CLEAR!

TV doctors bark this sharp-elbowed warning before they shock a restive heart back to a regular rhythm. It is also the warning pilots issue to bystanders before they energize an airplane’s air processer. Seemingly disassociated warnings, several days ago the Winnebago Flying Club united them by offering to resuscitate my flat-lined flying career and increase the active pilot population by one. (Hey, every one counts these days.)

Like uncounted thousands of pilots of my generation, I surrendered the left seat in the past decade because there just wasn’t enough money left at month’s end to pursue something I do for fun. Family obligations, like food and a warm, dry place to live, and two kids in college, with child support on top of tuition, books, and board, have first dibs on an unpredictable freelance income.

Counting the days to their graduation coincides with my 60th birthday and the financial preparations that will sustain me in my dotage. A realist, I was resigned to spend the rest of my life on the ground and looking up whenever an airplane flew overhead. When I learned that the flying club was accepting new members, looking at the numbers made my heart jump.

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I’m made quite a career out of whining about the aviation industry, but even I need someone’s shoulder to moan on every so often. As I sit here in a hotel room in Bordeaux trying to get back to the states from France using an American/Iberia code-share ticket, the story of how I got here … and how I’ll get back was simply too much even for an ex-airline guy like me. Imagine my shock when it took four different airline partners to complete one trip across the Atlantic.

Best of all, many of the French aviation unions are calling a strike for first thing Monday … the day I head back to America. Oh goodie.

I knew only one man could help me keep my sanity and explain for whom exactly, airline code-sharing is such a great solution.

I called Brett Snyder … The Cranky Flier. Before YOU book a ticket on an airline partner, you’d better give our conversation a listen.

Rob Mark

Jetwhine Tris to Out-Cranky the Cranky Flier Play Now | Download

From aviation’s infancy, the US military has been a leading source of aerial innovations and educator of those who put those winged aviation innovations to work. With the end of each conflict, pilots, technicians, and engineers used  their training and experience in commercial endeavors.

This cyclical birth of new aviation eras is tied to the end of America’s conflicts. World War I gave life to commercial aviation. Barnstormers became air mail pilots who became airline pilots. The industry made a quantum leap after World War II, in both technology and personnel. This process is again at work, but this time the new technology is replacing the old.

Yes, I’m talking about unmanned aerial vehicles. Drones are in ascendancy, replacing manned aircraft with increasing speed. It is quite possible that the manned military fleet will never again see a new design.  Given the cuts facing the defense budget, and the delays and cost overruns that have plagued it, the F-35 joint strike fighter faces an uncertain future.

The signs of change are unmistakable: GlobalPost cites a Congressional report that says, “1 in 3 US Warplanes a drone.â€Â  With a fleet of 7,494 UAVs of all types, the fleet has increased 40-fold since 2005. In 2011, reports National Defense, “For the first time in its history, the Air Force trained more UAV pilots than fighter and bomber pilots combined.â€

In the same article, looking forward a short way, to 2020,  a former commander of the Naval Air System Command said, “The Air Force and Navy will always have [fighter and bomber] pilots, but you can debate whether future operators will be airborne.†Picking up the slack, a number of collegiate aviation program have created UAV programs.

If aviation stays true to its historical precedents, commercial operations will follow the military’s lead. In coming full circle, pilots who want to get old school and actually climb into the sky will do so for personal enjoyment in a GA aircraft. Most likely it’ll be a Cessna 172, which like the B-52, is an ageless and irreplaceable vet. –Scott Spangler

First thing last Monday morning I read that US Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was scheduled to hold an hour-long meeting with aviation officials from Boeing, Honeywell, and United Airlines later that day at Boeing HQ. The announced agenda focused on the role of biofuels in long-term military and commercial energy needs.

Reducing dependence on imported dead dinosaurs is the stated goal, and the USDA supports and promotes it because it regulates and supports the people who grow the plants and animals that eventually become jet fuel. It’s working with the Department of Energy and the US Navy to develop ways “to take what we grow, and potentially crop residue, woody biomass and other materials and create a drop-in fuel†source for the military and commercial aviation,” Vilsack said.

