General Aviation

NextGen, ADS-B and General Aviation

The other day I wrote about how the JDPO is working hard to design the future of aviation, and how the NextGen is going to address the issues related to the safety, capacity and efficiency of the national airspace system while providing a flexible, expandable platform to accommodate future air traffic growth. You can read my article on NextGen Air Transportation System by clicking here.

JDPO is a group of government bodies, and the industry partners include Lockheed Martin, UPS, and a few other major aviation giants.

What I did not realize was that even General Aviation, and Flight Training institutes like the Embry Riddle (ERAU) are such an active partners in this program. As a matter of fact, after I saw this video I realized that as a matter of fact, this time around, this newer technology was handed over to the general aviation community even before the commercial airlines were able to get their hands on it.

In fiscal year 2006, the FAA approved funding for the implementation of Automatic Dependent Surveillance – Broadcast (ADS-B) at eight sites. ADS-B is surveillance, like radar, but offers more precision and additional services, such as weather and traffic information. ADS-B provides air traffic controllers and pilots with much more accurate information to help keep aircraft safely separated in the sky and on runways.

Here is a link to my previous article on ADS-B.

ADS-B Applications for Aircraft

• Enhanced Visual Acquisition: provides the flight crew with enhanced traffic situational awareness in controlled and uncontrolled airspace/airports.
• Enhanced Visual Approaches: enhances successive approaches for aircraft cleared to maintain visual separation from another aircraft on the approach.
• Final Approach and Runway Occupancy Awareness: reduces the likelihood of flight crew errors associated with runway occupancy and improves the capability of the flight crew to detect ATC errors.
• Airport Surface Situational Awareness – Conflict Detection: reduces the potential for deviations, errors, and collisions through an increase in flight crew situational awareness while operating an aircraft on the airport movement area.

Avionics Technician Careers

The more I am learning about this, the more I worry about that who is going to fix all these avionics when they break down. There is already an extreme shortage of aviation mechanics, and these guys are not even trained to repair avionics! And to be able to repair avionics, one doesn’t even have to be an aircraft or aviation mechanic.

And, from my 20 some years of aviation experience, I know that the avionics technicians are much harder to find nowadays, and they make a lot more money as well. So I started to look around to see who all offer Avionics Training, and I was surprised to find that there are quite a few options out there.

One excellent option is Redstone College in the Denver area. Redstone and Lockheed Martin even have a joint scholarship program for Avionics Training. If I had the choice to go back in time, I know what I would do.

Aviation has completed over a century of dynamic growth and advancement, resulting in the present air transportation system dominated by the commercial airline industry’s hub and spoke system. The initial 50 years of aviation were a chaotic, rapid evolutionary process involving disruptive technologies that required frequent modifications. The second half century produced a stable evolutionary optimization of services based on achieving an objective function  of economical operations. In the ongoing 50 years of what I call Aviation 3.0, there is a potential for aviation to transform itself into a more robust, scalable, adaptive, secure, safe, affordable, convenient, efficient, and environment friendly system. Read more about environment friendly aviation initiative in my “Green is the future of Aviation as Well” article.

However, such a global optimization requires not only the ability to perform analysis of larger system of system impacts, but also the ability to consider new value propositions that involve different infrastructures and business models that those which are currently the norm of the present aviation industry. While many obstacles exist, including technology, regulations, and perception; the Aviation 3.0 has the potential to mirror other on-demand market revolutions that have taken place over the past half century.

Highly successful innovators like Henry Ford and even Wright brothers believed that aviation would one day be capable of reaching an everyday impact in our daily lives. Yet after many years of rather empty promises, ranging from road-able aircraft to a a helicopter in every garage, the aviation community remains transfixed in a highly centralized world of very expensive, and not cost efficient aircraft.

Pessimists of the personal aircraft vision say that the aviation market evolution has brought us to the logical solution. Optimists of the vision respond that government regulations and the conservatism of the aerospace community have inhibited the industry. Both are correct, and as is typically the case, the answer lies somewhere in the middle. However, with a long-term viewpoint of demand and utility, it seems inevitable that in the very near future small aircraft will have a far more significant daily impact in many of our daily activities.

Sport pilot regulations, training and certification of the pilots, and the sport aircraft are a result of such an initiative from the government and the industry. If you desire to experience the spirit of what I am trying to express here in this article, find some time during your busy lives, visit your local GA airport, and ask someone in one of those FBOs to arrange for a demo flight for you in one of their Sport Aircraft. And then come back here and give this article and second read. And leave me a comment here underneath.

Breaking News:

We just found out that there is a new blogging platform or service being commissioned shortly – Pilotology.com.

The company will provide free blog space to anyone who is interested in having a blog with various aviation themes, aviation plugins, aviation widgets, etc. Currently, the front end, or the landing page of Pilotology.com is under construction. But, the backend is already fully functional.

So, I went ahead and visited the site www.pilotology.com and signed up for an account. The base platform is WordPress MU 2.8.x, and there are no aviation specific themes, widgets, or plugins enabled for the standard users. But, I had the opportunity to look at some of the future add-ons, and I was pleasantly surprised. I think this is going to be a big one for the aviation community.

