Maybe they
ought to just
try departing
on time?

ABC News is out today with a great piece by Scott Mayerowitz that explains what many airlines worldwide are doing to try and win back the respect and confidence of their cargo:

For most of us, the thought of flying conjures images of long lines, cramped seats and questionable food choices — if we are lucky enough to get some food. But for those who can afford it, airlines are going out of their way to add amenities in their first-class and business-class cabins. New seats, new entertainment systems and a bevy of additional services unheard of just a few years ago are popping up as airlines battle each other for lucrative customers. Emirates Airlines plans to spend $50 million in the next 18 months to upgrade its first-class product. Its new in-flight entertainment system, which will also be available in coach, will offer more than 600 channels of entertainment on demand. First-class screens will be a whopping 23 inches. Singapore Airlines has a news system called KrisWorld. Passengers can choose from 100 movies, 150 television shows, 700 CDs, 22 radio stations and 65 games.

Welcome to the latest round of airline seat wars.

O.K., because many of us never really fly Emirates or Singapore these days...what's really important is how the U.S. carriers are scrambling to upgrade your butt:

In 2006, Delta announced its intention to be the first U.S. carrier to offer lie-flat seats in its international business class. American Airlines introduced its plans for upgraded seats in March of this year and United unveiled its plans last month. United's "First Suite" offers a 180-degree lie-flat seat, a five-course meal, a laptop power source, a personal video screen with nine channels and a videotape player with a choice of 14 feature films.

All well and good, but there is still one huge hurdle that U.S. carriers must overcome. As the reliability of their schedules deteriorates into one that more resembles Amtrak's less-then-dependable train service, there cannot be any disputing my point of view:

Go ahead and dip the chairs in solid gold...and have bikini-clad Hooter girls slicing Ruth's Chris Steaks with sterling silver knives. Serve all-you-can-drink Guiness, and even throw in a massage to work out those kinks in your neck. Do just about anything you want to entice fatcats back to first class. But as the airliner sits stranded on the tarmac waiting for a slot to depart into a sky clogged with your company traffic plying the hub-and-spoke system, it can be scientifically proven that those high rollers up front will be delayed EXACTLY the same amount of time as the unwashed cattle in back.

If the U.S. carriers really want to win back our respect and confidence, maybe they ought to find a way to simply fly more direct routes on schedules that they can actually keep. And do away with their completely insulting overbooking policies, and while they're at it, come up with some fare structure that is the same price across the board, regardless of the day you buy the ticket. An empty seat is an empty seat, and it costs the same to carry one pax through the air. Do these things, and maybe we'll come back in droves.

But to simply gloss over the weaknesses of U.S. air travel with fancy first class seating is an insult to any passenger who flies in back...which happens to be the vast majority of their customers. So in today's airline management culture, it's apparently just fine to piss off the masses to cater to the few rich and famous who can still afford to sit up front.

Kind of sounds like the carriers are taking their cues from Bushco...screw the middle class, pamper the elite. And while they were lounging around coddling their fat cronies, the paying public was growing very weary of commercial air carriers.

Which might expain why general aviation aircraft sales are off the charts. Charter is booming, air taxi is just around the corner, and fractional ownership of a business aircraft really makes great financial sense. Lots of options out there to avoid the legacy carriers, and the airlines know it. If they weren't scared that those high fare passengers were going to defect to GA in droves, they wouldn't be trying so hard to keep them.

Major League
Validation for LSA

This year is going to be the "critical mass" year for Light Sport Aircraft...as 2007 will forever be remembered as the year both Cirrus and Cessna unveiled their LSA entries. But what has really put LSAs on the map for good is this news out of Echterdingen, Germany:

A Flight Design CTsw flown by Indian Air Force officers Rahul Monga and Anil Kumar completed a round-the-world flight in 79 days, believed to be a new world record for this class of aircraft. The flight was done as part of celebration of the Indian Air Force 75th Anniversary. Monga and Kumar began their voyage on June 1st at Delhi, India and returned August 19th.

In case you think this was just a lucky flight, Flight Design says no way. They have quite an impressive list of incredibly long excursions in their CT:

Even before the Indian Air Force Round the World flight, the Flight Design CT has gathered significant experience from intercontinental flights: Berlin, Germany to Toronto, Canada, and Toulouse, France to Kongo, Africa. Intercontinental flights under extreme climate conditions give the Flight Design Team an approval of their concepts and additional knowledge for future development.

So in reading this story, it got me thinking about Jerrie Mock, the first woman to fly solo around the world. She made that 1963 flight in a basically stock Cessna 180, accompanied in the cabin by two mondo aluminum fuel tanks. So just how could two guys fly an LSA around the world? Let's do some math, shall we:

The CTsw has an empty weight of 698 lbs., and a maximum take-off weight of 1320 lbs., resulting in a useful load of 622 lbs. Slice 250 off that for standard oil and fuel, and you can occupy the two seats with 372 lbs. of humans. That's 186 lbs. per chair, and by the looks of the two Indian pilots, neither topped the scale north of 150 lbs. That would theoretically leave 72 lbs. (about 11 gallons) available for additional fuel. At a maximum fuel economy power setting, those eleven gallons could push the CTsw an additional 396 nm...for a grand total of 1,396 nm per fuel load...if they had a tiny 11 gallon aux. tank in the trunk. They covered 25,310 miles in 79 days, which means they had to stop for gas just 18 times.

Of course, this is all gibberish, and the aerospace engineers in the audience will quickly point out that without knowing the exact weight of the pilots, or the exact quantity of any onboard aux. fuel tanks, there is no way to precisely calculate the effective range of an CTsw in this type of flight. I just wanted to throw some numbers around and see what happened.

But these results – far from inconclusive, I grant you – bodes well for the LSAs, I believe. If anyone thought the only use for a Light Sport plane was to chase down hamburgers costing $79.32 – a discount off the usual $100 rate – this world flight proves LSAs are the real deal, capable of actually taking you somewhere.

Just as long as that somewhere can be reached at an altitude less than 10,000 msl, on a daytime flight when visibility is at least 3 statute miles, at a maximum airspeed of 120 knots, with only one passenger along to enjoy the ride. If that sort of flying floats your boat, maybe an LSA is your ticket to the sky.

The Biggest,
Baddest RC
Model Ever!

When young kids are just learning about airplanes, one of the first things they all do is develop a keen interest in fighter jets. Watch a nine-year-old enjoying a Blue Angels show, and you'll know what I mean.

Along with being a fireman, cowboy, baseball player, or garbageman (don't ask), one of the vocations that most young boys and girls always say is on top of their list of career choices is pilot, and in particular, fighter jet pilot. But with the news out this week about the latest tool in the U.S. Air Force's arsenal, there may soon be less demand for jet jockeys:

The Air Force chief of staff announced "Reaper" has been chosen as the name for the MQ-9 unmanned aerial vehicle. The MQ-9 is the Air Force's first hunter-killer UAV. It is larger and more powerful than the MQ-1 Predator and is designed to go after time-sensitive targets with persistence and precision, and destroy or disable those targets with 500-pound bombs and Hellfire missiles.

When the USAF says this gigantic RC plane is "larger and more powerful" then the Predator, they are NOT kidding:

A 900-horsepower turbo-prop engine, compared to the 119-horsepower Predator engine, powers the aircraft. It has a 64-foot wingspan and carries more than 15 times the ordnance of the Predator, flying almost three times the Predator's cruise speed.

They need all that power and performance, because this version of the Predator is not just taking pictures:

"The Reaper represents a significant evolution in UAV technology and employment," General Moseley said. "We've moved from using UAVs primarily in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance roles before Operation Iraqi Freedom, to a true hunter-killer role with the Reaper." General Moseley stressed the key advantage is not keeping manned aircraft and pilots out of harm's way, but the persistence UAVs can inherently provide. The Reaper can stay airborne for up to 14 hours fully loaded.

So if UAV technology has evolved to this point, how close have we become to complete UAV squadrons that can blow apart entire cities without the loss of even one U.S. airman's life? And what about UAV bombers, clearly a case can be made to design a RC version of a B1, capable of flight halfway around the globe to deliver it's lethel cargo...without the need for an onboard lavatory or sleeping quarters for timed out crews.