Late last year the Navy bought 450,000 gallons of biofuel for its “Green Fleet†research. The Navy plans to burn the biofuel this coming summer; algae-gas will slake the thirst of an F-18, and grease-gas will do the same for a destroyer and cruiser. This sounded good, until I did the math: with a $12 million fuel bill, that’s $26.66 a gallon.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last Saturday was not a good day for transportation, but for once the bad news was not about aviation. An immense cruise ship — the Costa Concordia — capsized in the Mediterranean Sea off the west coast of Italy where rocks near the shore sliced open the ship’s hull with Titanic-like fury. Most of the 4,200 people are accounted for and while nearly a dozen people lost their lives, any losses were needless and simply compounded by some actions of the crew.

The captain told the BBC and Italian television that he believed they were sailing a few hundred meters from where the rocks were charted and that he had no idea why the ship ran aground. Surprisingly, large ships use the same sort of GPS guidance and autopilot systems we see on board an aircraft, systems designed to prevent just such a mishap … unless of course some human gets in the way. On board, cell phone videos captured the panic among the passengers as they sought safety.

But How?

The real story of this accident though is how a ship of this size in 2012 could run aground despite millions of dollars of safety equipment designed to prevent just such an accident. Back to the crew again as reports have emerged that Captain Francesco Schettino and many of his staff abandoned ship before all the passengers were accounted for. So it would it would seem that the captain was either lying through is teeth or was simply incompetent. The captain has been jailed adding fuel to the international debate of personal liability for crew negligence in such a crisis. Not all violations are quite so clear. Read the rest of this entry »

Wandering through a Google collection of aviation news, Combat Aviation Brigade Welcomes a New Unit, New Aircraft, grabbed my attention. I’m a dedicated rotorhead, helicopters comprise the majority of the US Army’s fleet, and I was hoping to learn about some new helo.

Nope. In March, the Combat Aviation Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division (aka The Big Red One, based at Fort Riley, Kansas) is getting the Gray Eagle, an “unmanned aerial system†that will be operated and maintained by Company F.

Unfamiliar with the full array of military drones, I assumed that the Gray Eagle was one of the smaller models, like the RQ-7 Shadow, which has a 14-foot wing span. Nope. The Gray Eagle is an upgraded MQ-1 Predator, built specifically for the Army’s recon and air support missions.

In short, when up to speed, the Gray Eagle will do everything the Air Force Predator now does and more, like integrating with Apache attack helos. What’s more, as far as I can tell, the Army drones will be flown by enlisted soldiers, not officers trained first in aircraft they get into.

Given the history of the US Air Force and its aviation battles with the US Army, the service that gave it life. I wonder if the Army drones will be the start of another interservice budget battle and turf war over who flies what aircraft.

Read the rest of this entry »

A college professor of mine told me a story years ago — OK … MANY years ago — about how solving one problem often creates another. Boy … did our switch from Feedburner to Mail Chimp subscriber software — not to mention my recent post about the change — gum up the subscriber works over here at Jetwhine HQ.

First let me apologize to all of you who tried to resubscribe in various attempts and were faced with our monkey screwing things up. It really wasn’t supposed to be this much work.

Our mail monkey has since been sent to his room without bananas to reconsider his behavior.

Seriously, our original goal was to be certain everyone from the old list made it on to the new one.

If you’d like to be sure where you stand and you’d rather not risk the wrath of the chimp, just send me an e-mail at rob@jetwhine.com and I’ll check the details of your subscription myself. In the subject line, just add the word subscription and we’ll do the rest.

On the bright side of this mess though Scott and I were both really impressed by the incredible number of e-mails we received telling us how important your Jetwhine subscription is to you and how much you like what we write about GA, biz av, FAA, flight training and a host of other relevant issues.

And because you, our subscribers are just as important to us, please keep that rob@jetwhine.com address handy and e-mail me directly if our chimp ever again fails to treat you with the respect you deserve.

Thanks,

Rob Mark, publisher

In case today’s title has you wondering, don’t worry. We haven’t decided to farm our content production out to a cheap, new labor source.

In 5 and a half years of writing Jetwhine, the world has continued to evolve around us although the look of Jetwhine has remained unchanged. technology has not obviously not remained static. The pace of the changes to the technology that support social media behind the scenes however, has been almost enough to make my eyes glaze over at times. And my point is what you’re probably asking about now.

One item long in need of an update here at Jetwhine is our subscription database system … a weakness pointed out a few weeks back by a few of our ever-vigilant subscribers … two folks at AOPA in this case. You know them … best $45 bucks you’ll spend each year.

For you as a reader there is very little if anything to do about our new database … except one. We’d very much appreciate you resubscribing to Jetwhine to verify that everyone has made it over to the new list manager.

