by
Darryl Phillips
Oshkosh is over for another year. It's so immense that nobody can see it all. If you've never been to the EAA Oshkosh Convention, there is no way that paper and ink can convey the diversity and enormity of this aviation extravaganza.
One common complaint is that it's too big. If you ask almost anyone if it's too big they'll answer yes, and next year they're going to return and bring their brother!
FAA Administrator David Hinson was on hand again this year for his MEET THE ADMINISTRATOR session. We watched as he awarded Chris Heintz the first Type Certificate granted under the new simplified procedures, for the Zenith CH 2000. Congratulations, Chris. With a lot of help from EAA headquarters and other organizations, and more money than anyone wants to talk about, and an FAA administrator who was trying very hard to make something work right, Zenith received the TC in just three years.
Mr. Hinson also announced a pending Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on the recreational pilot's license that would allow medical self-certification and remove the 50 mile restriction. That announcement was met with a standing ovation. I got the feeling that most of the attendees thought he was announcing that it would happen. Actually, all he was announcing was that it would be in a soon-to-be-released proposal. After the comment period, (you will comment, won't you?) FAA can decide to go ahead with it or not. Or, like so many other FAA NPRMs, they can just let it lie in a corner and slowly fade from memory. We shall see.
Anyway, Mr. Hinson eventually got to the questions. It was much the same as last year. The first question was about Bob Hoover. As you've no doubt read elsewhere, a third panel of doctors will issue a recommendation as to his fitness to fly.
There had been a rumor circulating at Oshkosh that FAA would return Mr. Hoover's certificate in a flightline ceremony and Bob would lead off the airshow, but like so many other rumors it proved to be untrue. My guess is, if the medical certificate is returned at all, it will be at the AOPA convention this fall in Atlantic City. But FAA will never have a more positive PR opportunity than Oshkosh 95. They blew it.
Last year the matter of the Pilot's Bill of Rights was raised. It came up again this time, and again Hinson said he would be happy to discuss it privately. Not much progress on that score.
Actually, all the questions can be distilled into two types. The first is "Why are you doing xxxx to us?" and the second is "Why aren't you doing xxxx for us?" The answer to the first is safety, and the answer to the second is budget.
Now that we have the answers to all our questions, I think in future years we can save those two hours at Oshkosh and spend them more profitably in the forums or out on the flightline or visiting the vendors or scouting the flymarket. Or just sleeping in after the Saturday night festivities.
One small departure from previous years was that yours truly did not ask the Administrator anything. I sat there listening, sorting the questions into the two categories, and began to realize that I knew both answers and could save wear and tear on the shoulder joint by just keeping my hand down. So I did. Mr. Hinson didn't seem to mind.
Also on the podium was U.S. Representative James Oberstar. He fielded several questions and got a hearty round of applause for his efforts to move FAA out of the Department of Transportation.
When the session ended I talked with Rep. Oberstar about the worsening overload of the transponder frequency, 1090 MHz. He seemed unaware that traffic is increasingly disappearing from the controller's screens. I had posed it as a "safety" problem so he was very interested, and I've since forwarded information to his office. If you've experienced a situation where one ATC facility says your transponder is fine while another says it isn't, please send a short letter to The Hon. James L. Oberstar, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington DC 20215. The more documented cases there are, the sooner we can get something done.
A couple of days later I had the opportunity to sit in on a Datalink forum presented by FAA. Yes, they're still planning on using the transponder frequency. But in spite of that fatal flaw there was much of interest. The presentation was a lively affair using a combination of full-color overhead graphics and a large-screen presentation of a windows-based tutorial. Unfortunately, even at Oshkosh the pictures were mostly of airliners.
One graphic had the controller clearing the aircraft to Flight Level 110. Yep, 110. That's 11,000 feet, although in the United States flight levels don't begin until 18,000. Obviously this FAA presentation was for foreign consumption.
