Aviation Interest

It appears the FAA is backtracking on an earlier directive that forbade at least some of its FAA Safety Team (FAAST) representatives from talking about pending tower closures. On Wednesday the FAAST Safety Team issued a general note of advice about operating at non-towered airports (the FAAST Team doesn’t like the term “uncontrolled”) and touched on all the points covered by myriad other sources on the topic since the closures became a real possibility. (Click here for a PDF of the e-mail.) Closures of 149 towers were supposed to start April 7 but on April 5 the FAA delayed that until at least June 15 citing the spate of legal challenges to the closures. Also on April 5, a regional FAAST assistant manager on the East Coast told his safety team that any discussion of tower closures was off limits. (Click here for the PDF.)

FAA’s 149 airport-tower closures cleared for takeoff – WASHINGTON – The Federal Aviation Administration is moving ahead with plans to close 149 small air-traffic-control towers across the nation as part of mandated spending cuts.

“We don’t have the money to keep them open,” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told the House Appropriations subcommittee on transportation Tuesday.”It’s a big headache for us.”

The FAA on April 5 postponed the closures until June 15. LaHood said was mostly so lawyers could review the decisions and give local governments a chance to find the money to keep them open.

A section of President Obama’s proposed 2014 budget aims to “reduce the deficit and more equitably share the cost of air traffic services” through a “$100 per flight fee” payable to the FAA, with exceptions. The fee would not apply to piston, military, public, or air ambulance aircraft as detailed on page 43 of the budget. It would also exempt Canada-to-Canada flights and those operating outside of controlled airspace. The user fee is one of two proposed measures that would directly affect general aviation. Aviation interest groups, from AOPA to GAMA to NATA, responded quickly, and negatively, to both proposals.

As SUN ‘n FUN celebrates the 70th anniversary of the creation of Women Airforce Service Pilots Thursday, efforts are underway to raise enough money to have a WASP float in the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade.

“The theme of this year’s parade is ‘making dreams come true,'” noted Kate Landdeck, WASP historian and coordinator for the WASP Float project. “The WASP worked so hard to make dreams of flying for their nation come true, and it’s important to honor and recognize their legacy and what they did for all the women who came after them.”

(CalPilots Editor’s Note: Here’s an interesting idea to get you out flying more)… SocialFlight, a free mobile app that aims to bring pilots together by providing an easy source of information about aviation events, has grown to 15,000 users since its launch just nine months ago, founder Jeff Simon said at Sun ‘n Fun on Tuesday. The app has also evolved to version 3.0. “We’re adding 1,000 users a month,” Simon said, “and the database users are adding 10 to 15 events a day. What we hear from users is, ‘I’m flying more.'” Simon said he hopes the app will help the pilot community to grow and encourage pilots to fly more often, by making it easy to find a nearby event to fly to. Simon also announced that AVweb, Kitplanes, and General Aviation News have signed on as partners to bring SocialFlight’s utility to their readership, both in print and online.

For the third year, the Lightspeed Aviation Foundation has presented $50,000 in grants to five aviation charities as chosen through online voting by the aviation community.

As we approach the April 7th “non-essential” airport tower closures the FAA has published a review on how to operate at non-tower airports. If you haven’t been operating at non-tower airports, it might be a good time to review procedures and pointers. To review the FAA’s document go here.  http://www.faa.gov/news/media/Contract_Tower_Closure_Guidance.pdf

LEESBURG, Va. – The Federal Aviation Administration said Friday that it would delay closing control towers at 149 airports until June to allow forsafety analyses and “to attempt to resolve multiple legal challenges.”

The closings had been planned as part of a $637 million spending reductionat the agency required under the across-the-board budget cuts known as thesequester.

Starting April 7, the FAA will close 149 contract air traffic control towers to help reduce expenditures as required by sequestration. General aviation uses thousands of airports that do not have towers, so why are GA advocates getting upset over the closing of these towers? That’s a question many pilots are asking. Answer: The closings…

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Sequestration hasn’t caused the sky to fall in Washington, but there are indications some efforts are being made to pull it down to meet the dire threats of disasters that have been put forth. The FAA notified employees of intended furloughs of up to 11 work days beginning about April 7. Read…