Will you please take just a moment and type your e-mail in the box to the upper right of this post, or verify the RSS feed is still connected at your end? If you do, you’ll have made both mine and Scott Spangler ‘s day and we can get back to our real job … providing you the best insights into the aviation industry available anywhere.

As always, if you have a friend who would benefit from reading Jetwhine — and who wouldn’t of course — we’d also be appreciative of you passing on this post about subscribing along with your personal endorsement.

Disclaimer: No chimps were harmed, nor overworked in the production of this post.

Thanks,

Rob Mark, publisher

In a general sense, I knew that NextGen would be the end of the VORs that have reliably led aviators for decades. But 10 days before Christmas, the retirement of these familiar white cones is much more real.

That’s when the FAA published its request for comments on its plan to start retiring legacy systems to the old navaids home. The comment period ends on March 7, 2012, and you can read the proposal and comment on it here.

It’s the next step in the implementation of NextGen’s “flexible point-to-point navigation enabled by geospatial positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) infrastructure and aircraft advanced navigation systems.†I added that emphasis; most of the aircraft owners I know have already stepped up to GPS/WAAS, but if you haven’t, and you depend on your airplane to get from point A to B in the weather, now is the time to think seriously about stepping up to this technology.

Sure, the FAA plans to retain an optimized network of DME stations and a “minimum operational network (MON)†of VORs to ensure safety and continuous operations in the lower 48 states and terminal operations at the “Core 30 airports,†as well as the existing ILS network (the FAA will meet new Category I requirements with LPV approaches), but it seems clear that the FAA will maintain these legacy systems behind glass labeled “Break In Case of Emergency!â€

Read the rest of this entry »

An old-school reader, annually I must winnow my collected ink-on-paper titles to make shelf room for Christmas newcomers. As they have for decades, the works of Richard Bach survive every purge.

Like many others, I met Richard through the pages of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a Christmas present from my parents in 1972. He articulated a kindred outlook on life I was then struggling to define. We met again in his other works and in subsequent titles that now wait on my shelf for our next reunion.

It’s been awhile since Richard and I met on new pages, so I sought out his digital being. He’s sharing his philosophy and love of flight through a blog born this December. It’s a home “for short little bits of ideas, funny things that happen, a place to show the pasts and futures of what I care about, dear reader, if you should happen to be interested.â€

As aviation—especially GA, the portal for flight’s newcomers—seeks its way in the 21st century, it should be of interest to all concerned about  the future. The critical message is the theme that unites all of Bach’s aeronautical prose, that aviation’s sustaining joy and rewards are found in the adventure of simple flight.

Isn’t that what first drew us into the sky? For Richard, the simple act of looking up at a passing airplane led him skyward in the mid-1950s. And the joy of simple stick & rudder flight sustains him still, a point well made in A Different Family. Its final paragraph offers aviators this poignant observation:

“We come together, we meet because we share common interests, common values, we laugh at common joys, cringe at common dangers.

“Not blood, that runs this deep.

“Only child, last survivor, orphan, black-sheep outcast from your clan?

“You want to find your family, first you find your love.â€

As we seek our way forward, perhaps the successful solution is to remember when we were newcomers enthralled with the sky. Instead of the technology and procedures that now define the maturity of our flying lives we should focus on the compelling and attractive challenges and rewards of simple flight.  – Scott Spangler

A recent issue of AOPA’s Flight School Business included this story: FAA Updates CFI Renewal Clinic Guidelines. It referenced the updated advisory circular that covers FIRCs and noted that the FAA added angle of attack (AoA) to the list of core subjects the renewal clinic must address.

That should be interesting because angle of attack is the root of an enduring aviation debate that correlates pitch & power with altitude & airspeed. This requirement will certainly lead to some spirited discussions and diagrams at FIRCs nationwide, but what was behind its addition?

The answer was in Appendix 1 of AC 61-83G, under Item 5: Safety Trends in GA: How CFIs Can Directly Contribute to Aviation Safety. To summarize, the non-commercial, non-corporate general aviation accident rate has been trending lower over the past two decades. To continue that trend, the FAA added A0A because it’s related to seven of the top 10 ways pilots kill themselves—low altitude maneuvering and loss of control.

Everyone involved has done an admirable job in making aviation safer, and the low rate we’ve had for decades suggests that it is the margin of error. In statistics I learned that this margin is an unavoidable fact of life. My prof said it grows as the data pool shrinks, so it makes sense that the accident rate—aviation’s margin of error—is up a tick. The shrinking pilot population is flying fewer hours. Explaining the statistical version of a pilot-induced oscillation, the prof also said trying to eliminate the margin usually makes it worse.