And what if the next generation of aerospace brain childen were to keep this line of thinking moving forward, and propose UAV commercial airliners? Talk about hijack proof....the cockpit would be a sealed pod with no humans in sight. And since this is a full-blown UAV, who needs flight attentants either? You, the passenger, would have to get your own stale pretzels, and the safety briefing that nobody ever watches could be taped. Can't get that overhead bin closed...tough luck, baby, because on UAV Airlines, the ticket is cheap, but you are really REALLY on your own.

O.K., now back to reality...

How to Get the
Inside Story

As I go about the task of finding a Piper Cherokee 235 that will serve me well in my business and family flying, there is one thing that keeps popping up with airplanes built before the Summer of Love...

Damage history.

As I browse the daily listings on sites like Trade-a-Plane and Controller, the one thing that always generates a second look is those magical three letters...NDH. No Damage History. It is one of the two most desirable attributes on an older model plane, right up there with "complete logs":

But when does "no damage history" really mean NO damage history? I have had a couple of recent surprises when a listing said NDH, but a quick search on The Google brought up an NTSB report showing a crash with "substantial" damage. On one of these occasions, I let the owner off the hook after he told me NDH and I found a 1967 crash because nothing about the accident was listed in the logs.

Now I'm using a secret weapon that all airplane buyers should know about...the FAA database. For a crisp ten spot and a few clicks of your mouse, you can go here and order a CD that contains every piece of FAA paperwork ever generated on a particular aircraft. Just plug in the N #, wait about 10 days, and your disk arrives with more 411 then you ever thought was out there about any flying machine ever registered with FAA.

On the disk will be two PDF documents, made from the microfilm archived at FAA. One PDF will show every shred of registration info, including all change of ownership forms as well as some mortgage and loan paperwork. This is a great tool to follow the lineage of the plane right back to day one. One disk I recently ordered showed close to 20 owners for a 1964 model 235, far too many for my blood. Multiple owners had resold the plane just a few months after buying it... an indicator of a possible dog. But the other half of the CD is where the really juicy stuff can be found:

The second PDF shows all 337 forms that have been submitted on the plane. You'll quickly scroll through every major repair or alteration, and get a glimpse into the past life of the plane. Want to know what year the ADF was junked...it's in there. That hangar rash suffered back on '72 when Bubba bounced his pick-up truck off the wingtip...it's in there.

The good news is that I have found a plane in SoCal that suits my mission profile perfectly. I have ordered the FAA disk, and ought to get it this week. If there are skeletons in the closet of this bird, I'll sleuth them out, since the NTSB search on The Google came up empty. I've set up a meeting with the owner in two weeks to look the plane over and fly it...with fingers crossed. This is the one I want, and so far it has passed every test. I still have several more hoops to jump through including the all-important pre-buy inspection, but at least with the FAA disk as ammunition, I'll go into the negotiations armed and loaded ready for a little back and forth as the owner's broker and I work towards the right price.

Stay tuned...this project is starting to heat up. A hangar at EUG has been secured, insurance quote came in low, and the money is collecting interest in the bank, waiting to be sent off to pay for the 235 of my dreams.

Something Big
Brewing in Mojave?

I've made it quite public over the years that I am a huge fan of everything Burt Rutan and Scaled Composites does. Rutan is – in my humble opinion – the most prolific aerospace engineer on this planet today, and every ship he and his team build can do amazing things.

Despite the tragic setback they suffered recently when three crew members perished in a flight line engine test explosion, Scaled remains on the very forward edge of the oncoming commercial space travel envelope. We know they are building ships for Virgin Galactic – that is quite public – but the following news tells me that they might be capable of producing much larger things:

Northrop Grumman Corporation announced today that it has completed a transaction that increases its ownership in Scaled Composites, LLC from approximately 40 percent to 100 percent.

With this 'whole enchilada' stake in Scaled, Northrop Grumman is showing their cards big time, shouting to the aerospace community that they want one of two things:

(1) They're jumping on a 100% share of Scaled because they desire a BIG piece of the commercial space travel pie. If you want in that game – and want to fly the very best private spacecraft – you want Burt Rutan on your team.

(2) Northrop Grumman is acquiring Scaled because they know Rutan can deliver a yet undisclosed new craft or system, one that can complete just about any civil or military mission. Rutan has the aviation creativity to build just about anything the Northrop management can dream up...anything.

O.K., I cannot decide which way to go on this. Do you bet on Northrop Grumman buying Scaled for the commercial space travel possibilities, or consider the hard-to-ignore fact thay they are a $30 billion global defense and technology company with a long history of building seriously lethal systems and products for worldwide government entities?

If you're not quite sure exactly what Northrop Grumman does these days, here's a sampling of products found under their "Space Technology" banner:

Bipropellant Engines & Thrusters
Booster Vehicle Engines
Chandra X-ray Observatory
Earth Observation/Remote Sensing
Electric Propulsion
Gel and Tactical Propulsion
Hyperspectral Imaging
James Webb Space Telescope
Laser Diode Arrays
Missile Defense
Propulsion Systems
Satellite Communications
Space-Based Surveillance
Spacecraft Platforms
Space Radar
Space Tracking and Surveillance System

Go ahead, pick any one of those, and let Rutan go wild with the design. When you mate our best aerospace engineer with one of our most important aerospace companies, the possibilities are indeed endless.

Slamming the Door
on Seattle

The King of America plans to shut down the airspace above an entire large metropolitan city on Monday, August 27 so he can stump for Republican Rep. Dave Reichert who is trying to hold on to his 8th District seat in WDC. If you fly anything from a 777 to a LSA in the vicinity of SEA and BFI, plan on parking it for this:

Bush is to hold a fundraiser at the Hyatt Regency in Bellevue, an afternon event hosted by Reichert's campaign and the state GOP Party. The event will include a $10,000-a-person reception for those cronies who want to blow ten grand for Hor'dourves, and a $1,000-a-person general reception for the unwashed, rank-and-file voters who are crazy enough to part with enough money to buy TEN $100 hamburgers.

Now having a sitting Prez fly around in Air Force One on the taxpayer's dime is nothing new...they've all done it on both side of the political spectrum. What galls me is the massive nature of the shutdown, for a race that many pundits say will be won by democrat Darcy Burner:

There will be a large 30-nautical-mile-radius temporary flight restriction (TFR) centered on the SEA VOR's 344-degree radial at 5.7 miles, extending up to Flight Level 180. It will be in effect from 3:05 p.m. local until 6:30 p.m. local on Monday. Also, there will be multiple smaller 10-nm-radius GA no-fly zones in effect within the larger TFR during that time frame.

There are many small and regional airfields and seaplane bases that will be effected:

Wiley Post Memorial SPB
Renton Municipal
Broadcast House Helistop Heliport
Komo Tv Heliport
Elliott Park Heliport
Seattle Seaplanes SPB
Kenmore Air Harbor SPB
Vashon Municipal
Quartermaster Harbor SPB
Jobe Skis Plant 1 Heliport
Auburn Municipal
Crest Airpark
Kenmore Air Harbor Inc SPB
Wilson Heliport
Port Orchard
Auburn Academy
Telephone Utilities/Tiw Heliport
Black Diamond
Evergreen Sky Ranch
Port of Poulsbo Marina Moorage SPB
Bremerton National
Tacoma Narrows
Apex Airpark
Leisureland Airpark
Bergseth Field
Snohomish County/Paine Field (PAE)
Cawleys South Prairie
Firstair Field
Harvey Field
Pierce County-Thun Field (PLU)
American Lake SPB
Spanaway Airport
Shady Acres
Gray AAF
Sky Harbor
Kimshan Ranch
Heineck Farm
Whidbey Air Park

O.K., I know what you're thinking...what's so bad about a few GA airports going silent for a few hours. Well if you own an FBO or flight school on those fields, or operate your scheduled seaplane service from one of the seaplane bases on the list, a shut-down is a big deal.

