The FAA has published new procedures that would give aircraft owners broader control over their flight information’s disclosure, according to a report at
===> Posted on May 15th, 2012 by Janice Wood.
Posts Tagged ‘FAA’
FAA revises flight blocking rules
Tuesday, May 15th, 2012The only thing faster than the airplane is information
Tuesday, May 15th, 2012It is amazing the contrasts in government efficiency–or the lack thereof–that exist every day. For instance, the FAA has spent billions to get the NextGen ATC system off the ground, and for all of that, we still have NowGen and YesterGen. Likewise, as my AME likes to say, the pilots are flying in 2012, but the FAA is practicing medicine in 1960-something. On the other end of the spectrum is the IRS. Get their attention, and you will be hearing about it immediately. They don’t mess around.
But, for all of the bad FAA jokes (my favorite: I’m from the FAA and I’m not happy until you’re not happy), the feds are by and large good people who do the best they can with the tools they have been given, which means they aren’t any different than you and me. I recently got a reminder that when they need to do something fast, they can.
I recently had an encounter with severe turbulence while climbing out of Baltimore. It was a short encounter, and not all that unexpected because of the weather. But, as with any encounter so severe, it got my intention. So, being the dutiful air-person and practitioner of air-person-ship that I am, I reported it to ATC.
The Washington Center controller asked a flurry of questions, and I responded with a flurry of information: altitude, exact location, a description of what happened. Every other airplane on the frequency immediately wanted to know where it was, and they requested deviations away from my little find.
The controller began by asking all flights climbing and descending in our area for ride reports. All the flights were in 737s or bigger, and they all reported “moderate” or “heavy moderate,” and you could hear the bounces in their voices. This made sense, because the CRJ that I fly has short, skinny wings, and it does not absorb turbulence very well at all. What would be severe to us might very well not be to something bigger; of course, the reverse applies as well.
What was so impressive was how quickly the word got out. On every frequency that I used for the balance of our flight to Cincinnati, the controller was issuing the pilot report about our encounter. On the first frequency change, as we were checking in, he was reading the news to everyone in his sector. I told him that we were the reporting aircraft, and he had a couple of follow-up questions, mostly pertaining to the accuracy of his information. It was spot on. It was quick, accurate, and given the proper sense of urgency.
When we landed, I called a friend of mine used to fly for us. He now flies for Southwest and was getting ready to commute to work from Providence, R.I. I told him to be ready for a bumpy ride, and relayed our experience. When he arrived in Baltimore, he called me back and said that the ride into BWI on the 737 flight he took was “737 moderate, and borderline RJ severe. That was a good call, and I’m glad I wasn’t there.”
I wish I hadn’t been either, but I’m glad that the FAA has the means to disseminate that kind of critical information as quickly as it did. Of course, these are the folks who got thousands of airplanes on the ground on September 11, 2001, in record time, so they deserve credit where credit is due.—By Chip Wright
Aviation legend Evelyn ‘Mama Bird’ Johnson dies
Sunday, May 13th, 2012
Known as “Mama Bird,” Johnson is said to have logged more flight hours — more than 57,000 — trained more pilots, and given more FAA exams than any other pilot on the planet.
===> Posted on May 13th, 2012 by Janice Wood.
DWI charge against former FAA administrator dismissed
Sunday, May 13th, 2012===> Posted on May 13th, 2012 by Janice Wood.
AeroLEDs receives PMA for landing light
Thursday, May 10th, 2012The FAA has granted PMA Certification to AeroLEDs’ Sunspot 36HX landing light.
===> Posted on May 10th, 2012 by Janice Wood.
Evaluation by the Administrator
Tuesday, May 8th, 2012
I was recently in the simulator helping out with some training, and I had an epiphany of sorts. You may have noticed when you read the FARs that in all too many instances is the phrase (or something similar) “will be evaluated by the Administrator, or his designee.”
In short, this means that the head cheese of the FAA is supposed to personally evaluate or test just about everything in the aviation universe. To do so would be a monumental and impossible task, even if the Administrator did nothing else. So, by law, the Administrator can have designees do the work. That way, the Administrator can spend his or her time Administrating.
I’ve explained in previous posts how some of this works with regard to check airmen/-women/-persons at the airlines. I have the honor, privilege, and responsibility of fulfilling this role as a line check airman at my company.
What struck me this week was the level of respect and integrity that this process really does engender. On my first day in the sim, I was flying as a captain for a first officer who was undergoing some training in the right seat. The sim instructor was a friend of mine who is quite a bit junior to both of us. The session went well, and when necessary, Joe asked to see the FO re-fly a maneuver that could have been done better the first time. He did, and when the session was over we all went our separate ways.
The next day, Joe was working with two very senior (and in this case, much older) captains who were being brought back to the training department after having flown the line for awhile. One of them was also being qualified for the first time in our 700/900 variant, and he was wrapping up his training by being officially qualified in the right seat. He won’t fly the line in that capacity—he won’t fly the line in the left seat of the 700/900 either—but he needed to be qualified nonetheless.
I happened to be in the break room with all of them, shooting the breeze and talking shop while waiting for my own session to start. What struck me was the way the tone of the conversation changed when one of the “students” asked a question about the lesson plan for the day. All three of them immediately fell into a very professional mode and demeanor, and Joe was accorded the same respect and decorum that the Administrator himself would have garnered.
Here were two fellows who had at least 10 years of seniority—one had close to 20—on Joe’s time at the company. They were older. Out on the line—heck, it had happened just a few minutes before—Joe would have been the subject of some good-natured kidding and ribbing as an FO or as the baby chick in the henhouse. But at the drop of a hat, when the talk turned serious, he was recognized as the man in charge. He had the ability and the authority to stop the training process in its tracks if necessary or if warranted by poor performance. In my own sim session the day before, he could have grounded me, even though the event had nothing to do with me.