Read the rest of this entry »

Curiosity often costs me a lot of sleep. Tonight I saw that TV commercial about the guys who captured some cool, outer space video using a weather balloon. So Google and I went looking for them. I found JP Aerospace. I don’t know if they did the commercial, but the volunteer-based, do-it-yourself space program offered a lot of cool video and stills on its website.

This is part of JP’s ATO—Airship to Orbit—program. It’s a cool, innovative three-part program that promises low-cost, bulk access to space. Part I is the atmospheric airship that climbs to 140,000 feet.

This work is going on now. Related to it are the PongSat missions, which carry student experiments that fit inside a ping pong ball. Since 2002, JP Aerospace has flown more than 4,000 PongSats to the edge of space at no cost to the 12,000 students (or their schools) who created them.

Part II is the crewed Dark Sky Station, parked at 140,000 feet. These way stations to space will be the construction facility for the large orbital vehicle. Part III is a huge “airship/dynamic vehicle†that reaches orbit directly.

When constructed, the initial test item will be 6,000 feet long. Its  buoyancy will carry it to 200,000 feet. From there, electric propulsion, several generations advanced from the system shown above, will slowly increase it speed, causing it to climb to orbit over several days.

This is, without a doubt, the coolest aerospace project I’ve come across in years, and it restores my hope for the future. They may not reach their ultimate goal in seven years, but they are going for it, and working within real-world constraints.

If you’re wondering what product the TV commercial was advertising, I’m afraid I can’t help you because I don’t remember anything more than the flight of the suborbital airship. But if you need to lift your aviation spirits, check out JP Aerospace. –Scott Spangler

From Paris –

There’s no small amount of irony that AMR, parent of American Airlines and American Eagle, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection – a move certain to save the carrier millions over the next few years – only a day before 2,000,000 million British public sector workers walked off the job to protest pension cuts in the UK.

Gerald Arpey stepping down as American’s CEO is just a tad late though since the airline lost billions in six of the eight years he ran the place. The union’s hated him so it was no surprise management told everyone that the straw that pushed the carrier over the edge was the inability of AA’s 11,000+ pilots to agree on productivity cuts in the upcoming contract.

You bad pilots.

The greedy Allied Pilots Association’s Master Executive Council, in fact, reportedly refused to even present management’s last offer to the rank and file. Clearly, just as in Britain, fault clearly rests with labor. Here we are in the worst recession/depression in a century and these damned pilots still want stuff. The nerve of these pilots trying to outmaneuver management.

Now American’s filed bankruptcy because those greedy employees went out and blew their huge bonuses again with no thought for tomorrow. Oh wait a minute … that’s right … it was just management who picked up those bonuses wasn’t it.  Oh whatever.

Obviously those stupid pilots don’t realize the corner they’ve put management in. Those poor fat cats are down to their last $4.1 B in cash too. That doesn’t leave much for anyone else for god’s sake.

C’mon you American pilots. Times really are tough. Can’t you just take one more for the team … just once more? Management’s got your back this time … really.

“Oh Paaaleazzzze!†But a common philosophy that labor and management are natural enemies is also ridiculous. That antagonism was born from too many layers of airline management losing touch with the pilots, flight attendants, mechanics and ground personnel who actually perform the work.

Read the rest of this entry »

According to the The Daily Planet, the blog of Air & Space Smithsonian, in November troops in Afghanistan will likely be resupplied by the K-Max, an automated cargo helicopter. The video is from a test earlier this year where the unmanned helo exceeded the Navy’s requirement to carry at least 6,000 pounds of cargo per day for five days. Over that period, the K-Max delivered 33,400 pounds of cargo to different locations on a single flight, and nearly 3,500 pounds on one mission.

Not the Navy’s only unmanned aircraft project, its carrier-based stealth UAV, the X-47B, made its first flight earlier this year. I think most will agree that flying a helicopter, especially in squirrely mountain winds, and carrier ops are two of aviation’s more difficult challenges.

So what future do you see for more prosaic forms of flight now that machines are taking over from humans in military operations? And before you dismiss the question, consider this headline in the November 27 Los Angeles Times: Idea of Civilians Using Drone Aircraft May Soon Fly with FAA.

