Don Brown from Get the Flick has an interesting commentary on an Associated Press article published today. That article claims that airlines could be saving billions if NextGen were implemented now. They back up these assertions with their own "analysis of federal and industry data." The sweeping statements made by the AP are frustrating at best, and Don does a good job of picking them apart.

And fired as it turns out... Captain Scott Oltman and FO Dillon Shepley recieved 60 and 45 day suspensions, respectively, from the FAA for their part in the February overflight of the Hawaiian island of Hilo. Controllers were unable to raise the aircraft for about 20 minutes, and it was later discovered that both the Captain and the FO were asleep. Go! airlines fired both pilots in April...

If you rode the airlines this week, then you might have been affected by flight delays resulting from a software glitch in the FAA's flight plan system on Tuesday. The glitch was fixed late that night and was a pretty unpredictable and random incident. All the same, it's another straw on the back of the camel for the FAA. Along with unhappy air traffic controllers, improper relationships with airlines and the user fees debate there seem to be a lot of complaints stacking up. My question (before anyone without any aviation knowledge tries to draw conclusions and make policy) is: does this latest incident serve as justification for the NextGen air traffic control system that the FAA wants GA pilots to fund, but not use. Let's take a look at it:

Cessna has produced a video that looks to be a shot across the bow of the airline industry. They're taking aim at the Airline Transport Association (ATA) and their new spokeswoman Edna. The ATA has been defending their stance against corporate aviation with the finger wagging and bee hive wearing Edna. She claims that corporate aviation isn't paying a their fair share for the air traffic system, however, she fails to mention that the hub and spoke system is broken... but we didn't expect them to admit that now did we.

The 2007 Collier Trophy, awarded by the National Aeronautics Association (NAA) for "the greatest achievement in aeronautics or astronautics in America, with respect to improving the performance, efficiency, and safety of air or space vehicles, the value of which has been thoroughly demonstrated by actual use during the preceding year (Wikipedia)," has been awarded to the ADS-B technology that is scheduled to revolutionize air traffic control in the United States. (see our May 22nd article here for more information on ADS-B)

I recently wrote about a couple of incidents where civilian aviators decided to fly unannounced through military airspace and were somehow surprised when the ended up in close proximity to military aircraft.

There are websites that try to show when MOAs are active, but they can change with only a couple hours' notice. If a pilot asks his or her enroute controller, they can usually find out if the airspace is active. However, It's not an ideal system and a lot of the time the military aircraft aren't using an entire MOA.

Thankfully, as reported by the AOPA, the USAF is working with the FAA fix the problem.

There has been some talk recently about the new Automatic Dependant Surveillance- Broadcast (ADS-B) program which is the major technology behind the FAA’s Next Generation air traffic control system and is slated to replace/ revolutionize air traffic control equipment in the next 10 to 15 years. I wanted to put out the information I’ve dug up so far and see what opinion our readers have for the new system

Recently, pilots in a PC-12 and then a Beech Premier jet were somehow surprised to get TCAS alerts and then find themselves in close proximity to F-16's while flying through some of the MOAs around Luke AFB (the USAF's F-16 training base.) One of these pilots, Patrick McCall, has been raising quite a fuss about the incident. Until now, I have refused to post anything about the story on this site because I figured it would be obvious to most pilots that McCall and the Premier pilot (Scott Laromee) made bad decisions by flying through an active MOA without sufficient coordination.

However, AvWeb has continued to follow this story, and the tone of their article seems to share some of the confusion from which McCall and Laromee are apparently suffering. I hope I can help clarify the situation somewhat.