But what about these little patches which are also listed as "effected" by the TFR:

Boeing Field/King County Int'l (BFI)
Seattle-Tacoma Int'l (SEA)
Mcchord Air Force Base

If I was in charge of things, the full cost of inviting Bush – or any other president – to gladhand with the Good Old Boys network while the candidate begs for money would be paid for by his/her campaign. Why should the public have to subsidize any candidate by filling Air Force One's tanks with Jet A just so that candidate can get some sound bites and face time for the six o'clock news?

And why should they have to lock down an entire region for the high rollers to have their gladhanding orgy? Do they really think a few small GA planes dotting the radar screen is going to be some sort of danger to the Gladhander-in-Chief? What would be so wrong with shutting down a corridor so AF1 can land, and then opening up operations until the baddest 747 on the planet launches again?

Oh wait...that makes sense. Sorry, what WAS I thinking.

When the Going
Gets Weird, the
Weird Go Flying.

Today I spent my lunch hour knoshing on rabbit food and trudging through cyberspace in search of the wild and woolly side of aviation. On most days, the news jumps out and screams to be seen, and other days – like today – there just wasn't any really hard news worth posting about.

So I went over to The Google and performed a search for "weird aircraft" just to see what is out there. Not sure why, I just did. Well, I am happy to report that just like anything on The Internets, someone named Mark Fisher has compiled the definitive collection of off the wall and weird flying machines.

The site, called "WeirdAir" is full of crazy birds, but also some very funny writing in the descriptions. Here's a taste:

Convair YF2Y-1 Sea Dart: OK, amphibian jets are unusual, yes, but a fighter?!? With retractable skis, the Sea Dart was underpowered and shook like crazy. After being re-engined, this aircraft holds the distinction of being the only amphibian to go supersonic! What crazy idiot did that?!?

Bell X-22: Helicopters are weird enough, and trying to combine their vertical flight capabilities with fixed wing performance often leads to some bizarre designs. The X-22 had four General Electric T58 turbojets mounted mid-cord in the rear wing, which, through a complex system of shafts, drove four standard Hamilton props in tiltable ducts. After a "hard landing" due to a malfunction, it was deemed uneconomical to repair. Go figure.

P.Z.L. Mielec M-15 Belphegor: The only biplane (sesquiplane, actually) powered by turbojet I know of, its large, mid-wing tanks are for agricultural work. Pilots refused to fly the prototype because of safety concerns. Duh.

Transavia PL-12 Airtruk/Skyfarmer: Yet another agricultural bird, this sesquiplane-winged twin boom single seater has a fuselage that looks like a broken Dorito chip. The radial engined version looks even worse!

I could go on all day with this stuff, but it would be much better for you to skate over to the WeirdAir site yourself, block out a couple hours of "me time" and laugh your butt off. You won't see a better collection of truly strange aircraft anyhere out there on any of the Internets. And if you get caught spending your "me time" at work, you didn't get the link from me...

As if He's Really
Going to Listen.

AOPA's Phil Boyer and NBAA's Ed Bolen are just two of the nation's aviation leaders who have signed on to a letter (pdf) sent August 20th to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, WDC. The purpose of the letter was cyrstal clear:

It was sent directly to President Bush as a urgent plea for him to actually think through the appointment of a new FAA Administrator to replace Marion Blakey, who will be shown the door on September 13th. The last thing United States aviation needs right now is another of George's buddies who knows squat about flying machines appointed to a position of such importance.

Does the name 'Brownie' mean anything to anyone? Of course it does, that was W's bff that completely botched FEMA's handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. Brownie was a bit short on experience at handling major disasters, which mattered little to Bush when he appointed him to lead a life-and-death department like FEMA. And when actual dead bodies began piling up in NOLA, Brownie bailed out, to...spend time with his family.

The letter says it is a critical time in aviation history, and reminds Bush of the need to find someone with actual verifiable aviation experience to sit in FAA's left seat for the next five years. It is no secret in WDC either that the FAA post is not a cush job:

Former Secretary of Transportation, Norman Mineta, put it succinctly on October 7, 1993, during House floor consideration of this legislation, when he said:

"This is an agency that is so highly technical that past administrators have acknowledged that, despite their aviation expertise, the learning curve to become a proficient administrator is over a year. The result of this combination of constant turnover and complex subject matter is that the FAA has had significant periods of time in the past several years in which the agency was being run by an administrator in training. Hopefully, this bill will provide some additional stability to this agency that is so vital to aviation safety.”

The people at the top of these organizations signed the letter:

Cargo Airline Assn.
National Business Aviation Assn.
Aircraft Owners and Pilots Assn.
General Aviation Manufacturers Assn.
Regional Airline Assn.
National Air Transport Assn.
Aircraft Electronics Assn.
National Business Travel Assn.
International Council of Air Shows
Aerospace States Assn.
Air Traffic Control Assn.
Aeronautical Repair Station Assn.
Professional Aviation Maintenance Assn.
Air Transport Assn.
Experimental Aircraft Assn.
National Assn. of State Aviation Officials
National Air Carriers Assn.
National Aircraft Resale Assn.

It is refreshing to see everyone that is anyone signing this letter. While it's true that AOPA, NBAA and all of GA are duking it out right now with ATA and airlines over user fees and tax increases, it good to know we are collectively trying to get the memo to the Feds that we do NOT want another 'Heckuva Job Brownie' running FAA. If we get someone who's only credentials for the job are that he played drinking games with Bushie while at Yale, we're screwed.

Oh my, September is going to be a very interesting month in U.S. aviation history.

Great Way to
Eat Crow.

Nobody is ever HAPPY to eat crow, but in this case, I'll be glad to chomp down some of the ugly black creature.

After looking at closeup shots of the injured underbelly of NASA's Endeavor, I did not feel good about the chances of that shuttle making it through re-entry. The chunk just looked too big and too deep. But it must have been in an area that could withstand the heat, because this morning, all went well with the shuttle landing, as space.com reports here:

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA's shuttle Endeavour and its seven-astronaut crew returned to Earth Tuesday, landing one day early due to earlier concerns that Hurricane Dean could disrupt Mission Control operations in Texas. Endeavour swooped down out of the Florida sky to loose two sonorous sonic booms before making a 12:32 p.m. EDT (1632 GMT) touchdown at NASA's Shuttle Landing Facility here at the Kennedy Space Center.

Now that this bullet has been dodged, we move on and move forward:

NASA plans at least 11 more shuttle flights to complete construction of the ISS by September 2010, when the space agency plans to retire its three-orbiter fleet. Two flights are slated to fly later this year: The shuttle Discovery is scheduled to launch the new Harmony connecting node on Oct. 23, and Atlantis is set to haul the European Columbus laboratory to the ISS on Dec. 6.

Now I follow space flights about as much as most aviators...fascinated by space since childhood. But had you pinned me down and asked me the amount of shuttle flights there have been over the years, I would have never guessed this:

Tuesday's landing completed NASA's 119th shuttle flight -- the 22nd bound for the ISS -- and the 20th spaceflight for Endeavour.

Whoa. I must have missed a few memos along the way, because I would have swore under oath there was in the neighborhood of 40-50 launches. But this link shows the launches and the cargo.

There will come a day fairly soon when the only Shuttles you can find will be on display at the Steven Udvar-Hazy Center in WDC. NASA will be flying something else in a few years, and for many critics of the shuttle's design, it won't be a moment too soon. When your belly tiles can get dinged by disintegrating foam or dislodged rocks of ice, and when your glide characteristics so closely relate a brick tied to a boxcar, maybe it IS time to retire that flying machine.

Risky Business in Space?

NASA is rolling the dice in allowing the Shuttle Endeavor to attempt a re-entry and landing next week despite this...from space.com:

A baseball-sized piece of tank foam weighing 0.021 pounds (about one-third of an ounce) bit into two of Endeavour's fragile tiles just aft of the orbiter's right landing gear door during its Aug. 8 launch. After nearly a week of intense scrutiny and tests, mission managers concluded that the ding in the 1.12-inch (2.8-centimeter) thick tile posed no risk to Endeavour or its astronaut crew. NASA mission managers decided late Thursday to forgo a risky spacewalk repair to fill in a 3 1/2-inch (nine-centimeter) divot in the heat-resistant tiles on Endeavour's underbelly.

