Here's the motley crew from yesterday's really fun UCAP event at Barnes Westfield Airport (BAF).




l to r: Mike Wise, "Maxflight" & Lisa, Jeff O'Halloran(kneeling), Rick Felty, Jeff Ward (peering over from the back), John Wellington, Jack Hodgson, Doug Fortnam, Kim & "Turbo" Ed, & Mike Smith. All standing in front of Mike Wise's Sting S3 LSA.

If you haven't aready heard, let me pass on an interesting piece of good news for general aviation: Richard L. Skinner, Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security, released a report on general aviation, TSA's role and the overall security picture...and he said:

"We determined that the general aviation presents only limited and mostly hypothetical threats to security."

In other words, as a security threat general aviation poses little -- and what the threats the TSA wants to clamp down on are "mostly hypothetical" and the aircraft in general are too light and of highly limited capacity to do damage.

Isn't that what we've been saying for several years?

Mr. Skinner's report notes that reports if suspicious activities to the AOPA Airport Watch Hotline have resulted in only rare instances of cases that might pose a real security threat. And the department's own Office of Intelligence has concluded that there are no credible threats of crop dusters being used to mount a chemical or biological attack.

OK. The verdict is in. Time for the TSA to withdraw the Large Aircraft Security Program proposal totally and turn its resources to watching for real threats. And time for the TSA to simply kill off the recently inacted insanity requiring background checks, fingerprinting and airport-specific badges for GA tenants at air-carrier airports with physical separation between the two operations.

We do not need these skeenkin' badges.

Of course, we pretty much all recognize that this could change; but between the AOPA Airport Watch Program and its activities, hotline and how-to pamphlet, we're all sensitive to the appearance of suspicious activities -- and those reports to the hotline have proved this system works.

So TSA -- do the right thing.

And finally, to Prof. Lawrence M. Wein, the professor of management science at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, maybe you should manage to read Mr. Skinner's report.

After your little OpEd in The New York Times this week, you may want to update your MBA approach to general aviation security because it's wholly lacking in logic, devoid of effectiveness and even more impractical than anything the TSA has come up with -- at least, anything that's made it to the light of day.

The good professor was discussing the lack of an "overarching strategic plan" at DHS, observing all the ways terrorists might sneak a fissile weapon into the U.S. -- across borders, via boats, and, of course, airplanes. He identified four modes with no less than 132 different paths possible.
Here's what he said about general aviation:

"What about attack by a small plane? Given the impracticality of shooting down a tiny aircraft before it could detonate a bomb from the air, the best approach is to begin screening all domestic departures of small airplanes. This effort should be folded into the Securing the Cities Initiative."


Guess for someone sitting in a bastion of theoretical management practices where process is king, the good professor might have his supporters.

But his approach -- even absent the report from the DHS IG -- was lacking wholly in practical aspects and logistical basis. Every flight? Really?

How? With what army? Oh, yeah...let's not forget, the terrorists will just naturally stick with using an established airport with establishment security screening becuase we know how important it is for terrorists to obey the laws of the nation they want to attack.

Please. Every flight screened? Really?

REALLY!?!?

Get a grip, Professor. And come back when you've come up with a recommendation that we also start screening every trip by a pick-up, minivan or SUV.

Really. And read Mr. Skinner.

He seems to be the half of this week's DHS news that has a grip on reality -- let alone practicality.

-- Dave

The headline from today's AOPA Aviation eBrief says this: "General aviation applauds changes to TSA Security Directive." The AeB references a story by an old friend in aviation journalism, Benet Wilson, as sound, sturdy and sober a realist as you're apt to find in the business -- particularly that part of the aviation journalism community anchored inside The Beltway.

So the gist of the story never felt questionable or in-doubt to me.

No, what made me stop and cogitate was the concept represented by the headline and the underlying story. Aviation group leaders in essence applauded an uncommon application of common sense by the uncommonly obtuse at the TSA.

Seriously. Think about this for a brief moment.

