Aviation Update

This will be one of an every-so-often post about aviation, which is an interest of mine and unfortunately will probably become an interest of everyone during Trump 2.0.

The FAA layoffs are still being processed by the aviation community. We know they hit government officials who manage pilot medicals, and they also hit the group that makes navigation charts used by pilots and air traffic controllers. This piece has more detail on all the layoffs.

Elon’s snout is in the trough, this time with a ridiculous accusation against Verizon that got Starlink the contract for communications for the FAA.

It’s easy to root for injuries here, but Starlink is no comparison to a robust fiber-optic connection, which is what I assume Verizon bid to supply. I have Starlink and used it for work (my subscription is inactive). It’s not a robust piece of hardware, it requires a line of sight to the satellites, so it can be disrupted by very heavy rain, snow (the dish has hardware to melt snow) and it must have a clear view of the sky. Every piece of hardware and redundancy engineering for a land-based fiber network is more resilient.

The media is on high alert for aviation incidents, and there have been a lot of them, just as there were before the media was on high alert. This runway incursion at Chicago Midway airport, where tragedy was narrowly averted by a Southwest Airlines’ crew quick go-around is the newest example. It’s pretty clear that the problem was caused by the crew of a private jet misinterpreting clear instructions to hold short of the active runway where the Southwest jet was landing.

This brings me to another general regulatory issue. After the Colgan Air crash in 2009, the FAA tightened up the regulations for commercial airline pilots. In the past, first officers could start flying after 250 hours of experience, now they need 1,500 hours. Regulations about fatigue, and a database of pilot records showing training, and training failures, were also instituted. Taken together, these changes made it harder to find qualified pilots, and wages of pilots flying for regional airlines finally rose to a what people imagine pilots make.

This means that the next tier of pilots, commercial pilots flying passengers for hire but not for an airline (like business jets) might just be not-so-great, or not as good as they used to be. This video about the near-death of Dale Earnhart Jr at the hands of a pair of pilots who did a terrible job is just one example. Another is that incursion at Midway posted above.

Then there’s General Aviation (GA), the doctor in his Beechcraft, the rich guy who likes to fly his plane but doesn’t like his recurrent training. My interest in aviation started reading Flying Magazine at the barbershop, and the Aftermath section of that magazine was, and is, full of GA pilots fucking up and killing people.

My point isn’t to slag on non-airline pilots here. Rather, we all have a huge interest in all pilots being properly certified, trained and following the rules, because they all share the same airspace. That’s part of the FAA’s job. As far as I’m concerned the FAA needs more resources to do this job, not less. Because as we’ve seen recently in DC, even highly experienced pilots flying in regulated airspace can have mid-air collisions. And the history of aviation includes GA pilots having mid-airs with commercial airplanes.