Currently, the STS-118 crew – including teacher Barbara Morgan – is slated to land Wednesday, however the approaching Hurricane Dean may move that up to Tueday. Either way, I can't be the only person out there concerned. There are three words in the following pull that scream loudly:

After a week of intense scrutiny and a battery of tests, mission managers concluded that the small, but deep, divot in Endeavour's undercarriage will not require repair during a planned Saturday spacewalk, said NASA's STS-118 mission management team.

Small, but deep.

Take a long look at the photo posted above and ask yourself if you would like to blast through re-entry with that kind of CHUNK missing? The astronauts aboard Endeavour say they are "confident in the decision" not to patch a small gouge in their orbiter's heat shield before leaving the International Space Station.

I freely admit I am not a thermal tile expert, nor do I play one on TV. But given the history of the Shuttle program, I'm not sure if I'd want to try that maneuver in a ship with a "small but deep" hole in the belly. I have another word for the gash:

Gaping.

America Deserves Better.

I've been looking at a few troubling stories like this that seem to indicate all is not well in FAA Land between their management and their Controllers.

These days, NATCA and FAA are at each other's throats, and for good reason. If 1/100th of what I read posted all over The Internets about working conditions at FAA facilities is true, we have a problem potentially larger then user fees.

Which scares the hell out of me, frankly. Within a month I hope to be taking delivery of the airplane of my dreams, and will embark on the flight training portion of earning my instrument rating. As I plow through the clouds inbound towards the IAF, I want a happy controller in my headset talking to me while sitting in a plush leather Manager's Chair located in a cool, pleasant cab with a fridge full of iced Perrier within arm's reach. I want soothing smooth jazz as background music, and butterflies dancing on every window sill.

Our ATC people need to want to come to work in facilities that haven't suffered from the 'Katrinization' of the FAA. If this is the agency that is charged with trying to design NextGen, maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to get their management house in order first. This whole thing is starting to reak, much like a plugged toilet in the basement of a TRACON.

The REAL Cause
of the Delays, Exposed!

To keep to my word about re-publishing some of the great reporting AOPA puts out there (with their permission), here is a fine example of how the airlines are trying without much success at blowing smoke where the sun doesn't shine:

NBC report backs up AOPA analysis: Airlines create their own problems

It's the increasing number of airliners competing for runway space—particularly regional jets—that are a major cause of airline delays, NBC's Tom Costello reported on August 14. The airlines have grounded 385 larger aircraft since 2000, and replaced them with more than 1,000 RJs.

"Fewer seats, cheaper to fly, but competing for the same limited space on runways," Costello said.

And that confirms AOPA's analysis. Delays are the worst in the New York area, and getting worse every year. Yet since Congress removed the FAA's ability to limit the number of flights into those airports (slot control), the airlines have added more and more aircraft, sometimes to the point where the number of scheduled flights exceed the number of operations the airport can handle in VFR conditions.

"It's the runways," said AOPA President Phil Boyer. "Neither the airlines nor the FAA have yet to explain how NextGen (modernized air traffic control system) is going to allow them to get more than one operation per minute on a runway."

Thirty takeoffs and 30 landings per hour is the theoretical maximum for a runway in optimal conditions, according the FAA's Capacity Modeling and Analysis Group.

For example, the FAA's Airport Capacity Benchmark report shows that New York's JFK airport can handle one flight every 41 seconds during optimal visual conditions, using two runways simultaneously. Yet to meet the airlines' schedules during some of the "push" times, air traffic controllers would have to get an airliner on or off the runway every 36 seconds. During instrument conditions (visibility less than three miles or ceiling less than 1,000 feet), the FAA says the maximum is 17 flights every 15 minutes; the airlines have scheduled up to 25.

While the airlines try to point the finger at the number of corporate jets flying to and from New York, general aviation aircraft accounted for only 2.3 percent of the traffic at the hub airports of JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark during the first six months of 2007.

Nor is the problem the number of general aviation aircraft in the New York airspace. "That's a red herring," says Steve Brown, the former FAA Association Administrator of air traffic services. Corporate jets using Teterboro, Westchester County, and other New York-area airports flew routes below, above, and around the airline operations into the three New York hub airports, according to Brown.

Air traffic controllers agree. "Corporate aircraft are not the reason for system delays," said Patrick Forrey, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers.

"As long as the airlines operate a hub-and-spoke system, putting fewer passengers on more aircraft, all trying to arrive and depart at the same time, system delays are inevitable," said Boyer. "More runways would help, but it takes at least a decade to build a new runway in a major metropolitan area—if local politics will allow it."

A big hat tip to NBC for getting this one right. I like to bang on the mainstream media with regular frequency here, but if they do some actual reporting like this and get the facts straight a few more times, I might have to let up on the Peacock Network. But before that happens though, Jay Leno will need to lighten up with the drunk pilot jokes.

SatNav Myths Debunked

I've recently been handed a letter from the Director of Communications at the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) which aims to clear up some incorrect information that has been published recently about satellite-based navigation and separation standards.

Here is NATCA's Doug Church on the topic, reprinted verbatim with his permission:

In a Chicago Tribune “Travel Insider” column on August 5 about flight delays and the discussion about how a Next Generation air traffic control system could help, it was reported, “Countries such as Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom are using next-generation precise satellite systems that permit much less than the normal 3 miles separation between planes.”

This is not true. There are only three places in the world where aircraft are allowed to legally be closer than three miles: London Heathrow, but only during the daytime in good weather within 15 miles of landing, the United States at most major airports within 10 miles of landing, and one terminal area in Sweden.

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association asked its controller colleagues in other countries about their separation standards between planes, even when using advanced navigation technologies, and here is what we found:

AUSTRALIA: While the technology is there, the standards that they have to use to separate aircraft remain the same – three nautical miles -- restricted by the reality of controllers being able to intervene with any real possibility of maintaining safety. Says our contact there: “While we love RNP (Required Navigation Performance, a modern GPS navigation system) approaches and all they offer the industry, we still use three nautical miles.” And here’s more: “ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance – Broadcast) separation procedures similar to radar separation minima are implemented for en-route traffic. ADS-B separation procedures for non-radar terminal areas are being developed, but minima would not be less than the radar minima.”

UNITED KINGDOM: Our contact says, “Satellite navigation can be used as one means of navigating for P-RNAV (Precision Area Navigation). However, the route spacing to be applied when using P-RNAV is five nautical miles for straight segments, and more for converging routes. The proposed route spacing is therefore still greater than the three nautical miles that can be achieved when applying radar vectors in the LTMA (London Terminal Control Area).” Our contact notes that RNP procedures in terminal airspace could eventually enable routes to be spaced by as little as 1.2 nautical miles “using the principle of containment, rather than traditional separation standards. However, in practice, such low route spacing values won’t be achieved due to the need to maintain the ‘controller intervention buffer’, i.e. provide time for controllers to detect a blunder, formulate a corrective course of action, apply the corrective course of action and the aircrew respond to the corrective action. This buffer will, in my humble opinion, prevent routes from being spaced less than the three nautical miles that is already in use in some terminal airspace.”

CANADA: Here’s what a Canadian air traffic controller wrote in the Tribune’s “comment” section beneath Mr. Borcover’s column: “As a Canadian air traffic controller, I can assure you that we are still using old radar systems with a minimum separation standard of three miles, with five miles being the standard the majority of the time. We are in the very beginning of looking at using satellite surveillance but it is not in use at this time.”

SOUTH AFRICA: South African controllers use five nautical miles as the minimum radar separation. “We are working to reduce to four nautical miles on final,” our contact says, “but it’s not approved yet. This is just radar and no fancy RNAV/RNP/GNSS in this process.”

