One of the biggest news stories in the Washington, DC area this week is about the news itself — the sale of the national news icon, The Washington Post. It’s generally recognized that print news media has been under intense pressure for many years, largely due to the digital revolution. The Graham family who controlled […]
The Reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration was finally completed the end of January. While much has been said about the Reauthorization, not much has been said about its adequacy. After 22 extensions and over four years of stop-gap measures, some of which didn’t work and created significant gaps and employee furloughs, the FAA can […]
As we reflect on where we are and ponder resolutions for the coming year, I think of NextGen and some of the subtle, but significant, experiences of the past year. The NextGen we need requires change. Yet, we know change does not come easily. In fact, I have seen a recurring resistance to change. In […]
For people in the US, it’s NextGen. For Europeans, it’s SESAR or Single European Sky. For the Japanese, it’s CARATS. These are the programs by which the air transportation systems of tomorrow will be developed—that is, for the US, Europe and Japan. So, what’s the rest of the world supposed to do? Recently, ICAO held […]
A little over a year after the Eyjafjallajökull eruption, we have another eruption in Iceland causing air transportation disruptions in Europe. Grímsvötn erupted on May 21, but relatively briefly. Although ash emissions slowed after a couple of days, the ash plume was propelled above FL600. The ash clouds moved predominantly to the north and northeast. […]
Ever since I can remember, when it comes to measuring the performance of the nation’s air transportation system, the aviation community has focused on safety, capacity, and delays. These have been the primary yardsticks of performance. The legislation that created the FAA cites safety and efficiency as its primary mission, but efficiency is difficult to […]
NextGen suffers from an inability to clearly and simply articulate what it will do for everyday Americans. Recent media coverage seems to focus on the price tag of NextGen and an unclear picture of its benefits. The problem of explaining what NextGen will do is exacerbated by the fact that the nation’s air transportation system […]
Coming off several months of studying volcanic disruptions to aviation, I come away with sobering observations about the way we as an aviation community go about solving real world problems, or the way we don’t solve them as the case may be.At the core, volcanic disruptions require safe and efficient rerouting of aircraft to avoid […]
The recent news about the first third party approval of a Required Navigation Performance (RNP) procedure at Bradley Field in Hartford, CT, makes it clear to me that Performance-based Navigation (PBN) is likely to take off in a big way. The huge demand for these procedures and the low rate at which the FAA had […]
I just returned from the Atlantic Conference on Eyjafjallajökull and Aviation held in Keflavik, Iceland. It was organized by the Keilir Aviation Academy with sponsorship from ICAO and IATA. As far as I can tell, it’s the first time in recent history that an interdisciplinary meeting has been held on the topic of volcanic disruptions […]
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