The site administrators have opened up the registrations for the beta phase. If anyone is looking to have a aviation specific WordPress blogging service, and that too for FREE, I suggest go there, and sign up for the account.

The early bird incentive is: get the premium blog names!! They are all available at this time. For example, if you are a pilot, and want to have pilotjohn as your blog name, you can have it (I hope it is still available). WordPress, BlogSpot, LiveJournal, etc. are all overbooked and it is very hard to find a blog name that I want. So, don’t settle for just any blog name, go there, and get the blog name of your choice while it is still available.

Oh, BTW, don’t just get the blog account, but start using it too. I am sure that in 2-3 months this Pilotology.com domain name will be a great place to be at.

If you spend long enough time in general aviation, especially in teaching environment, you are definitely going to hear these two terms above. And if you are thinking about learning how to fly, then you are probably wondering what is the diference between a flying club and a flight school anyways. Well, we will nail this issue here in this post once and for all!

Flying Club: A flying club, just like the name itself, is in fact a club. A flying club could be a private non-profit organization, a for-profit organization, a government or semi-government run organization, or many other unique setups. Typically, a flying club will have members consisting of the following:

• Aircraft owners
• Aircaft users/renters
• Pilots – student pilots, private pilots, commercial pilots, and above
• Flight Instructors

A flying club also has it’s management, i.e. general manager, president, mechanics, accounting people etc. The basics of a flying club setup is that aircraft owners lease their aircraft to the club, and then rent from the club itself whenever they need to use the aircraft. They can not only rent their own aircraft, but any other aircraft that is available to the members of the club. This increases their selection of the aircraft available to them. The cost of aircraft ownership/operation is subsidized by letting other nn-owner member pilots to rent and fly the club aircraft. The non-owner members pay for the aircraft rental, and most of the times, some sort of membership fee as well. The club aircraft get better rates for insurance, fuel etc as now they are a bulk customer and not individual aircraft. I hope you get the idea of this cost savings, not only for the aircraft owners but also for other renters as well.

Now, there are flight instructor members as well in the club. They make their services available to club members, of course for a fee. If a new member wants to join the club, he or she will definitely need some training. Whether it is training to get a pilot certificate, or just an insurance checkout, the flight instructors (CFI) do the job. And this is how they mak their living, or in most cases, get paid to enjoy and share the love of aviation.

Flight School: A flight school is a business involved in training people how to fly. This is what they do, and this is their expertise. They are usually owned by someone, has a chief flight instructor, and employed flight instructors and other professionals. The flight schools also rent aircraft (in most cases) to renters. Flight schools are usually designed and operated as any other school – i.e. imagine your high school. From the school principal all the way down to the housekeeping staff.

Did you know that you can track just about any flight online from your computer? Live? Whether it is a commercial airline flight, or a private training flight, or a buddy flying a flight school or a flying club rental aircraft? And it is FREE!

FlightAware

Did you know that you could track live just about any flight, private or commercial, from your own home computer? Well, FlightAware lets you do just that. And that too for free. You can now use FlightAware to quickly and easily plan & file IFR flight for turbine and piston aircraft.

You do not need to know about probable DPs, STARs, transitions, available routings, or winds aloft. Simply type in the basics of your trip (ident / origin / destination / departure time / number on board) and FlightAware.com will present a list of optimized routings, altitudes, predicted fuel burns, and operational options. Select what suits your mission and click to file.

Background

Founded in March of 2005, FlightAware was the first company to offer free flight tracking services for both private and commercial air traffic in the United States. FlightAware launched public operations in late 2005 and quickly became the most popular flight tracking service in the world. FlightAware’s proprietary flight arrival time algorithms combined with FlightAware’s powerful, intuitive, responsive, and reliable web-based interface yield the most capable and useful flight tracking application and service. FlightAware has offices in Houston and New York.

Always Aware

FlightAware offers live flight data, airport information, weather maps and charts, as well as aviation news to nearly two million users a month. FlightAware also powers operational management and dispatch software, airport FIDS (flight information displays), and provides reporting data to aircraft and airport operators.

Enterprise Commercial Services

Aviation businesses (aircraft and engine manufacturers, charters operators, airlines, airport operators, government) rely on FlightAware’s commercial services division for data analysis, trending, outsourcing of data processing, and finding the answer to tomorrow’s aviation optimization and reliability problems.

FlightAware joins Twitter and Facebook. Also, they have one of the best collection of aircraft photos . I always knew about the Live Flight Tracking service, but just came across this photo collection today. It is totally worth going and checking the album out as well.

FlightAware Squawk

is for sharing aviation news, stories, pictures, and videos. FlightAware members submit the links and then vote to decide which stories are important, interesting, or amusing. The list of popular squawks changes constantly. You can also include a squawk box on your blog or any web page.

Merchandise

FlightAware merchandise is a cool accessory for any FlightAware enthusiast, so feel free buy something if you’re interested although FlightAware isn’t profiting off any of these products, so please do not feel obligated to buy anything simply to support the most popular flight tracking service on the internet.

All merchandise and sales are handled by Spreadshirt, an independent merchant.

Discussion Forum

FlightAware discussion forum is available as well. Lots of good to know information and learn new things.