Miscellaneous Aviation News

by philg

The latest AOPA Pilot magazine arrived today. Some interesting stuff…

The Icon A5 seaplane gets a good review as a flying machine. I want serial number 500!

An Atlanta-based doctor explains why he likes to fly a little airplane to Haiti and treat patients:

There are no insurance companies or hospital administrators to deal with, no reports to write, and no forms to fill out. There are only patients in need of care, and the focus is on healing. “This is what drew me to medicine in the first place,” Rizor said. “At home, it’s easy to forget that.”

Bell Helicopter is laying off 1,100 employees, “more than 15 percent of the workforce.” This announcement comes shortly after United Technologies said that they wanted to unload Sikorsky. Bell and Sikorsky got fat off U.S. military contracts while Airbus Helicopters, formerly “Eurocopter”, invested in new designs and is now the worldwide market leader (with a big recent push into China). If you want to stay competitive in the global economy, it is important to remember that the French and Germans do more than simply shovel cash into the Greek furnace!

Unlike Obamacare, where state and federal governments run web sites that have a monopoly on customers in particular states (at a cost of $2 billion/year?), the FAA has for decades had a system in which at least two private companies could interface to their computer systems and offer weather briefings and flight plan filing to pilots. The FAA would pay each company according to how many weather briefings it delivered because each one saved the Feds from answering a phone call. The contracts came up for renewal recently. When the dust settled, the FAA pulled the interface from the smallest company, Data Transformation Corporation, left the interface in place with the 70,000-employee Computer Sciences Corporation, and added an interface for Lockheed Martin, the 112,000-employee government contractor (Lockheed Martin previously won a contract to become the monopoly provider of telephone weather briefings, taking over work that had been done by civil servants). Lesson: Go Big or Go Home if you’re working with the federal government!

As is typical, a portion of the magazine is devoted to the “Charlie-Foxtrot” of getting planes converted to comply with ADS-B. The glorious plan is to have everyone in the system in 2020, almost exactly 25 years after it would have been technically feasible (GPS became “fully operational” in 1995). Personally I think the most exciting product in this area is the Lynx NGT-9000 transponder, about $10,000 installed. It has a little screen to show nearby traffic and weather, pulled from the ADS-B In feed. If this can fit in the same panel space as the standard Garmin transponders in older Cirrus aircraft then it seems as though it would be the best way to move into the 2020s.

Note: Oshkosh starts on Monday and that’s traditionally when a flood of product announcements occurs.

7 thoughts on “Miscellaneous Aviation News”

  1. or, your Atlanta doctor could try working in a single-payer health funding system. Works great at reducing the paper burden.

  2. I like the Icon A5 and am immensely impressed that they managed to get a weight exemption from the FAA because their design was still heavy but I’d rather have a Searey. Better looking, sliding canopies, well proved design, and it has slightly higher performance (but it’s not as spin resistant).

    Icon has a big challenge ahead of it for marketing its plane the way it does (step off of your Sea Doo and into an Icon). Keeping low time, new pilots from being reckless with their shiny toys? Good luck, Icon.

  3. Thanks, Cliff. I had forgotten about the Searey. http://www.searey.com/our-aircraft/searey-light-sport-elite shows 350′ takeoff roll in the water. That’s a lot better than 920′ for the Icon A5! Even the Searey with the small engine (same as the Icon) gets off the water in 472′ supposedly.

    The Icon A5 will be great for the monster lakes of the West. Maybe Icon will eventually figure out how to get some more power in there. Or the SkiGull from Burt Rutan will be done.

  4. Is there a table of the ‘cheapest to insure’ airplanes somewhere? This would seem like critical information for someone who wants to buy/share a plane.

  5. Dave: It is pretty easy to figure out what it will cost to insure an airplane. Higher value = higher cost. Two engines = higher cost. Retractable gear = higher cost. Higher wing load = higher cost (because more stall-prone). There is not a big difference among similar planes from different companies, e.g., a four-seat slow single-engine fixed-gear Cessna that is worth $40,000 will cost about the same to ensure as a four-seat slow single-engine fixed-gear Piper worth $40,000.

    Overall planes are much cheaper to insure than cars of the same value.

  6. Lockheed announced today that they are buying Sikorsky. Orders are way down because oil industry.

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