The term that kept cropping up was ICAO. International Civil Aviation Organization. The FAA meetings repeatedly mentioned ICAO, in forums on free flight and datalink we heard about ICAO, in the various exhibits in the NASA building or the FAA Aviation Center a common theme was ICAO. FAA is so busy keeping the international aviation interests happy they're largely ignoring the taxpayers that support them and the constitutional government under which they operate.
According to FAA thinking, the airliners that fly overseas must have equipment compatible with the nations they visit. That makes sense. Next, all airliners must be equipped alike. That doesn't make sense. Next, our Air Traffic Control must be structured to work with the overseas system. That makes no sense whatsoever. Finally, the other 93% of our planes, general aviation, must be equipped to work within the ATC system. In my opinion that is totally absurd.
Nevermind that few Archers or Bonanzas or 172s make the trip across the pond. Nevermind that the international system isn't designed to accommodate the needs of personal aviation, nevermind that the capacity of our airspace system suffers. It has been decided that ICAO is more important than aviation.
Very few of our planes are air carriers, only about 7% of the fleet. And very few of those are international flights, most of our airliners spend their lives shuttling between places like Boston and Atlanta or Dallas and San Francisco. And a lot are regional carriers that never get 500 miles from home. Only a tiny percentage of our airliners ever leave the United States.
This isn't just a case of the tail wagging the dog, it's the last few hairs wagging the tail that wags the dog. All to keep ICAO happy.
As the bombers and fighters flew overhead at Oshkosh, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the end of World War Two, we were constantly told that it's necessary that our aviation system meet worldwide standards. Excuse me, but I thought there was supposed to be some advantage to winning the war. If we must bow to the whim of tiny countries on the other side of the earth, what was the point?
In ICAO, every member nation has a vote. Afganistan has a vote, Albania has a vote, and so on. Uganda has a vote, United States has a vote, Uruguay has a vote. Many nations of the earth have no general aviation at all, many have totalitarian governments or dictatorships where the freedom of flight is impossible. Yet each has a vote as big as ours.
Is this ridiculous or what?
I understand that if I travel to Iceland or Italy or Indonesia I'll have to obey their laws. But if I'm in Nebraska I don't expect that those foreign countries will have any pull at all. Except in aviation. Our FAA totally ignores the fact that here in the USA we have the great majority of the earth's aircraft. We are the 600 lb gorilla. We can do aviation any way we want and the others are free to follow or not. It's their choice.
But FAA says that we're a member of ICAO, and are bound by that agreement. Bull. If some two-bit dictator on the other side of the earth can influence what a Missouri farmer can and cannot do with his airplane, then we need to tear up the agreement.
And if this FAA won't do it, that's the biggest argument I've found for turning it all over to private enterprise. Moving it out from under DOT is no answer at all, corporatizing ATC isn't either. None of those changes will make any difference if we continue to let the one-world bunch decide how aviation must function.
Can the FAA change? Sometimes the answer is yes, and it's good to point out those occasions. We need to say thank you when FAA does something right, and we need to remember that hope is not lost and we can get FAA to do it our way if we want it bad enough. A case in point is the Carter matter, so eloquently covered in the July 21 1995 issue of GAN&F by J. Scott Hamilton.
In case you missed it, FAA had ordered an emergency revocation of a pilot's certificate for giving a free ride to a scientist from the Cousteau Society so he could speak to a summer science camp in a tiny Nebraska town where there was no other reasonable means of transportation. FAA said the pilot "could" have claimed a tax deduction, and was therefore compensated. Since he held only a private certificate, this was a violation in the opinion of FAA. As Scott put it, "Use your airplane to do good, and you will be punished."
The uproar was immediate and fierce. It came from Angelflight and Air Lifeline pilots, from members of CAP, and from a lot of other pilots as well. FAA Administrator Hinson heard them, and FAA policy has been revised. The power of the people prevailed. We won.
We do not lose our freedoms in some forlorn jungle or on some faraway beach. We lose our freedoms in Washington DC, and if we're to regain our freedoms that is where the battle must be waged. We can defeat ICAO, we can influence FAA policy, we can keep'em flying.
But, just as in WWII, we can't let the other guy do it all. We must each do our share. This includes you.