FAA and Regs

Republican Senator Jim Inhofe, of Oklahoma, and Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois, have introduced a bill they say will streamline funding for general aviation airports. It would also formally enshrine in legislation the building of homebuilt aircraft as an “aeronautical activity” to eliminate any bureaucratic interpretation on doing that work at an airport. The […]

AVweb’s General Aviation Accident Bulletin is taken from the pages of our sister publication, Aviation Safety magazine and is published twice a month. All the reports listed here are preliminary and include only initial factual findings about crashes. You can learn more about the final probable cause in the NTSB’s web site at www.ntsb.gov. Final […]

The Aviation Funding Stability Act (AFSA), introduced by Reps. Peter DeFazio and Rick Larsen, Democrats on the House Aviation Subcommittee, would require Airport and Airway Trust Fund income to be paid over to the FAA, providing the air traffic agency with more direct access to revenue collected from ticket taxes. A key argument in favor […]

The task definition for slow flight in the Airmen Certification Standards (ACS) is changing, again. When the private pilot ACS were finalized in June 2016, the FAA changed the definition of slow flight to maintenance of “an airspeed, approximately 5-10 knots above the 1G stall speed, at which the airplane is capable of maintaining controlled […]

The aviation community is continuing to respond to the Trump administration’s proposal on Monday to privatize the air traffic control system. FAA Administrator Michael P. Huerta released a brief statement, saying he supports “looking at new ways to help us provide stable and sufficient funding to more rapidly modernize our system, while maintaining the highest […]

Sixteen general aviation advocacy groups signed on to a letter on Monday (PDF) opposing President Trump’s plan to turn the FAA into a private nonprofit corporation. “Dismantling the current system will devastate GA, while not accomplishing the desired goals of efficiency and technological improvements,” the letter says. “Today, the U.S. air traffic control system is […]

As expected, President Donald Trump announced on Monday that air traffic control will no longer be a government function but instead will become a “self-financing nonprofit.” Calling the change “a great new era in American aviation,” he said it will replace “an antiquated horrible system that doesn’t work.” Trump also called the current system “ancient” […]

President Donald Trump will use a proposal to privatize air traffic control in the U.S. to kick off a weeklong blitz of announcements to push his infrastructure revitalization plan. At an announcement that includes an Oval Office ceremony and White House Rose Garden event on Monday morning, White House officials have confirmed Trump will affirm […]

The FAA and Department of Transportation released the list of airport improvement programs (AIP) that they will fund out of the discretionary portion of the AIP budget for the 2017 fiscal year earlier this week. For small airports, AIP grants can cover 90-95% of the cost of airport improvements such as runway or taxiway construction, […]

Regional airlines say the FAA is vastly understating the cost of a proposed AD that will require them to replace 10,482 passenger seats in various small airliners. The FAA said the AD will only cost the airlines a total of $900,000 because it is only tallying the labor cost of removing the Slim and Slimplus […]