, join us on Monday July 28 at 4 PM at the GAMA building. For those of you who Twitter, I’ll be there too on my “Jetwhine” ID unless I can figure out how to make my iPhone run with the “AirVenture” ID I also reserved.

While our Fest will be a meet and greet opportunity for anyone who blogs about aviation - or wants to - this will also be the chance for people who simply want to know more about how this industry and Web 2.0 fit together. We may even have a few cool aviation social media announcements you won’t want to miss.

So come early, stay late.

We’ll have lots of bottled water on ice to take away the burn of that hot Oshkosh summer heat.

London’s Times Online and Plane Stupid are spreading the story about how the BAA apparently supported its case for a third runway at London’s Heathrow Airport - the busiest airport in Europe - by using environmental data for an airplane the does not exist and is not even on the drawing boards.

The best quote of the article … “Nothing like this [super jumbo] is on the drawing board,” said one senior industry source. “I don’t think it’s feasible because the size of engines that would be required for this plane to safely take off don’t exist and aren’t under development.”

But these are the same folks that work with our own FAA. What a surprise.

Sometime during the past two years I gave the FAA my email address. When and how doesn’t matter. What’s important is that I started receiving FAASTeam Notices about important stuff like new ADs, airspace changes, and the like. I also received notices of safety clinics in my area, which I routinely ignored until the recent tailwheel clinic south of me (see Pilots Flock to Stick & Rudder Safety Clinic).

I went to the FAAST website to get directions to the clinic, but I didn’t take the time to explore it beyond the information I wanted on the clinic. I was just too busy. Then the clinic moderator mentioned the new Wings program. Huh? New? What happened to the old one?

To find out I finally started clicking buttons on the FAAST home page (the new Wings program, now a true proficiency program, will be the subject of an upcoming post). The more I found the harder I kicked myself for not visiting sooner. Now, just one address replaces the dozens of FAA URLs because www.FAASafety.gov puts me no more than two clicks away from more than 95 percent of the information I need.

Not just for pilots, the site serves avionics and maintenance technicians as well. Before you do anything else, become a member of the FAASTeam. All it takes is an email address and a user-provided password. Then complete your profile, which includes certificates and ratings, the category and class of aircraft you’re interested in, and how far from your Zip code you want to travel for seminars. This customizes the site and the news it sends to you.

Urge everyone you know to sign up, especially if they are sport pilots flying on a driver’s license medical. If someone at FAA is looking beyond this site, they’ll use this information to more accurately take the census of active pilots, which are now counted by the number of current FAA medical certificates. (See General Aviation Won’t Find Future Pilots in Rear View Mirror.)

The site offers too much cool stuff to cover here, but in broad categories it ranges from FAA handbooks (usually in PDF format) and Advisory Circulars to online training courses and databases covering airmen, aircraft, and the FARs. All of it is well organized and easy to find.

The FAASTeam’s mission is to reduce accidents, just as it was with the old FAA Safety Program and the FAA Accident Prevention Program before that. What make FAAST different is more than the website. The FAA has finally realized that one size doesn’t fit all, that flying in Alaska is not like flying in the LA Basin.

To customize the program the team draws on accident/incident reports, hazards identified by FSDO inspectors, and information from the area’s aviation community. A national coordinator supports the eight regional managers who work with individual program managers to customize the clinics and other offerings to that area’s particular aviation missions.

Anyone can become a FAAST member, and the benefits are well worth the time it takes to sign up. And if you’re a CFI or avionics/maintenance technician, you can be a volunteer FAASTeam Representative, working closely with area program managers to spread the safety word.

If you haven’t been to www.FAASafety.gov, give it a visit now and sign up. If it comes up in a hangar conversation, nod your head knowingly. I’ll be happy to take the heat for being the last airman in America to realize he’s been ignoring a free gift. — Scott Spangler 

The interview is long - about 25 minutes - but the concepts Barrett hammers at - that customers and employees are the top priorities at an airline and not shareholders - are evergreen … to some.

It really is a shame that the legacy carriers are too embroiled in cutting costs - and employees - to notice that they’re still shooting themselves in the foot.

“It was quite an adventure, American Airlines Flight 2020A from St. Louis to New York,” Frank wrote us recently. “I think the cabin announcement went something like this…

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to flight 2020A flying today from St. Louis to New York’s airport, whichever one we can get into. We hope this is a comfortable trip for you.

And do we have a pilot on board? No? Ouch.

Anyone who has ever flown a 737 here maybe?

No? How about anyone with dual engine experience?

Mmmm. Anyone with single engine and instrument flying experience?

No?

How about a visual-only pilot?

OK, how about a private pilot who learns quickly?”

Silence … “Anyone then who learned something about flying but never quite got to the pilot license level?”

That’s when I stood up.

“Come this way, the flight attendant told me. “I sat in the captain’s chair. Here’s an airplane manual and checklist. We’re getting pushed out of the gate now, so just follow the instructions. This plane is highly automated and nearly flies itself.”

