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United States Pilots Association |
Apparently Marion Blakey has finally decided to do the right thing. Her last act as administrator of the FAA was to publicly castigate the airlines for causing their own problems by scheduling too many flights at the same time, to and from hub airports. I suspect she was only singing the administration's line while employed as administrator. Once free of Presidential influence she told it like it is.
I believe her final gasp influenced the House Ways and Means committee to unanimously vote against user fees in any form. This puts the lower house squarely at odds with the Senate over this issue. Once again I predict this obnoxious legislation, giving the airlines a huge bonus in the form of fuel tax elimination, will not pass the combined Congress.
Two new issues have come to light, emanating from the FAA. First is the notice that the 121.5 frequency ELTs are to be phased out by 2009 and replaced by a 400 plus MHZ unit which supposedly claims better accuracy and can be traced to the specific airplane by encoding its signal. Currently starting price on these units runs up from $800 into the multiple thousands. Supposedly, this will somehow eliminate the numerous false alarms attributable to the older units.
Then we have the FAA, staunch defender of General Aviation, embarking on a campaign to eliminate instrument approaches all over the country. One airport in particular, M. Graham Clark-Taney County (KPLK) serves Branson, Missouri. You only have to fly in there once to understand the necessity of the two approaches the geniuses at the FAA are trying to remove. Landing from the west you fly over an embankment alongside the lake that is considerably higher than the runway elevation. Landing from the east puts you onto an elevated threshold with a substantial drop to the highway below. I would bet that no one from the FAA involved in the elimination of these approaches has ever flown into this airport. There have been two fatal crashes at KPLK--one involving a Cessna Citation on an IFR approach in instrument conditions. There is no room for error going in to this airport. Removal of these approaches will ultimately require IFR traffic to divert to Springfield, MO, a fair distance away.
The airport manager at KPLK has requested our assistance in writing to the FAA to reverse this proposal. Please read Jan's news release or go to the USPA website where it will appear. Contact information will be shown.
This campaign is nothing more than a resumption of one that was defeated five years ago when approaches were pulled at West Houston Airport. Here again the feds involved never came to IWS to determine if there was a problem. It begs the question: What will the FAA do after they eliminate approaches, outsource the flight service stations and the air traffic control system? Gee, all that staff to perform ramp checks to make sure your medical is up to date.
Finally, for those of us who fly into Canada, Mexico, or the Bahamas, Homeland Security has a new proposed rule about to be foisted upon us. We must notify HS one hour before crossing the border BY COMPUTER, prior to entering U.S. airspace. I sure hope they can tell me where in Mexico there are computer terminals that can communicate with HS, or do we all have to buy Blackberrys? This smells to me to be a plan to protect the airlines from losing their vacationing passengers by forcing GA aircraft to comply with yet another ridiculous requirement. We are not the problem!
Steve Uslan, President
United States Pilots Association