Back last year here came the TSA with another cockamamie regulation issued not as a proposed rule but as a fete de compli -- a done deal as Security Directive SD 1542-04-08F. It came out of the blue aimed at all tenants of airports with any level of commercial serviced.

The requirement: each airport impacted must write and get approved a new security program for creating and issuing steenkin' badges to all tenants and those who want to move around the movement areas. Oh, yeah, the program has to show how the airport's program will assure fingerprinting, criminal background checks and the issuance of new badges specific to this program.

The rules require each airport to come up with its own steenkin' badge -- steenkin' badges only legal at the airport of issuance. Without a steenkin' badge, everybody using the movement area of such airports must be escorted by someone with a steenkin' badge -- or else that person and the airport could be in deep skeenk.

Brilliant.

Now prior to this new steenkin' SD, airports at which GA and Common Carriage Carriers shared access to ramps and hangar areas already lived with such steekin' badges requirements; no real incidents are cited or known about other airports at which GA and Common Carraige Carriers have their own, separate and distinct, operating areas, while sharing a runway.

So no idea what problem this steenkin badge idea deems to solve. They won't say -- at least, beyond the boilerplate "to enhance the security of"...like the Cheetos tiger intones, "Blah, blah, blah."

And it gets better, of course. The TSA also never made available a full list of affected airports -- nor did it publicly reveal the full details of the program. You know, the Catch 22 of the War on Terror: You must follow rules, but you can' t know what they all are because you might use them! Maybe to comply!!

Yeah, right...can't have people actually knowing enough to comply, now, can we? The might help the terrorists, you know.

So the applause seems a little bit like applauding your boxing opponent because he stopped hitting you after knocking you down.

It makes little sense from my seat. Applauding a reduction in ridiculousness should actually involve reminding the TSA of the steenkin' badges aspects of this whole mess: use of directives to avoid actual user-involved rulemaking; no use of common sense in the structuring of the program or the rules underpinning it. No complete info available to the public.

So letting transient pilots hit the head or go to the phone to call for service is some small progress, a tiny victory over the total "Duh?!?" of the original document. And accepting an ill-advised rule enacted by a dubious process for a doubtful purpose warrants no applause from my seat.

We can't keep accepting little losses from this agency in hopes it will wise up later; we keep up the pace of lost access and flexiblity liked that proposed in the Large Aircraft Security
Program proposal, adding further government control access and flexiblity, and we'll be on our way to extinction as a mode of personal and small-business travel.

Instead of applauding the TSA showing a tiny bit of common sense, we should be showing uncommon unity and calling for the agency's sunset.

Maybe then we as a community can create an agency capable of meeting both sides of its mission: enacting sensible protections without nonsensically stifling private aviation and commercial -- something, somehow, the TSA has managed not to visit or otherwise eviscerate rail and bus, truck and car rentals, or private maritime travel.

It's time aviation got as much consideration. In the meantime, no applause from this cockpit.

-- Dave

This weekend we pause from our usual lives' rhythms to remember those who've fallen in defense of our ideals, our Constitution and the freedoms it guarantees. For the defense and protection of those beliefs, millions have served, millions have fallen.

They fell not for the flag but for the ideals it represents.

They sacrificed not for the President but to preserve and protect the Constitution that created the office.

They died not for themselves but for their fellow Americans.

They lived, as well, and not always with ease or expectation of reward. So we also honor those who've served and returned, those still serving -- and the idealism and courage of those who will.

Please keep in your thoughts those friends, neighbors, relatives, and those we don't know.

Without the bravery of those willing to support our ideals, our freedoms would not exist -- and without those ideals, no amount of bravery or military might could ever grant us that which exists in nature.

They are our fathers, uncles, brothers and sons, mothers, sisters, aunts, and daughter, prom dates and classmates, coworkers and competitors, homeless on the streets and residents of our homes for those no longer able to care for themselves.

They are our fellow Americans. They are our fellow citizens. They are us.

