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FAA at Oshkosh talks LSA


Roger Lee

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FAA Administrator Connects with EAA Crowd

Posted by Fred George at 7/29/2010 1:43 PM CDT

 

 

 

More than 300 EAA members stuffed the "Meet the Administrator" forum at Oshkosh on Thursday, welcoming FAA administrator Randy Babbitt with unusually strong applause as he was introduced by EAA chairman Tom Poberezny. He said he's been coming to EAA Oshkosh long before he became the administrator.

 

He said he was "so impressed" with the success of Light Sport Aircraft in the aviation industry, pointing out that 8,700 new LSAs have been delivered since the ASTM validation standards went into effect in 2004. More than 3,500 pilots have earned licenses in LSAs in the past six years, according to Babbitt and their safety record is "marvelous". He said that the government / industry partnership in developing the LSA standard was a prime reason.

 

Babbitt reiterated his safety push, complimenting the general aviation community for continuing to reduce fatal accidents. But, he pointed out that night VFR disorientation, inadvertent flight into IMC and fuel exhaustion still account for a large portion of fatal accidents and that trend doesn't appear to be improving.

 

He believes that more frequent and rigorous training can help lower the accident rate, but "I can't make a rule to make people more professional". He does believe that all aviation organizations and pilots need safety management systems that identify specific hazards, implement solutions and look for feedback to determine the results.

 

Babbitt also said that FAA is committed to working with EPA and general aviation groups to find a "drop in" replacement for 100LL Avgas, one that's both technically possible and economically feasible. He assured the group that "there will not be any interruption in general aviation operations" as EPA, FAA and stakeholders work through complex issues.

 

The EAA crowd listened to Babbitt's now familiar push for FAA's Next-Gen air traffic management system, particularly when he said that ADS-B OUT avionics may not be any more expensive that a transponder in the future.

 

Responding to questions from the audience, Babbitt said that the Obama administration currently is not advocating airspace or airport user fees and that "it's not on the horizon right now."

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Roger,

 

What is ADS-B OUT and how does it relate to us?

 

'The EAA crowd listened to Babbitt's now familiar push for FAA's Next-Gen air traffic management system, particularly when he said that ADS-B OUT avionics may not be any more expensive that a transponder in the future'.

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It means that the unit in the plane will "dish out" information to the controllers on the ground but will not be able to receive any information from an interrogation. Read that as saying we won't be able to receive any traffic information, weather,

airport info, etc back from other sources. I know the alphabet associations were disappointed when this came out. I was really hoping they'd make it an in/out system. XM weather is great, but at $49.95/month, it gets expensive. The ADS-B system,

although not quite as accurate, would be able to feed information back into our plane just like the controllers read out to us now. I don't know why they've said they won't require it, but maybe it's a way to keep people talking to the controllers. Think

about it... If you had extremely accurate traffic alerts, weather, ATIS, and other things, why would you talk to controllers for flight following?

 

John

 

PS Not that I'm getting paranoid or anything! AND I'm not going to break the law, but they'll be able to watch you anytime you're in the air with tail number information and who the owner of the plane is. I can see it now, "LSA pilot is in big trouble for landing 5 minutes past official sunset with documented computer logs"

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