NEW ZEALAND: Separation standards are the same as the United States’: Five nautical miles for en route airspace and three for terminal airspace. “There is discussion around reducing the en-route minima towards three nautical miles with RNP,” our contact says, “but this is still only an idea and would be some time away.”

ITALY: Separation standards of three nautical miles are used ONLY in the terminal airspace of Rome and Milan. More separation is used everywhere else.

SWEDEN: Separation standards are five nautical miles for en route and three nautical miles in terminal, except for one area where 2.5 nautical miles is used.

-Doug Church Director of Communications,
National Air Traffic Controllers Association

In our many discussions on Nextgen, we often neglect to include the voice of the Air Traffic Controller, and that is a mistake. As is usually the case in Corporate America, the old, gray cronies in the Board Room make their decisions based on ego and profit instead of by listening to the people in the trenches who really know what is going on. If FAA takes this approach to the development of NextGen, it will be a fatal mistake, guaranteed.

Personal Air Vehicles:
The Second Century of Gridlock

Until today, I had not heard of Personal Air Vehicles (PAVs). But NASA has, and through the Cafe Foundation – a nonprofit group of flight test engineers in charge of the event – NASA is offering a prize purse of $250,000 to the brain child that comes up with the best design in NASA's Personal Aircraft Vehicle (PAV) Challenge.

As always, I went searching tonight for the 411 on PAVs, and was rocked back on my heels by what I found:

PAVs will have the capability to quietly land and takeoff in very short distances and will be so easy to operate that, like a rental car, anyone with a driver's license can legally fly a PAV after completing a simplified training akin to "driver's ed." As PAVs become more popular, a wide array of 'residential' airports will be built across America - airports whose 400 foot long runways allow them to be situated very close to one's destination doorstep.

O.K., so they are easy to fly, we get that. Any Bozo who can pilot an Escalade can "fly" a PAV, so says the CAFE Foundation's site:

The flight computer displays your position and guides you to taxi a short distance to the runway for departure. It shows the distance and route to your destination along with estimated time enroute. You take off in your PAV within 10 minutes of arriving at the airport and speed directly to your destination at 150-200 mph. Your PAV cruises at altitudes below 12,000 feet where there is no need for pressurization or oxygen masks and well below where airliners cruise. Your flight path consists of your own unique "Highway In The Sky" (HITS) shown as a virtual tunnel depicted on the computer display through which you or the autopilot will fly your PAV. Your HITS route is created and integrated automatically by a computerized air traffic control system that coordinates traffic avoidance and sequencing to assure your PAV a safe route without traffic delays.

Whoa, baby, that sounds just a touch far out, in a day when the FAA can't even figure out how to fund or implement the Next Generation of ATC. But while the idea of PAVs seems to have far too much "blue sky" for 2007, there might be a day – way WAY off in the future – when some sort of PAV might be possible.

But long before the first PAV takes off from that cute new 400-foot strip next to Grandma's place, FAA and NASA will need to convince us "conventional" pilots that having millions of "pilots" up there with little to no aeronautical knowledge is a good thing. For now, let's sort out user fees, and we'll talk later to FAA about coating the sky with winged computers "flown" by non-aviators.

For more information, click here or here.

The Avionics Evolution
Hits a Bump in the Road

As each day passes, I move swiftly to buying the Cherokee 235 of my dreams. I have found two planes that have the suite of avionics I desire, that being a Garmin 430 coupled to an S-TEC 50 with GPSS. From where I sit, if you really want to fly IFR and provide the absolute safest means of private air travel for passengers, buy the best avionics you can afford, you will never be sorry.

But in the new aircraft world, avionics technology is moving forward almost at warp speed. What is hot today is old school tomorrow. Is the Avionics world evolving too fast? Yesterday I would have said no, but today ANN tells me this:

ANN has confirmed that a large percentage of the Columbia Aircraft manufacturing work-force was laid off Monday, due to the reported lack of critical avionics components needed to finish the aircraft. "Nearly 300" staffers were notified Monday that they were furloughed until components of the Garmin G1000 glass panel system were delivered in sufficient quantity to re-start the production line. Garmin recently notified Columbia of an inherent problem in the AHRS (Attitude, Heading & Reference System) of its G1000 integrated avionics system that will delay shipments of the Primary Flight Display used in the Columbia 350 and 400. The problem limits aircraft operations to VFR only and causes an inability for Columbia to issue a Certificate of Airworthiness to customer specifications for delivery.

After coming off a losing battle against Mother Nature when she puked hail onto 66 beautiful Columbias sitting outside the Bend, Oregon plant last year, the maker had just re-hired back those employees and things were ramping up quite nicely. So it has to be frustrating knowing this:

The chief concern is that the avionics supplier is unable to definitively confirm when the problem will be resolved or when parts shipments will resume to Columbia. According to Garmin, all G1000 Primary Flight Displays manufactured on or after May 1, 2007 are suspect.

This isn't the first time "supplier issues" have recently stopped GA production lines. When Eclipse switched from Avidyne to a new vendor for it's AVIO avionics suite several months ago, it caused the company reported production delays they did not need.

I am a huge fan of everything Garmin does, and I'll bet anyone they have their full force of technicians working overtime to solve this glitch and get back to blowing G1000s out the factory door at a brisk clip. They have to, since so many OEMs such as Cessna, Diamond, Mooney and Piper are seriously married to the G1000 glass panel.

When you are the star of the avionics world, and your most visible product line suffers a setback such as this, it means you fix it overnight, period. I hope that in short order, we all forget this happened once the lines at Columbia crank back up, and pilots like me go back to dreaming of flying behind the G1000.

Everything IS Broken.

The title of this post is also the title of a 1989 Bob Dylan song that sums up what I am feeling this week about our country. Hang with me here, as always I will spin this around in the direction of aviation...

As Dylan sang...

Broken cutters, broken saws,
Broken buckles, broken laws,
Broken bodies, broken bones,
Broken voices on broken phones.
Take a deep breath, feel like you're chokin',
Everything is broken.

I was really peeved Sunday morning when I logged into cyberspace and found this:

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Weary international passengers were stuck at Los Angeles International Airport for several hours, after a computer failure prevented customs officials from screening arrivals. More than 20,000 international passengers, both Americans and foreigners, sat in four airport terminals and in 60 planes starting about 2 p.m. on Saturday.

Another day in America, another airport with computer problems. It's becoming so routine to read of major airports having one "glitch" or another, impacting ATC, security, or in this case, customs. Add that to a seemingly endless quagmire in Iraq, a pathetic Federal response to Katrina, a deplorable health care system, the bottom dropping out of the mortgage industry, a real estate market heading to the basement at warp speed and collapsing Interstate bridges, and it is easy to agree with Dylan's lyrics...everything certainly seems broken.

It is far too easy to blame the guy holding the Oval Office hostage, since this downward spiral happened on his watch. But this post is not about King George, it is about crappy computer systems. And since computers are front and center in ATC these days – and will be the heart of any new NextGen system – I have to ask this one question:

Why can't we build bulletproof computer systems?

While admittedly not a systems analyst and certainly not an IT junkie, I know a few things about these dastardly machines that all seem in one way or another connected to what "W" likes to call The Internets. It just slays me that the powers to be can't figure out how to build a system more dependable then a 1948 DeSoto, with firewalls that any brilliant 15-year-old hacker can't break into. Is it too much to ask that someone re-invent email so that 85% of the traffic is not spam? Hey, here's an idea, let's start by physically blocking the actual wires that connect the U.S. mainland to Nigeria.

When it comes to U.S. Customs computers – which are certainly at the very core of our Homeland Security efforts – you'd think at least these machines would be bulletproof. But the debacle at LAX proves even such an important system can go down. Which leads me into the discussion of our ATC computer system...is it bulletproof? Do they have at least as many redundant systems in place as a Cessna 150 has magnetos?

Jump on The Google and do a search for ATC computer failures. Then watch as 982,000 pages are served up describing how the system that keep us pilots from all trading paint can hardly be called infallible.

As we head down the rocky road towards NextGen, regardless of the funding scheme that is used, one thing is crystal clear: They had better get the computer system right. In the ATC world of tomorrow that will be so dependent on these gizmos we call computers, the last thing we need is the Katrinization of that system. Maybe what FAA needs to do is hire a herd of 15-year-olds and have THEM build the system.