A more pressing question should be, even though we can do this, should we? Have we gotten too smart for our own good? On one hand, the technology and its capabilities are really cool. But what are the consequences, and have we considered them, especially for civilian applications? If history offers us a clue, the answer is clearly a nope.

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Test pilots and flight test engineers are an amazing and interesting group of people. But they are deadly serious about their work because focus and attention to detail preserves not only their lives, but those who go aloft in the aircraft they are testing. Some aspects of certification flight tests can be eternally boring.  Tests for function and reliability and extended ops, or ETOPS, for example, can involve flights lasting 15 hours or more.

My only experience with long duration flight was the 17-hour confinement, not counting the Alaskan fuel stop,  in a stretch DC-8 with max density seating. It carried me, and the hefty Air Force and Army sergeants on my left and right, to Asia in 1975. Aside from better, more comfortable seats, I can’t imagine the willpower it takes to focus on precisely flying the data points and monitoring the data.

Then I found Randy’s Journal, that’s Randy Tinseth, VP of marketing for Boeing Commercial Airplane. How much fun would it be to use a 747-8 Freighter to scribe on a FlightAware map a “747†that covered 15 states stretching east from Washington to Wisconsin and south to California, New Mexico, and Texas? From Paine Field, the 17-hour function and reliability test flight had to go somewhere, so why not have fun with it?

Not to be outdone, the flight test crew of the 747-8 Intercontinental had an 18-hour ETOPS test flight to plan, and they figured it would be just enough time to fly over every one of the lower 48 states. This time they tracked their route on a Google Earth map. The test “helps determine how far the airplane will be able to travel from a suitable diversion airport,†Randy wrote, adding, “After the Intercontinental returned to Everett, it still had more than two and a half hours worth of fuel left.â€

And to fill the downtime on that flight, one of the flight test analysis engineers walked a half-marathon. “In 15 minute increments, she circled a 225 foot loop around the aft section of the airplane—310 times.â€Â  Oh, what I would not have given for that opportunity back in the day. –Scott Spangler

Flight accidents that are the result of negligent behavior may call for an aviation litigation expert like Kansas City Personal Injury Attorney Robb & Robb.

By Douglas Boyd Ph.D

One of every six adult Americans is afraid to fly according to the Journal of Travel Research. Frightened folks – who BTW cross all socio-economic lines – take 66% fewer commercial airline trips than those who enjoy time aloft. Interestingly, this heightened anxiety is despite an excellent airline safety record in developed countries with no fatalities on US carriers in 3 out of 4 years (2007-2010).

The impact of these anxiety-induced flyers on lost airline and charter revenue, calculated at $1.6 billion, is considerable. Perhaps, the extent of the problem is best illustrated by the 50,000 graduates of the British Airways Flying with Confidence program over its 25-year history.

I think we need to get these folks flying! Here’s how pilots can help.

Read the rest of this entry »

With her saucy style, Gail Collins is one of my favorite New York Times Op-Ed authors. This week she wrote about “The Best Perk in Politics.†Naturally, she’s talking about business jets and all the free rides Rick Perry took on them. After a fleeting aero-centric thought of how the industry would defend itself against the latest attack, I cogitated on conflict’s root causes and supporting players.

First, biz jets are a pawn in our political, social, and financial debates because they are an immediately understood symbol that separates those with the power and influence money buys from everyone else. Yes, as a member of the aviation clan I fully understand and support all the good business aviation provides, and the livelihoods it supports. But these boring realities are lost in the wordy gale of accusations and counter claims.

Collins succinctly described why biz jets are the ideal symbol in the wealth wars. “And you have to admit: private jets are the best. When you get to the airport, they’re waiting for you. You can keep your shoes on. Nobody tells you to turn off your Kindle until the plane has reached cruising altitude. It’s the one rich-person perk I truly, desperately envy.â€

She and the millions of people subjected to the TSA security show who must also endure the airlines’ crass treatment and pocket-picking fees. A spurious question: Do rich and powerful airline execs have biz jets, or do they fly coach like their paying customers?

Still, being an envied yet despised symbol is not good for aviation and the people who make their livings from it. But, realistically, biz jets will forever be a symbol, a pawn in the wealth wars. As everyone knows, aerial corporate transport is but a tool, and how it is perceived depends on how their owners use them. Until this changes, business aviation will always be a topic for op-ed authors and others. –Scott Spangler

Editor Note: At least a couple of times each week, someone sends an unsolicited story trying to convince us to publish it. More often than not, the material simply doesn’t fit. It’s either too long, too sales focused or – as happened today in fact – completely inappropriate ( they wanted us to run a story about dental hygiene).

