Ground them pilotsAfter hunkering down for a threat of snow and wind, last week’s flying weather turned more benign and air traffic resumed to near-normal numbers. There were some B-2 Spirit bombers departing out of Whiteman AFB for parts unknown and reader Rodney Rom reported seeing the Piper Navajo survey plane making passes.
At the local runway, we saw a Mooney M20 and a Piper Archer executing circuits and bumps, and an unidentified twin-engine bird arrived on Friday. Out of our hangars, Jon Laughlin’s Piper Cherokee 180C returned from the shop and Delaney Rindol resumed training students in her Cessna 150s after the weather hiatus.
On the week’s national aerospace news scene, Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship #8 only made it to Florida this time, after a launch from Boca Chica, Texas, repeating the “rapid unscheduled disassembly” of #7. At this point, Starship development resembles Thomas Edison’s pursuit of the incandescent light bulb; “at least we know what doesn’t work.”
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy was quoted as saying the pilots involved in the Flexjet runway incursion at Chicago Midway airport last week “should have their certificates pulled.” To be sure, there will be FAA repercussions over making a Southwest Airlines 737 take a waveoff, but it’s unclear what penalty will be assessed. In most cases of inadvertent mess-ups, retraining is called for. In more grievous scenarios, the pilot gets his/her license suspended for months or a year while contemplating their sins, after which they can resume flying. If rules were willing flaunted and public endangerment resulted, revocation of the pilot’s credentials is done, meaning that if they ever want to fly again they have to get a student certificate and do all the training and tests from zero.
We presume lighter penalties will be assessed for the three general aviation airplanes that took turns busting the Mar-A-Lago presidental restricted airspace in Florida last week. F-16 fighters were dispatched to wave the errant pilots off, who evidently had no evil intent. These temporary flight restrictions come and go with the movements of the President, so it’s hard to know when it’s safe to fly. South Florida is a maze of airspace borders even in non-Trump times.
Boom Supersonic recently ran its XB-1 test-bed concept airplane through the sound barrier over the California desert, successfully proving that it doesn’t create a sonic boom, so the company is hoping to move ahead with its plans to make 30-passenger fast flyer. The last sonic boom I heard was 20 years ago at Tullahoma, Tennessee at Arnold AFB, probably by an F-15 on their test range.
Last week, we asked “how much does a certified air traffic controller get paid, on average?” The answer is $163.000, but that includes a lot of entry-level training wage, and 80% of those taking the test never finish. For next time, tell us how long B.F. Goodrich has been flying blimps over sporting events. You can send your answers to kochhaus1@gmail.com.
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