Or they could just daisy-chain a bunch of Macbooks together and teach them to keep airplanes separated. At least that way they'd have cool tunes to listen to and great video to watch while the system hums along, up and running.

Aviation Community
Loses a Great Performer

In the post I wrote last night (shown below this one), I spoke of meeting Jim LeRoy several years back at an ICAS meeting in Northern California. Today, however, I am saddened to discover this on ANN:

[Jim] LeRoy was lost during a July 28 performance at the Vectren Dayton Air Show in Ohio, when his modified "Bulldog" Pitts biplane impacted the runway in a flat attitude at the bottom of a loop, during a performance of the two-ship "Code Name Mary's Lamb" routine. ANN has learned friends and colleagues of air show performer Jim LeRoy are encouraging air show fans, pilots and aviation enthusiasts to make a contribution of any size to the scholarship fund recently established to benefit Jim's four-year old son, Tommy.

Air show fans and aviation enthusiasts are urged to send their contributions to: Jim LeRoy, Jr. Memorial Fund, c/o Harris Bank, 110 East Irving Park Road, Roselle, IL 60172, phone 630-980-2700.

My sincere condolences go out to the LeRoy family. Jim was not only one of the best in the business, he was a helluva nice guy...never talked down to me or his fans. A class "act" that will be missed.

Godspeed Jim..say hello to Papa Louie for me up there.

Extreeeeme
Air Show
Entertainment!

Several years ago, I was asked to attend an International Council of Air Shows meeting by the late Lee Hansen, promoter of a number of Air Show events in the San Joaquin Valley of California. This meeting was held at Beale AFB, and for two days, I was surrounded with the likes of Wayne Handley. Jim LeRoy and a bunch of other aerobatic stars. I was allowed into the inner circle of air show performers, and to this day, I enjoy watching the "business side" of air shows.

So it was with great delight that I discovered Infinity Entertainment's Turbine Toucan Biplane act, set to descend (rapidly) on the 2008 Air Show Circuit. This is not your usual Air Show act, no, this is like nothing that has come before it. Infinity has a long history of working in and around the digital entertainment fields, with projects at Disney's Epcot Center dating back to 1984. Their literature says they "push the boundaries of entertainment marketing through immersive brand experiences such as the Turbine Toucan", and it is the Turbine Toucan that has now propelled the company into the air show industry.

So just who is behind this project? Good question:

David Kervinen not only designed and built the aircraft and systems but he also designed the identity and paint scheme. David worked in conjunction with Kevin Kimball for all the engineering and feasibility studies. Under contract, Jim Kimball Enterprises created many of the components that made the Toucan possible. Instrumental in the building process of the Turbine Toucan was Butch Pfeifer, who tirelessly worked with David to complete the aircraft in record time.

O.K., with that out of the way, let's generate some drool:

Turbine Toucan:
General performance specifications:
Rate of Climb : 9500/fpm.
Roll Rate: 350 degrees/sec.
Stall Speed: 64mph
G loading: +6/-4 routine
Horsepower: 750shp
Propeller: 4 blade composite 100” dia.
Fuel Capacity: 94 Gal. Jet-A
Thrust: 3300lbs.

This is a "blank sheet of paper" airplane, designed to do two things very well: (1) It is meant to entertain air show crowds, and (2) It is designed to claim the "world's Fastest Biplane" record now held by Italian Fiat CR42B at a speed of 323 mph:

From the conception of the Turbine Toucan, one major goal, though not a principle reason for building the plane, was to break the world’s fastest biplane record. If we can take 215kts indicated up to 32,000ft (under waiver) we will true out at 362kts @-35ºF. This number translates to 407mph TAS. If we can pull it off, we'd be the only biplane in history to break the 400mph mark.

O.K., you might be thinking that a really fast, really agile new biplane won't exactly set the Air Show world afire? If you think that, you don't know Jack about marketing:

Team Toucan is already busy readying for the 2008 Air show Season with the acquisition of a custom tractor trailer specifically designed for air show/sponsorship hospitality. Our goal is not only to provide entertainment in the sky but entertainment on the ground. We believe providing access to the aircraft, the team and support equipment makes for a much richer at venue experience. The 53' trailer consists of custom VIP sky deck for the best seat in the house, high speed satellite uplink, pilot/crew lounge and dedicated area for our sponsors. We are now in the early stages of designing the graphics package for a complete tractor trailer wrap.

I am very, very impressed with the overall package of the Turbine Toucan. Someone has thought this through to the very end, and from their web site, it already looks like they've signed a long list of sponsors. I hope they make gobs of money selling Toucan shirts, hats, models and beer steins...because in the Air Show business, anyone making a dime is ahead of the game.

This is a first-class act we all need to watch next year.

Recycled Post:

Here is something from 2006 that I wanted to re-share....as I got nuttin' else worthwhile tonight. I thought this might be a good way to see in real-time just how clogged our airspace really is.

Just how busy IS our airspace?

Long ago, I create a web page that shows real-time IFR arrivals inbound to many of the biggest U.S. airports with class Bravo and Charlie airspace. The raw data feed comes courtesy of FBOweb.com.

Visitors who have checked out this page have told me they did not realize the sheer volume of inbounds to some of the big fields like ORD, LAX or JFK. But I like to point out that in the evening, the IFR traffic in bound to MEM (Memphis) and SDF (Louisville) increases substantially because of the FedEx and UPS hubs. Anyone who knows the overnight parcel system knows that planes from all over the lower 48 must get into those two fields every night, and then depart again a few hours later. Makes for an interesting few hours.

Been there, done that.

We all like to rally together these days and gang up on the airlines, who deserve to be taken out behind the woodshed for the less than truthful way they've tried to mislead the public into believing general aviation aircraft are the root cause of the nation's increasing ATC delays.

While we can all agree that the misinformation campaign from Big Airlines is on par ethically with most everything else coming out of George Bush's Washington today, few of us have every really been in that airline system to learn the truth first hand.

But Dan Eikleberry has.

Dan is a retired, high-time United Airlines 747-400 Captain, and recently AOPA published his letter to Delta Air Lines CEO Gerald Grinstein. The letter called the airline's bluff about the user fee fairy tale that Delta and others in the Big Airlines community are spewing as the truth. I have received permission from AOPA to re-publish this letter, so here it is, posted verbatim from AOPA's site:

AOPA's Intro: Voice of experience

The majority of the responses to Delta were respectful, articulate, and well reasoned. The writers made their arguments with facts and personal examples. Many writers had years of experience as pilots and airline passengers to draw on. The e-mail that follows is one of the best diagnoses of the airline delay problem we've seen.

Dear Mr. Grinstein:
Delta e-mails to its frequent fliers indicate that general aviation is somehow responsible for airline traffic delays.

As a 20,000+ hour airline captain, I have flown out of almost every major (and many small) airports in the USA and around the world. General aviation aircraft operating at airports served by airlines, especially those served by your airline (Delta) are almost NEVER the cause of any delays and you should know that. Ask your own pilots what the causes are. Ask them why they aren't getting out of the gate on time. Ask them what causes late arrivals.

I'll try to itemize the MOST common reasons I have seen in 28 years of airline flying as a pilot for another major airline that operates competitively from the same airports Delta flys from:

1. Failure of the airline to get the passengers and bags ON BOARD! That's the PRIMARY reason for airline delays. Most airlines have gotten much better at boarding passengers, and getting the cabin door closed, but the bags, and sometimes the fueling, are the primary reason for the delay.

2. Basic failure to get the plane off the gate. Doors closed, bags loaded, pilots ready ... but there is no one to do the push, or the alley way behind the plane is blocked (usually from your own airline), or ramp control/ground control frequency is so busy your pilots cannot get a word in edgewise to request permission to push back.

3. Pushback problems: Trying to load last minute bags after the plane has pushed, or generally sloppy work on the part of the pushback crew can waste valuable minutes as the engines are started. After that, ATC (ground control) delays providing taxi clearance can be a problem. This is due to too many airlines, NOT general aviation, trying to taxi at once!