When I first heard from today’s author – Travis Bedwell – he didn’t try to suggest I publish anything actually. He merely wanted to know how I got started as a writer. Clever guy this Travis.

My break as a writer, in fact, came from a guy many of you might never have heard of,  former Flying Magazine senior editor Gordon Baxter.

During the course of a couple of e-mails with Travis, I realized he was a passionate aviator (training for his CFI at Southern Illinois University) with some solid reasoning behind his current flying options. But I also noticed he possessed a talent for putting words together. In the end I asked him to offer Jetwhine readers a few insights into the world of learning to fly from the right seat.

Without further ado, may I present Travis Bedwell, a young man I hope we’ll hear more from over the next few years.

Rob Mark, publisher

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“Left rudder, left rudder†says my flight instructor as I manage to touch our Cutlass down on the right main wheel first (Note to self: next time touch down on both mains at the same time for a smooth landing).

It doesn’t seem that flying in the right seat should be any different than the left, despite the fact that those instruments that I’ve been staring at for my entire flying career are gone. However, acquiring the skills and traits required to be a certificated flight instructor is the greatest challenge that I have encountered in my flight training.

I chose to pursue CFI training because I want to share my love of flying with others. Some of my colleagues are bypassing the flight instructor route and obtaining more multi engine time hoping to go to a regional carrier. I love flying twins, but that time and place will come later for me. I want to instruct not only to share my passion of aviation, but to become a better pilot as well.

Like any other flight rating, I have ground and flight lessons. The majority of my ground time consists of me teaching for an hour and a half with a thirty-minute debrief; it’s a brutal 90 minutes. Trying to explain topics, such as aerodynamics and weather theory, give a new meaning to migraines. To add to the challenge, my instructor makes me explain the same topic using a variety of methods and visual aids before moving on. Although I shoot him a dirty look, I know that his reasoning is solid. Read the rest of this entry »

Now that I have your attention, the concept of fuel efficient formation flight for airliners is one of four areas covered in the United Kingdom’s Institution of Mechanical Engineers recently released report on aviation that asks an interesting question—Aero 2075: Flying Into a Bright Future?

Focusing on its aerospace industry, the report leads with a warning that applies to us as well: “Research and development investment is at an historic low, and core capabilities, key facilities, and infrastructure are slowly eroding.â€

During the next two decades, the report continues, the global airline industry is predicted to order more than 25,000 new aircraft “with a market value in excess of $3 trillion.†Who made this prediction is unknown, and orders and deliveries are two different things. Still, “with limited grown in Europe and North America predicted, it will be the rapid expansion of domestic routes in Asia and south America which will drive demand.â€

Given the state of the global economy and human nature, I’m not so sanguine. Given the colliding realities of a population passing the 7 billion mark, the ever increasing disparity between the haves and have-nots, and their rates at which they are consuming natural and manmade resources, some will certainly be living in interesting times, others will be surviving.

But that’s not the really cool part of the report. For commercial aviation to survive and prosper through 2075, “Aerospace engineers must navigate a turbulent zone where technology and economics combine to compete with physics…[and ] produce ever more ingenious ideas for aircraft design and technology.â€

In its crystal ball the institution looks at four areas: subsonic, supersonic, hypersonic, and the aforementioned formation flying.

Read the rest of this entry »

Some functions come naturally to most humans, eating, sleeping, even defending ourselves … at least most of the time. But the message the House of Representatives just sent FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt with passage of the European Emissions Trading Scheme Prohibition Act of 2011 is pretty clear. Our administrator needs to find a sparing partner and get himself in shape for the scuffles ahead with Europe.

For years, the European Union has promoted its plan to reduce aviation’s carbon footprint anywhere in the group’s 21-nation states, despite the fact that research shows this industry contributes far less to global warming than just about any other segment such as automobiles — between two and three percent by most calculations.

No matter. It’s their union and they are free to make their own choices. Problem is that this new EU plan will significantly affect our industry here in the states because the EU intends to hold every country responsible for complying with their carbon trading scheme if they fly into EU airspace.

Most other countries are having a little heartburn with the plan, as is ICAO, the United Nations body focused on aviation that believes one country or one region setting it’s own standards – higher or lower than the rest of the world – is a rally bad idea, and one that will be enormously difficult to enforce. Read the rest of this entry »