In your honor, in our honor, we pause to reflect, to remember -- and to salute with the simplest form of recognition we have: our "Thank you."

-- Dave

...because signs of misinformation -- OK, make that outright errors -- appear all over the FAA budget proposal your Administration released May 12. It makes a body wonder whether a truly bright, facts-based judgment is lacking because of bad advice from folks at The Office of Management & Budget, DoT...somewhere.

Those signs appear in some goals the FAA budget proposal cites.

First off, in the past two months your Administration twice published FAA budget blueprints outlining a move to funding the agency from direct user fees...your May 12 blueprint, at $9.6 billion annually in fees starting in 2011 came in almost $2 billion higher than the first one; OK, funding the FAA at a higher level to meet ambitious goals for NextGen and ADS-B is fine by most of us -- long as the FAA actually makes a buck's worth of progress for every buck spent...heck, we'd probably be singing praises at $0.80 worth per buck...but I digress.

Second, along the way the blueprint calls for reducing the public coffers of the General Fund to about 10 percent...

So we go along flying, happy and serving the country's 4,500 or so non-airline airports through 2010, paying our way with excise taxes and General Fund contributions -- and suddenly we cut the public share and shift to $9.6 million in Direct User Fees? Uh, how much of that $9.6 million does the OMB feel will be left to actually use for FAA needs? $9 billion? $8.75 billion? $9.25 billion?

We respectfully ask this question 'cause for every buck collected in aviation excise taxes it costs our good Federal Government fractions of a penny to administer and account for...by the most-conservative estimates, the costs of creating a system to Track Use/Users, Bill For, Collect, Account and Handle that $9.6 billion in Direct User Fees is gonna cost us about 1000 percent more -- a not-insubstantial 3 percent...or more; as noted, the estimates tend to play down the costs so they're conservative.

Now by my math, 3 percent of $9.6 billion comes to about $288 billion! Now if that's low by even the tiniest bit, we're looking at $300 million; compared to the three hundredths of a percent the excise taxes cost -- about $3 million -- to handle the current Excise Taxes levied, this is categorically not a smart-government example. It's not even a good business model.

And, on top of reducing the funds available to the FAA through the genius of Direct User Fees your people propose reducing the General Fund contribution -- while they also propose raising public funding for roads and rails and rivers.

What did General Aviation ever do to America to deserve the treatment of a shunned relative?

It's as if suddenly General Aviation was an enemy of the people -- in the irony-tinged way of an Ibsen title -- when every unbiased survey and study demonstrates that private aviation contributes mightily to the nation's well being, from economic to industrial to philanthropic.

Like the guy Bill at breakfast this morning. He recently rented a private aircraft, paid his own money, to fly a medical patient four hours home from treatment in a local hospital. Now recognizing that somewhere some airline executive gnashes teeth at the thought of some kind soul depriving his company of a paying passenger out some feel-good motivation, this pilot Bill also paid to use the Air Traffic System by paying excise taxes on the 150 gallons or so of avgas the plane used...and he didn't even use the system. Didn't need to.

But he gets no dispensation from the Excise Taxes and felt no real pain paying those Excise Taxes -- contained, as they were, in the cost of the fual...oh, yeah -- the Excise Taxes were proportional to his time in the sky, since that Excise Tax payment was keyed to the fuel purchased, which was in direct relationship to the time the engine ran...

Simple, eh? So simple even Congressmen, Congresswomen and Senators figured this out a half-dozen White House occupants back...

And about this reduction in the General Fund contribution: somewhere some errant soul is likely to resurrect or otherwise cite a study undertaken by the Reagan Administration that "concluded" that there is no "public benefit" from aviation...hence, no real justification for any General Fund contribution.

These guys could have justified anything they put their minds to and the White House wanted to sever any linkage between public benefit and aviation so it could sever any relationship between FAA funding and the General Fund.

