FAA and Regs

Last week, the FAA issued Change 6 to the Compliance and Enforcement Handbook for its inspectors, providing enforcement guidelines for violation of the FARs by drone operators. Among its provisions, it establishes a basis for holding certificated aircraft pilots to a higher standard than other drone operators, potentially leading to harsher punishments for certificated pilots […]

It’s not enough that the airlines want to reduce the distance between seats to the width of a human hair, now the flight attendants want to take away our phones again. It’s been barely a year since the airlines and the FAA relented, tossing the downtrodden traveling masses the leanest bone of being able to […]

For those who thought Amazon.com was not serious about its plans to deliver packages with Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), its petition to the FAA for an exemption to test them outdoors near Seattle, Washington, has been pending since July 9. With the FAA’s recent approval of some petitions for exemption for UAS in the movie […]

Flying IFR under Part 91 gives us pilots an incredible amount of freedom. Yet, it is this relative freedom from heavy regulation which is largely responsible for general aviation’s safety record, and it, frankly, is not all that great. No, flying little airplanes is not as safe as flying the airlines. Nor is it as […]

The FAA issued a statement Wednesday regarding the status of operations in the Chicago area-and noted that O’Hare operations were the most numerous in the country Tuesday, even as it is working to get Chicago Center fully operational. The full text of the statement follows: “FAA air traffic controllers managed more operations at Chicago O’Hare […]

After watching FAA administrator Michael Huerta interviewed on network news last night, I felt so much better. For all the administrators I’ve covered in some way, and that’s about nine, he is absolutely the most skilled at giving polished, content-free answers and he doles these out not just to us ink-stained wretches in the GA […]

As we reported Tuesday, the FAA has taken the first steps to allow commercial use of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) in what it referred to as the National Airspace System by granting limited exemptions from the Federal Aviation Regulations to six aerial photo and video production companies to use UAS below 400 feet AGL on […]

Last July, the FAA told a Congressional committee that it would not meet the December 31, 2015 deadline mandated by federal law to simplify and streamline aircraft certification regulations-FAR Part 23. The announcement, causing some members of the committee to unload on the unfortunate FAA messenger, had deeper import than just another report that the […]

Tuesday, the NTSB released a report on pilot drug use that, based on post-crash toxicology tests on pilots killed in aircraft accidents from 1990 through 2012, concluded drug use of all types, particularly over-the-counter (OTC) drugs, is up among pilots and that the risk of pilot impairment is on the rise. However, the study did […]

Last July, an FAA spokesperson gave stunning testimony before Congress-she said that the FAA was going to miss its December 2015 deadline for the rewrite of FAR Part 23 to simplify small aircraft certification by at least two years. As would be expected, the aviation community expressed its fury. Members of Congress sent letters to […]