It seemed only reasonable to assist in these tight eco-times.

Frank Froman

The aircraft came so close that the Traffic Collision and Avoidance System (TCAS) on the Premier generated first a Traffic Alert (TA) to warn of the impending conflict, quickly followed by a Resolution Alert (RA) demanding the pilot climb at a rate in excess of 3000 fpm to get out of the way. At cruise airspeed, that meant the Beech pilot probably squashed his passengers into their seats to avoid the fighter.

Pilots in both airplanes demanded FAA controllers offer up a way for them to complain about the shenanigans of the F-16 pilot when they realized the move were deliberate. My guess is the incident probably ruined the controller’s day too.

At lunch today with a bunch of other pilots I learned people don’t all understand MOA operations and what both pilots and controllers are expected to do. Question is, who’s correct?

Can you legally fly through an MOA on an IFR flight plan if the area is hot? Is it the controller’s responsibility to tell us the area is hot if we’re headed in that direction, or are is the pilot supposed to know and ask for avoidance? Whose airspace is the MOA, center’s or DoD’s? This all seems a bit gray to me and gray in Positive Control Airspace is not cool at all.

AOPA says FAA and the DoD are looking into the matter and that the F-16 pilot was whacked across the hands for the incident. What do you think?

This subject arose during a recent lunch with Jason Blair, the new executive director of the National Association of Flight Instructors (NAFI). A designated pilot examiner and designated sport pilot examiner, he is a NAFI Master Instructor, owner of Dodgen Aircraft, which offers training and aircraft maintenance, and manager of the Allegan, Michigan, airport. Pilots are still flying, he says, but a growing number are only flying enough to meet pilot-in-command and rental currency requirements.

Common sense suggests that flying four hours a year–an hour every 90 days to log the requisite landings–does not a current, safe pilot make. But is this sense common?

Restricted supplies escalated fuel prices during the 1973 oil crisis. FAA data on GA hours flown and the corresponding total accident rate per 100,000 hours shows that the rate improved as flight time increased. So it seems that fuel prices didn’t keep pilots from flying. And industry and government efforts to improve safety had their desired effect.

But the laws of economics demand balance, an effect for every cause. It  stands out clearly in the missing variable–the pilot population. Lack of data beyond the number of active pilots makes it impossible to know more about the 36,262 pilots who stopped flying in 1973. My guess is that most of them flew for fun, and when they had to make a choice, recreation lost. I’d also hazard a guess this also played a part in accident rate improvement.

Fuel prices have been climbing for years, and the final FAA numbers for the first six years of this century, compiled by the General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA), illustrate the trend that will likely continue with the final numbers for succeeding years. The accident rate is more or less stable and the pilot population and the hours they fly are in decline. The only real similarity between fuel crises past and present is increasing prices. So, obviously, safety is not a price-related problem.

Based on past experience some might say that GA will rise again. And if fuel prices go down, it might. But when the world uses oil as fast as it can be sucked out of the earth, what are the chances of that happening? And what are we going to do if fuel prices don’t abate? –Scott Spangler

As a corporate pilot, I can tell you that there is no greater Hell on Earth than making us travel on the airlines because we realize how much better air travel can be.

In the past few years, the thousands of business airplanes being delivered attest to the fact that travelers around the world are catching on to the benefits of air travel that keeps them as far away from an airline hub airport as possible.

Here’s a great little video clip the Cessna folks sent me that you absolutely must pass on to anyone who has ever wondered how or why a business airplane is a better way to travel. Enjoy.

And when you think new media like this YouTube clip, be sure and jot down the Jetwhine Blogger Fest at AirVenture, July 28, 4 PM at the GAMA bldg. We’ll be Twittering on the “airventure” ID as well. See you all there.

I was listening to an engaging interview with David Cush, Virgin America’s CEO, on Bloomberg Monday when he mentioned one tiny little fact that I found superbly fascinating in an entirely intriguing 9 minutes. It reminded me again why airlines like Virgin, Southwest and JetBlue are so successful. They’re all trying to reinvent the wheel … but in a good way. These airlines simply refuse to see the air travel business as it was and seem to work tirelessly to imagine the airline world the way it might be.

Cush was talking about how his airline has customized the cabin service experience for all the passengers aboard their Airbus A-320s through the use of a simple piece of touch-screen technology made easier because all of Virgin’s aircraft, like JetBlue’s, are equipped with TV screens in front of each passenger.

Rather than running those knee-crushing service carts back and forth down the aisle, Virgin allows passengers to purchase a snack or a drink on demand during the flight. When they’re ready, they select an item on the TV screen at their seat and in a matter of minutes, the precise drink or meal is brought to their seat. No more being at the wrong end of the cabin when service begins.

Best of all, Virgin cuts down on the chaos of, “How do I get to the bathroom when there’s a 50-lb. cart between me and lav?” Sorry … You have to be old to think like that I guess.

Nice job Virgin.