Between the firefighting aircraft in California this month to the efforts of private aircraft on behalf of the public -- search and rescue, serving communities without commercial service, aeromedical and on and on -- you are smart enough and perceptive enough to understand the falisy of that old study's conclusion.

We even know of a presidential candidate who owes part of his success to the savvy deployment of a private aircraft during the campaign, allowing the connection to cities and towns impossible otherwise. Take a look in a mirror...you'll see him smiling back at you.

So, Mr. President, please do yourself a favor and, in the process, the American public at-large, and those who fly for fun and for hire: get a second opinion, from some of the committee chairmen on Capitol Hill, from the aviation groups...even the Air Transport Association knows User Fees cost more.

And these fees won't change the problem of shrinking fund contributions when flying itself is declining across the board, commercial and private alike, from the economic malaise.

Check around; you'll learn your proposal is backward and wrong. And then you can do what smart politicians do to succeed: make a new decision.

Respectfully,

Dave
Adendum: Reader Bob Collins' comment on my post is correct -- mea culpa on my part; calculated it correctly, then wrote it incorrectly...corrected both Billion-versus-Million misstatements...and think the point still holds...guess my brain had trouble believing anything still costs only in the millions in these days of billions and trillions getting so much more mention.
dh

It's Day 2 at this year's Sun 'n Fun Fly-in and Jeb and I were in exactly the right place at the right time last evening. We we're offered the chance to fly this morning with the Aeroshell Aerobatic Team.

We reported to their parking area out on the edge of the warbirds parking area. We were introduced to our pilots and each climbed into the back seat of a T-6.

I won't rehash the whole flight but it was awesome.






This was my first experience with flying (riding along) aerobatic. I wasn't sure how I'd react, and I'm pleased to report that it was nothing but exhilarating.

We flew out in formation. Really close to the other planes. After traveling about 10 miles out and climbing to a few thousand feet, we did a formation loop, followed by a formation barrel roll.

I could really feel the G forces, but other wise it was just a blast.

After the barrel roll I realized that we were headed back to the airport, and I was actually disappointed. I was more than ready for more.

Our thanks to the folks at the Aeroshell Aerobatics Team for squeezing us in at the last moment. And a huge thanks to listener Tony who made the initial contact for us.

Check out my flickr account for about a half dozen pics from the ride.

A few months ago, when most of the country still suffered under the chilled embrace of Winter, Spring at times seemed impossibly far away. Winter Storm Warnings, blizzard conditions, punishing winds...some days it felt like these phenomena drew paychecks and mission statements from those who strive to reduce General Aviation's extraordinary impact on American life...

Even after the "official" arrival of Spring March 20, some days it just didn't pay to drive to the airport. But there's no keeping down a good bunch of pilots, aviators, planemakers, vendors and all of our collective community.

As this gets written, evidence of that fact already exists on the grounds of the Sun 'n Fun Fly-In on the south side of Lakeland Linder Regional Airport (LAL); that evidence erupts into a full-blown international statement of our love of, desire to and right to fly starting Tuesday, April 21.

And for the ensuing six days, the entirety of the aviation community -- those off site as well as on-site -- plan to celebrate our community, our flying, and our contribution to the social and economic well-being of this country...the country that arguably lead the world into the Aviation Age.

We'll set aside differences, live with flaws and fly as though our lives depend on air beneath our feet -- because to so many of us, our lives to depend on it. Some because of livelihood, some because of passion alone, and to the truly afflicted, because of a blend of both.

Mostly we'll come together to renew friendships and enjoy fellowship with fellow flyers, make new friends, see new things and experience the community in a way only possible at shows like Sun 'n Fun and AirVenture -- and thousands of smaller ones in between, from EAA chapter fly-ins to niche-aviation gatherings, to airport appreciation days and plane-old-down-off-the-ramp spontaneous gatherings.

So Horrah! to the new show season and Hurray! for us all. After all, what better way to extend our lives than to fly somewhere for fun.

Remember, "Time spent flying is not subtracted from your lifespan."

Hope to see you out there...

-- Dave