You have to love this one. And this has nothing to do with FAA!

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.

Am I the last airman in America to totally ignore the free and invaluable gift that is FAAST, the FAA Safety Team at www.FAASafety.gov?

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.

Continue Reading »

My blogging pal Eric Joiner and his buddy Spike at the Freight Dawg have managed to snag a great video of Southwest Airlines’ president Colleen Barrett speaking on leadership to the Wharton Business School.

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.

Every so often Jetwhine is lucky enough to unexpectedly receive an important work of prose from another professional mind. Today we have one from Frank Froman, a St. Louis psychologist, a man with a secret dream, but a man who also knows how to solve a problem when he’s confronted with it. It’s men like Frank that just might hold some of the solutions the airlines are seeking … maybe!

“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?

Continue Reading »

If you’re a pilot and and watch the AOPA video of the rocket-run the F-16 pilots ran on a couple of civil airplanes in March, you’ll probably lose your lunch. A Beech Premier and a PC-12 were transiting a Military Operations Area (MOA) that the ABQ Center controller obviously realized was active when the fighter decided to make the two civil pilots aware they were not wanted.

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?

Talking to friends, flight schools, and FBOs it is clear that I’m not the only one who isn’t flying as much as I used to. With avgas going for roughly $6 a gallon or more, depending where you live, direct operating costs are climbing faster than the airplanes they fuel. This begs an important question: will general aviation’s accident rate increase as flight time declines?

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?

Continue Reading »

Those of us who have either flown business airplanes or have been lucky enough to travel in the back - a few of us qualify for both - are light years ahead of the people we are still trying to convince about the value of personal air travel over the chaos of traveling on board the airlines, despite yesterday’s Jetwhine post on Virgin America.

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.

Clever and creative are not terms people use much when they speak about the airline industry, except for a few of the “Gen Xer airlines” as I call the Low Cost Carriers because they really seem to get it.

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.

Close on the heels of this 4th of July comes the realization that the most heated presidential election we will probably see in our life times is really upon us. The relentless drum-beat from both nominees is that this nation is in serious need of some serious change.

While I’m not quite ready to throw in the towel with those who say the U.S. is busted, there is little doubt that the Congress has forgotten the meaning of the words leadership and compromise. No where does that seemingly worn out notion of leadership - or the lack of it - hit home more than at our own personal bunch of sky-bobbies, the FAA.

You’ve all heard me and many others beat these management folks up in the past year, whether it’s about the failure of the agency to negotiate some sort of settlement with the nation’s air traffic controllers, to the mess the inspectors uncovered with their bosses in Washington over how much self-policing the airlines should be allowed, to why a guy in a lawn chair over Idaho isn’t in jail for endangering the safety of the flying public after launching his balloon-powered seat over Oregon over this weekend. And don’t get me started on user fees and Next-Gen or the JPDO …

The overall responsibility for all this FAA silliness ends up precisely where it should, on the desk of Bobby Sturgell, the man who would be administrator pictured here with his political appointee pal Mary Peters.

But for once, let’s cut Bobby a little slack … not too much though, because while Bobby has proven he’s great at making speeches - thirteen in the past three months in fact - he is not up to the job of evoking change at the agency, much less leading it anywhere. When I went through FAA Management School in Lawton OK 20 years ago, management of everything was the job to be learned, not leadership. It seems that little has changed.

So why show Bobby Sturgell any mercy?

Continue Reading »

It’s been awhile since I’ve attended an FAA safety seminar. With good intentions I read all e-mail invitations FAASafety.gov sends, but other weekend responsibilities too often take precedence. A tailwheel clinic, on the other hand, is more important than cutting the grass, especially when it’s held in a place where airplanes are born. 

Located on the Rochester, Wisconsin, airport, the American Champion Aircraft (ACA) factory wasn’t hard to find. In the main assembly hangar several dozen people, many wearing their best aviation T-shirts, milled around the tables where the Rochester Library Association sold coffee Grande and high-octane pastries for $1 each. Based on the safety clinics I’d attended in the past, the crowd seemed average. 

Nearby, a High Country Explorer guarded a sea of 200 empty chairs that faced a large screen standing before a yellow Scout on tall Tundra Tires. Rather optimistic attendance hopes, I thought, given that taildragger pilots are a minority among aviators.

Then an amplified voice echoed through the hangar. “Let’s get started,” said Jeff Taylor of the Wisconsin Bureau of Aeronautics. Those with coffee and donuts got the best seats. Right behind them were the pilots who had been exploring the CNC mills and towering racks of aluminum and steel airplane parts. At 9 a.m., it was hard to find an empty chair.

What’s going on here?

Continue Reading »