I’ve seen this kind of thing a thousand times in the past, but I never really appreciated it as I was watching it happen. For some reason, it caught my attention this time. I left the room before they had finished their discussion, but I didn’t need to be there to see how it would end. And I knew that once in the box, all three would be professional, cordial, and respectful of one another.
This sort of interaction goes on every day, and it is a testament to the success of the system that allows—forces—the FAA to place a great deal of authority and autonomy in the hands of its field representatives.
Pilots, mechanics, dispatchers, doctors, and dozens of others treat their burdens and responsibilities with great care, and exercise the extreme limits of their duties with restraint and when circumstances require. They don’t do it because they have an axe to grind or a seniority number to gain or vendetta to exact. In fact, in cases where two people simply can’t get along, they will often agree to seek another evaluator to avoid allegations of a conflict of interest.
This system works, and we should all be grateful that it does.—By Chip Wright
Oshkosh NOTAM now online
Sunday, May 6th, 2012The FAA has released the EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2012 Notice to Airmen (NOTAM), featuring arrival and departure procedures for the Experimental Aircraft Association’s 60th annual fly-in convention July 23-29 at Wittman Regional Airport in Oshkosh.
===> Posted on May 6th, 2012 by Janice Wood.
FAA forecast for LSAs improbable
Thursday, May 3rd, 2012The FAA recently issued its 20-year forecast for aviation, showing growth prospects for business jets and LSAs. It also forecasts a decline in the total number of piston-powered aircraft. Viewed from a distance, this might seem beneficial to LSA producers and sellers. Reasonably, FAA’s report appears to suggest recreational pilots will enjoy more hours aloft in a growing fleet of LSA.
Against a backdrop of what seems to be continuously increasing prices for avgas — some believe 100LL might even disappear — the fuel efficiency of LSAs becomes more important. For example, Rotax just launched its 912 iS fuel-injected engine boasting a 21% reduction in fuel consumption, taking the popular engine from burning about five gallons per hour to a theoretical four gallons in an hour of flying. Should we LSA enthusiasts celebrate these facts?
Regretfully, I find FAA’s forecast improbable (see details below).
===> Posted on May 3rd, 2012 by Dan Johnson.
FAA Gives Advance Notice of TFRs for G8, NATO Summits
Thursday, May 3rd, 2012The United States will host the NATO and G8 summits in two weeks, and two recently issued FAA flight advisories inform pilots that TFRs will be in place in those designated ‘National Defense Airspace’ areas. The G-8 Summit will be held at Camp David, Thurmont, Maryland, May 18-19, and the 25th NATO Summit will occur in Chicago May 19-21.
FOQA
Monday, April 30th, 2012In a previous post, I discussed the Aviation Safety Action Program (ASAP) that is used at some airlines to create a new kind of safety environment. In addition to ASAP, there is a program called the Flight Operations Quality Assurance (FOQA, pronounced “Foe-KWA”). Whereas ASAP relies on self-disclosure for its success, it is limited to those reports that are turned in, as well as by the information that is actually provided in the narratives, thus limiting its scope and effectiveness.
FOQA, like ASAP, requires a joint approach among the airline, the FAA, and the pilot unions. Where FOQA differs is in the fact that the information is gleaned from the flight data recorders (FDRs) on board the airplanes. The data from the FDR is downloaded by the designated personnel, and the information that identifies flight numbers, crews, et cetera, is immediately separated.
Using some pretty sophisticated and slick computer software, it is possible to choose which parameters to study. Say, for instance, you want to check out all flights that exceeded a certain rate of descent in the terminal area, and did so for more than 10 seconds. You can find that.
Or, if you want to flnd flights that landed more than so many pounds over the max landing weight, you can. There are hundreds of parameters that can be searched individually, or thousands of combinations can be created. There are usually certain trends that the airline wants to track at a given time, so they will search those, as well as any other trigger points that have their interest.
The information can be viewed numerically or graphically, and it can also be viewed as a video playback, which allows it to be seen in real time and in context. It’s all very slick, but it’s also very time consuming to produce the videos, so only a select few are made.
Even if the folks in the FOQA office find that certain performance parameters are being exceeded by a certain amount, they can’t just call the crew or ground them—remember, they don’t know who the crew is, and nor does the FAA. Further, cockpit voice recorder (CVR) downloads are not used. However, they can reach out to the designated representative(s) from the union, who can then “open the envelope” to see who the crew is. Only the designated contact persons can actually contact the crew, and the crew does not have to share any information at all—or they can share whatever information they want to, without fear of retribution or discipline.
The reason that the program works this way is that it is against the law to use FDRs for discipline; CVRs are not used because voices are too easy to identify. In fact, the FDR and CVR can only be used when there is an accident. For some pilots, the very thought that the FDR information can be viewed outside of an accident is unsettling. FOQA works because the respect for the privacy of the crew is not only paramount, but also it is the fundamental basis on which the program is designed.
In fact, no crew will ever know that one of its flights or actions is being scrutinized unless the designated contact person calls. More importantly, the company and the FAA will never know. The tradeoff is that the airline—and the FAA—are able to extract extremely useful information that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to get. As an example, a major airline was able to find out from FOQA that crews on one of its fleet types was unable to meet certain visual approach criteria at a particular airport. Thanks to the FOQA data, changes were made.
The U.S. airline industry is in the midst of an incredible run with regards to safety and accident prevention–which is proof that, done correctly, ASAP and FOQA, along with other safety and training programs, work. Industry and government have both embraced each program, and we have all embraced the results…even if we didn’t know it.—Chip Wright
