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FAA Funds Joint-Use Fields … As AVweb reported Monday, the FAA is faced with yet another new report projecting that demand will outgrow capacity at many of the nation’s airports. Just about every attempt to expand or build an airport runs into delays and obstacles, but one program has been working since the early 1990s […]

The confusion seems to have arisen from two separate provisions in the expected Sport Pilot rule. While only the FAA can designate a DPE, the major ultralight organizations — ASC, USUA, and EAA — may endorse applicants, and that endorsement, although it is not required, will add to the value of the application. It was […]

About 5 p.m. Tuesday, a teleconference with EAA, the ASC, the FAA, and the U.S. Ultralight Association (USUA) was held to clarify the procedure for authorized ultralight instructors to become DPEs in the proposed Sport Pilot category. “FAA emphasized that, contrary to some reports, the application process has NOT started and that no action to […]

Let the Games Begin … When the Aero Sports Connection (ASC), a membership group for sport flyers and ultralight pilots, sent out a letter last week to its registered ultralight instructors asking them if they want to become FAA Designated Pilot Examiners (DPEs) in the proposed Sport Pilot category, it opened a can of worms […]

To prevent a duplication of the Washington incident, the FAA has now banned aircraft with non-functioning transponders from the ADIZ. If the transponder goes on the fritz while in the ADIZ, the aircraft is supposed to depart via the most direct route. As AVweb has previously reported, the new rule raised the hackles of AOPA, […]

Meanwhile, Martin said the FAA plans to install a direct feed from the ATC system to the NCRCC to try and avoid this kind of confusion. He said the “raw radar” feed now received by NCRCC via the Internet isn’t able to show all the information portrayed on the core system. While that might solve […]

A moment’s inattention by a civilian contractor to the FAA was largely to blame for the false alarm that caused an evacuation of the Capitol building June 9. FAA Deputy Director of Communications Greg Martin told AVweb this week that the contractor, whose job is to act as a liaison between air traffic control and […]

But there are still those who think airports are a good thing, even if they don’t have a lot of airplanes to use them. Take, for example, the folks in Hulett, Wyo., population 427. They figured they weren’t getting their share of the more than half a million tourists heading to Devils Tower National Monument […]

Of course, airport expansion is usually a ticklish subject between airports, local governments and the neighbors. At Bob Hope Airport, in Burbank, Calif., the airport authority and the city are so tired of spending money on lawyers ($25 million in total) over expansion issues, they’ve called a truce of sorts. The airport has agreed to […]

FAA Study Says More Capacity Needed… An FAA study has confirmed what most of us had likely already guessed. We’re running out of room for airplanes and we need to build new airports as well as expand existing ones. But the FAA admits there are some areas of the country that simply won’t be able […]