briefs

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_______COLUMNS The Pilot’s Lounge #70: Do Humans Create Those Written Tests?Every pilot has taken them — and most have noticed strange or at least confusing questions on those FAA Knowledge Tests. Sometimes it seems like nobody official has even looked at those questions in decades to decide if the questions are relevant. AVweb’s Rick Durden […]

https://avweb.com/avmail/ Reader mail this week about FSS privatization, the state of GA, some potential problems with Sport Pilot and more.

In Florida, two 911 calls from the witness of a plane crash near the Venice airport somehow failed to initiate a search, and the wreck was not found by rescue/recovery crews till 19 hours later. Cindy Toepfer first called 911 immediately after the crash and “was first referred to an 800 number for the Domestic […]

Among the many tasks that GA aircraft reliably take on, one that occurs quietly behind the scenes is their work as scientific research platforms. This winter, a high-flying ER-2 aircraft, which is a civilian variant of Lockheed’s U-2, and a Cessna Citation II have been working out of Bangor, Maine, to help NASA scientists learn […]

While much of the U.S. is griping and groaning its way through a record-setting cold blustery winter, signs of spring are on the horizon. The folks at EAA say they are working away “like elves helping Santa” in anticipation of the sometime-this-year enactment of the FAA’s new Sport Pilot/Light Sport Aircraft rules. On Thursday, the […]

The light bulb only cost 77 cents, but without it, a “No Smoking, Fasten Seat Belt” sign on a Comair flight was dark, and it stayed out for four flights. What ensued, according to a report in Friday’s USA Today, was a four-year investigation, an inch-thick report, and a proposed $44,000 fine. (It’s possible the […]

The TSA may pull your certificate without reason and at a moment’s notice; it took the FAA a bit longer. According to FAA documents, Pennsylvania pilot John V. Salamone on Jan. 15 allegedly made a reckless four-hour flight in his Piper Cherokee while drunk. Last week the FAA took their own action and revoked Salamone’s […]

Pilot error caused a U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds F-16 to crash at an air show on Sept. 14 at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho, the Air Force said on Wednesday. (See below for in-cockpit video of the crash.) The pilot incorrectly climbed to 1,670 feet AGL instead of 2,500 feet before initiating the pull-down […]

An FAA team is working in the Chicago TRACON (terminal radar approach control) facility in Elgin, Ill., this week to investigate a sharp increase in errors and a record increase in delays. Twenty-four errors involving violations of minimum spacing between airplanes occurred last year at the facility, up from four errors in 2002, according to […]