4. Taxi routes: Most airports today have a good plan, good taxi-way layout, but many of the older airports such as LGA, EWR, BOS, even SFO to some extent, have poorly designed taxi routings and it causes bottlenecks (crossing runways, airliners all trying to converge on a single runway for takeoff while waiting for landing airlines to pass by). The "conga lines" at EWR and LGA are a major problem that cause delays down-line for your airline because if you can't get OFF the ground, you're plane is going to be late IN and then late OUT at the next airport. The domino effect. FIX the problems at the hubs so your planes can get IN and get OUT.

5. Notice to this point, I have NOT mentioned weather nor maintenance delays? Again, those happen, and are NOT a general aviation-generated problem.

6. Departure and arrival ATC delays: Some air traffic controllers can handle any volume of traffic, some can't. The Chicago approach and departure control are amazing. They can handle any amount of traffic you give them. In 28 years, I've been impressed with ORD handling of traffic. Departures are simple: Turn to this heading and get out of town! It works. They separate the planes and you're on your way. I wish every air traffic controller had a mandatory 6 month duty at ORD approach and tower, after which he could go to his permanent assignment and relax for the rest of his life. It's all relative. SYD (Australia) thinks they have a busy airport and have many rules and run you all over the sky before they let you land, yet they have the traffic count of CID (Cedar Rapids, Iowa). But they think they're busy.

7. En route ATC can be a drag, but again, it's NOT general aviation up there at FL310 — FL390 where the airlines are flying. In the USA, almost the entire country is under radar coverage. If a slower biz-jet is in your way, ATC can easily give you a small 10 degree turn and you simply go around the biz-jet, or you climb 1000' and go over him. ATC can handle that easily. Slow biz-jets (and there aren't that many in the sky compared to the number of airliners on your routes) are simply NOT a problem. For the most part, the biz-jets make their economy at HIGHER flight levels than airlines fly, anyway. FL410-FL450 are rarely visited by airlines, but are fuel efficient levels for the Learjets and Citations and Gulfstreams who can cruise up there easily.

Please STOP your attack on general aviation. I have flown all the Boeing jets, I have a prior background in military jet fighters (USAF, flew F-4s in Viet Nam and the USA), and have and still do, fly general aviation piston aircraft. In the homebuilt experimentals, we stay far from airline airports and same for the light Cessnas I fly. Please do NOT do anything to tax our flights, as we are simply NOT PART OF YOUR PROBLEM!

Thank you for reading this, if you do.

Dan Eikleberry
Captain, 747-400, United Airlines
(Recently forced into retirement by the archaic age-60 rule!)

Whoa, that's telling it like it is! Now these questions still beg to be answered: Will the Big Airlines, the FAA, the Senate and the ATA all listen to the kind of logic that Captain Eikleberry puts out there? Will a few Senators kill any deal that removes the huge tax break that will be gifted to their Big Airline cronies? And if AOPA is successful in getting H.R. 2881 passed (which kills off user fees), will W sign it?

Power of the Pen

Since late May, I have been scouring three web sites, waiting for the Piper Cherokee 235 of my dreams to appear. I search Trade-a-Plane, ASO and Controller, with a tab set up in my Firefox browser so I can open all three at one time and go straight to their 235 listings:

And since May – with a couple of exceptions – there have been basically the same collection of available birds. I know them all well. There's the one that the NTSB says suffered "substantial damage" in a crop dusting accident in South Dakota (who the hell dusts crops in a Cherokee anyway?), and the one in SoCal with zero time on the engine, perfect paint and interior that commands a high asking price, but without a GPS or autopilot. Then there's the one with the custom wood panel, which looks pretty but has the steam gauges positioned in a wild, non-standard panel that would make the FAA Examiner on my IFR check ride cringe.

Week after week, the same planes sit...and sit...and sit. Once in a while, one leaves the listings, only to reappear a week later a little cheaper after a deal falls through. As my pre-determined date of "September" for a purchase nears – and without any real "lookers" in the listings with the right combination of low engine, good GPS and altitude hold A/P – it became apparent that we needed a more direct means of making this plane appear.

I cannot take credit for the plan that was devised. My wife Julie – who is easily the wisest person I know – calmly said I should search the online FAA database for 235 owners in Oregon and Washington, send them personal letters and tell them I may want to buy their plane if it fits my mission profile. Jules comes up with lots of ideas every day, and this was a good one.

So I authored a nice personal letter, ran the search and found 51 owners in WA and OR. After dropping a few dimes on "Forever" stamps, I sent the letters out, hoping for the best. Since we're in the advertising business, I know a one percent return on direct mail is about all that can be expected, so just one call would have been awesome.

I got six...so far...five calls on Tuesday alone!

This "power of the pen" strategy produced a handful of very nice prospects. One, in fact, looks to be "the one", with a 75-hour engine, Garmin 430, S-Tec 50 GPSS autopilot, digital fuel flow and EGT, 8/8 P & I, and a long, long list of upgrades and replaced components...all at a price that I think is fair to me and the owner. I haven't seen pictures yet, but unless this one is a complete dog, I feel like it's our next plane.

Moral of this post: As the guys and gals in Cupertino have said for years, sometimes it just pays to think differently.

More Good Reasons
to Fly a Private Aircraft

I'm sure the marketing departments at the major U.S. carriers cringe any time they catch wind that the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), a part of DOT’s Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA), is about to release their Air Travel Consumer Report...especially when we see headlines like this:

Airline On-Time Performance Slips, Cancellations and Mishandled Bags Up

Based on Data Filed with the BTS by the 20 Reporting Carriers, we learn that the Bigs had an overall "on-time arrivals" rate of a pathetic 68.1 percent. The carriers doing the best job at getting their fares to their destinations on time were Hawaiian Airlines with 92.9 percent, Aloha Airlines with 86.8 percent and SkyWest Airlines with 77.9 percent. Those who can't seem to get that part of commercial air travel right were the bottom three, Atlantic Southeast Airlines at 56.0 percent, American Airlines with 57.9 percent, and American Eagle Airlines with a stunning 60.5 percent.

I can easily understand who the two main carriers that fly the Pacific out to the Islands would have such high rates...weather, or lack thereof. But while they are making the trips on time, it is almost unbelievable that the DOT says these flights are late 100 percent of the time:

ASA 4104 - Atlanta to Chattanooga
ASA 4176- Atlanta to Myrtle Beach
ASA 4415 - Chattanooga to Atlanta
ASA 4415 - Atlanta to Hilton Head
ASA 4854 - Atlanta to Milwaukee
Comair 5565 - JFK to Buffalo
Delta 1891- JFK to LA
Northwest 656 - Detroit to Newark

And it just gets worse:

The 20 reporting carriers also posted a mishandled baggage rate of 7.92 reports per 1,000 passengers in June, higher than both June 2006’s 6.30 rate and May 2007’s 5.93 mark. In addition, the Department received 1,094 complaints from consumers in June about airline service, up 43.4 percent from the 763 complaints received in June 2006 and 17.8 percent more than the total of 929 filed in May 2007.

Oh, but wait, a little blue sky in the report surfaces here:

For the first six months of this year, the Department received 47 complaints alleging discrimination by airlines due to factors other than disability – such as race, religion, national origin or sex, down 24.2 percent from the 62 complaints filed during January-June 2006.

So when you have such a tough time pleasing your customers, I guess having just 47 of them reporting you to the Feds for discrimination is a good thing. After all, they need to find something in this report to spin in their next marketing campaign:

Fly the Less Hateful Skies of XYZ Airlines

The BTS website has loads of more bad news about how low the level of service at U.S. carriers has fallen. For example, that site shows that airlines reported 462 flights with taxi-out times of more than three hours in June! That must have been all those little GA planes clogging up the system again.

All of this plays right into the hands of so many of my private aviation clients who sell airplanes or airplane parts, fly charters or train pilots to fly in private flight departments. I believe there is a direct correlation between the record shipments and billings that GAMA reports, and the dismal airline service numbers that DOT reports. The more suck the airlines become, the more it makes sense to fly yourself.

