FAA and Regs

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 […]

There are three ways to arrive at an airport when operating under IFR: a standard instrument approach procedure (IAP), a visual approach and a contact approach. A great way to bring hangar flying to a screeching halt is to ask about a contact approach. A lot of IFR pilots know that it is some sort […]

As sure as winter turns to spring, the ATC privatization idea has resurfaced and just as surely as summer is coming, so too are the alphabets protesting it. We’ve already hashed out ad nauseam why turning over air traffic to a private entity is a bad idea, but this season’s regurgitation has a new twist: […]

A recent federal court decision (PDF) that the FAA has no authority to require drone users to register is not sitting well with many aviators. Helicopter Association International issued a statement (PDF) this week saying it “strongly disagrees” with the ruling, adding that helicopter pilots “are deeply concerned about our ability to fly safely in […]

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 Bahamas is the first neighboring country to the U.S. to accept BasicMed as a medical qualification for U.S. pilots flying in its airspace. BasicMed went into effect on May 1 and allows pilots to fly up to five passengers on day or night VFR or IFR pleasure flights (not for compensation or hire) in […]

A Washington court has quashed the FAA’s drone registration program. The court ruled Friday that the registration rule violates the FAA Modernization and Reform Act, passed by Congress in 2012, that specifically bars the FAA from creating “any rule or regulation regarding a model aircraft.” Since December of 2015, the FAA has required drone owners […]

A temporary mobile air traffic control tower will be operating this summer at Leesburg Executive Airport, in Virginia, requiring special procedures from pilots. Pilots flying both VFR and IFR will need to contact the tower, NBAA said this week. The tests, which are part of the airport’s Remote Control Tower experiment, will run June 5 […]

The U.S. plan to ban laptops from airliner cabins on flights originating in Europe is drawing increasing resistance from the European Union, a UK pilot union and business travelers. EU aviation authorities will meet this week to consider the proposed laptop ban. The issue became the center of a Washington political firestorm this week on […]