Then, the only delay getting out of the airport will be when you stop at the FBO to chat up the desk girls and eat free chocolate chip cookies.

Manufacturers Riding High

The recent General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA) shipment and billing report for the first half of 2007 are very encouraging, and show some nice trends upward:

GAMA member companies’ airplane shipments and billings for the first half of 2007 totaled 1,883 units, a 1.7 percent increase over the same period last year, with industry billings rising 11.7 percent to $9.8 billion. Turboprop shipments rose 15.2 percent from 158 units in 2006 to 182 units over the same period in 2007. Meanwhile, the business jet market segment grew by 14.7 percent, with an increase in shipments from 414 units in the first half of 2006 to 475 units in the first half of 2007. Shipments of piston-powered airplanes through the second quarter of 2007 were down slightly from the same period last year, to 1,226 units, a 4.2 percent decrease.

The turboprop increase is due in part to the 18 TBM 850s that Socata EADS sold, generating billings of $51.6 million. The business jet sector was anchored by Cessna delivering 163 Citation, the Beechcraft/Hawker family moving 30 units, and Eclipse delivering 21 E500s. As always, a large part of the total sales figures for high-dollar bizjets came from Dassault, who moved 30 of their Falcons which cost somebody just shy of a billion at $981.3 million.

Piston-powered flying machines saw a slight dip, due most likely to the wait-and-see attitude of many regarding user fees. Here's a capsule summary of the main lines and their deliveries:

Beechcraft Bonanza G36 - 21
Beechcraft Baron G58 - 10
Cessna 172 Skyhawk - 43
Cessna 172S Skyhawk SP - 122
Cessna 182 Skylane - 63
Cessna T182 Turbo Skylane - 63
Cessna 206 Stationair - 12
Cessna T206 Turbo Stationair - 49
Cirrus SRV - 2
Cirrus SR20 - 51
Cirrus SR22 - 215
Columbia 350 - 29
Columbia 400 - 72
Diamond DA20-C1 - 28
Diamond DA40 - 126
Diamond DA42 Twin Star - 82
Piper PA-28-161 Warrior III - 13
Piper PA-28-181 Archer III - 6
Piper PA-28R-201 Arrow - 4
Piper PA-32R-301T Saratoga II TC - 21
Piper PA-32-301FT Piper 6X - 7
Piper PA-34-220T Seneca V - 10
Piper PA-44-180 Seminole - 4

These are first half 2007 numbers, and do not reflect any hardware that was sold or delivered at EAA Airventure Oshkosh. I can only assume that since EAA had one of their biggest shows ever in terms of attendance, we will see an overall increase in piston sales this year. And when we win the user fee battle, sales and deliveries are sure to begin ramping up fast.

For more GAMA information, here is their site, and here is the full shipment report as PDF. Their Media Guide page, found here, has a ton of great info you should download and keep handy to help explain the GA world to non-pilots.

Do we really need
off-the-shelf UFOs?

As I scoured the Internets tonight, I came across the kind of a story my readers know I cannot possibly avoid. It's about a flying machine so weird (or is it?) that I just had to poke some fun:

Moller International has begun producing parts for its Jetsons-like M200G Volantor, a small airborne two passenger saucer-shaped vehicle that is designed to take-off and land vertically. The M200G is the size of a small automobile and is powered by eight of the Company’s Rotapower® rotary engines. This vehicle is intended for operation continuously in “ground effect” up to approximately 10 feet altitude. You can speed over rocks, swampland, fences, or log infested waterways with ease because you’re not limited by the surface. The electronics keep the craft stabilized at no more than 10 feet altitude, which places the craft within ground effect where extra lift is obtained from operating near the ground. This lets you glide over terrain at 50 mph.

Yes, I'll admit, on paper this sounds pretty far out. But in this video on Moller International's home page, you'll see the technology does in fact fly. And on a site called Gizmodo, which covers the ever-changing world of Gizmos, was this:

Because the M200G is classified as a recreation device and not an aircraft, it is not subject to FAA regulations and anybody can operate one.

Great. Just what we need is to have the same clowns that cannot drive an Escalade without shoving people off on the shoulder dropping some of their daddy's Baby Boomer inheritance on a craft that skims over damn near anything at just shy of the speed limit. It will be just a matter of time before one of those aforementioned clowns thinks they can hover into the local airport's traffic pattern right into the path of a Bonanza on short final.

In my books – and it should be in the FAA's – a flying machine is a flying machine. It shouldn't make any difference if you're hovering on down the four-lane taking Johnny to soccer practice, or blasting across the flight levels in a Gulfstream V.

So if Moller can hit their price point of a projected $90,000, and if they can require some sort of license to keep these out of the hands of arrogant fools with more money then brains, this might just be a fun project to watch. If the Volentor's technology can be honed to be bulletproof and provide hours of safe, efficient hovering, I can easily see a multitude of uses for such a craft.

If you absolutely must have a flying saucer of your very own, contact Bruce Calkins at (530) 756-5086 ext. 33, or email him here.

Busting at the Seams

I have been lucky enough to get back to EAA Airventure Oshkosh three different years (not this one however), and cherish every second inside the gates of EAA's sacred grounds.

But last night I tried the impossible – I tried to explain to a non-pilot just what EAA Airventure is all about. Even as an advanced member of Eugene's Toastmasters public speaking club, and with a quite decent talent for stringing the right words together to make a point, I was going downhill fast trying to describe what the North 40 is like, or how your heart races as you approach Aeroshell Square for the first time.

You try and tell them it's big, but stumble when attempting to paint a picture in their non-aviator mind of row upon row of perfectly restored flying machines. I tried describing my very first trip there:

I had just bought my very first professional digital SLR, a Canon D60. Loaded with enough batteries and memory cards to blast away for hours, I didn't know which way to point the lens first. So after a morning of scouring the four mammoth exhibit halls, the outdoor booths offering every imaginable new airplane for sale, and of course the exquisite hardware in Aeroshell Square, I headed south from show center, towards the homebuilts, experimentals and vintage aircraft. I walked for hours, gazing and drooling, shooting hundreds of images of everything. By late afternoon of the first day, I wandered back to show center...tired, drained and satisfied. I had been oogling flying machines for hours, and was overdosing big time on shiny radial engines, polished aluminum and sleek composite fuselages. It was then that I realized that I had now only covered HALF THE SHOW GROUNDS!

Yes, it's big, trust me. So big that EAA President Tom Poberezny recently said that even though the show covers about 60 percent of the total 1,800 acres EAA leases and owns at OSH, the organization will spend more on improvements to the AirVenture convention grounds over the next three to five years than it has in its first 30 years in Oshkosh, with expansion plans utilizing another 200 acres.

So just how big is "Oshkosh" anyway? Let's look at some "by the numbers" numbers:

This year, there were 2,617 showplanes for judging, including 985 homebuilts, 1,014 vintage airplanes, 365 warbirds, 136 ultralights and 117 seaplanes. There were 900 members of the media representing about 375 outlets covering the show, and 40,000 campers were among the 560,000 that viewed the displays of 784 exhibitors.

From the Green Bay Press Gazette are these fun facts:

Used at EAA Airventure were:
– 184,000 square feet of building exhibit space
– 30 customized Volkswagens roaming the grounds
– 100 flowerbeds
– 15,500 flowers planted
– 350 planters, pots and hanging baskets
– 350 street signs on the grounds
– 400 maintenance department volunteers

I found this collection of interesting OSH food numbers from a 2004 article, but they also show the enormity of this event since you can assume they move this much grub every year:

• 329,694 beverages served
• 72,222 hamburgers sold
• 130,305 hot dogs consumed
• 20,972 bratwursts enjoyed
• 46,751 orders of french fries bagged
• 55,241 ice cream cones devoured
• 15,304 ice cream bars eaten

And of course, you can't have food without this:

1,089 portable toilets
10,600 rolls of toilet paper

See, "Oshkosh" really is big. Really big. Really, Really, REALLY big.