Left Seat

©Sandy Hansen Photography

A group of aviation enthusiasts led by Dick DeVos of Amway has created an unusual, perhaps totally unique, public high school in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It is the West Michigan Aviation Academy now in its third year of operation.

The Academy is a charter school under the Michigan state education system. That means it is open to any high school age student in Michigan with absolutely no tuition or fees. It is a public high school, but with a very special aviation emphasis.

Under the Michigan charter school system the government pays for the cost of the basic education, including all of the normally required classes and subjects. But privately raised funds coming from aviation businesses and flying enthusiasts make the aviation emphasis possible.

The West Michigan Aviation Academy (WMAA) has a beautiful purpose-built facility on the Grand Rapids airport with access to taxiways and runways. The building is made possible by the support of private companies such as Gulfstream and private foundations and individuals making donations.

The WMAA emphasis is on science, technology, engineering and math. Whenever appropriate aviation is the example of how classroom instruction can be applied to real world application. Students study aviation specific topics, have a chance to fly in gliders and the school’s Cessna 172, and many are actively building and flying radio control models.

At WMAA all aspects of aviation are the inspiration for students to study and learn, but the structure and discipline required to succeed as a pilot, aircraft designer, manufacturer or maintainer are the core of the curriculum. Parents bring some of the nearly 300 students from as far away as 60 miles to give their kids the opportunity to learn in an aviation inspired environment. The fundamental concept that DeVos and the others who pioneered WMAA believe is that it shouldn’t matter what your zip code is, all students deserve the opportunity to receive the best possible education.

This week the WMAA hosted its third “The Leaders of Tomorrow Gala” fundraising dinner that was held in the Amway hangar on Grand Rapids airport. More than 900 people attended and the featured speaker was past President George W. Bush. President Bush arrived several hours earlier to spend time with the WMAA students. The President was candid about his own educational career, humorous and as entertaining as anybody from any political persuasion could have hoped for.

Gulfstream was the underwriter of the Gala and its president Larry Flynn was on hand along with a new G280 super midsize Gulfstream that was the backdrop for the speaker’s podium in the hangar. Several other aviation companies were sponsors, including Waco Aircraft that builds those beautiful classic biplanes. But support for WMAA is widespread and not limited to aviation and dozens of business and charitable foundations were very generous in their support.

All of us in aviation believe that flying is special, an activity with great risks and challenges that must be managed, but something that offers unmatched reward. Could there be a better environment for public high school students than to me immersed in our world of private aviation? I don’t think so. And neither do aviation industry and community leaders in West Michigan.

The WMAA slogan is “A High School Where Attitude Meets Altitude.” And I would add it is a place where private aviation and the people who love it work together with government to make a very special public high school.

Most of us remember from ground school that air circulates clockwise around a high and counter clockwise around a low pressure center. It’s useful, I guess, to know this to help understand what is happening overall with the weather. But most of the time I just look at the streamlines on the winds aloft forecast map, note that the arrows are blowing directly from my destination to the departure airport, and groan about the yellow or orange color that indicates the headwind is really strong.

The counter clockwise circulation around low pressure gets lots of attention every hurricane season when satellite and radar images show the wind racing around an intense low pressure center. I don’t pretend to understand all of the ingredients necessary to cause a tropical storm to form, but we all hear repeatedly that it is the heat of warm ocean water that fuels the storm. And the low pressure of a cyclone is at the surface so a falling barometer is a very positive indication that nasty weather is on the way.

But there is another low pressure system that is not all that common but makes the flying weather over a huge chunk of the country just plain miserable for days and that is the closed low aloft.

Actually, closed low aloft is now a little used meteorological term. The more common name for these nasty phenomenon is now cutoff low. By either name this is a low pressure system that forms in the upper atmosphere and the circulation is closed, meaning the wind makes a complete counter clockwise circle as it does in a tropical storm or hurricane.

For a closed low to form it must be cut off from the jet stream. Forecasting the formation of a cutoff low is notoriously difficult. Because the low is not being propelled by the jet stream it is almost impossible to predict reliably if it will move, where it will move, or when it will move. And forecasters don’t have much success in predicting when the cutoff low will break apart.

A cutoff low can bring days of strong winds at the surface and aloft, and drenching rains over the same spot. Convective activity pops up all over the place under the low, and the strong winds that shear with altitude and small changes in distance creates huge areas of moderate or greater turbulence. Flying into a cutoff low is simply something none of us wants to do.

As luck would have it a cutoff low formed over the southern states a couple days before I planned to fly from home base in western Michigan to Savannah. The low brought severe storms to eastern Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Alabama, and serious flooding in Georgia. I hoped the low would break up or move away before my trip. It didn’t.

The northern edge of the low pressure circulation was very clear on the weather radar mosaic. I could fly along the northern edge almost to the east coast and then make a right turn for Savannah and miss most of the worst weather. But the southeast wind aloft was blowing 50 and more knots. A trip that normally takes 3+45 would take 5+30 so a fuel stop was required. I picked Greensboro as the most southeasterly spot before the weather became really terrible.

By the time I slogged into GSO it was raining, the surface temperature was barely 50 degrees, and it was howling out of the east. Then I had to turn back to a southwesterly course for Savannah and fly through several bands of rain, continuous turbulence, and 50 knots of headwind component even though I stayed at 4,000 feet.

About 30 miles north of Savannah I flew out of the clouds into clear air, the temperature jumped up 10 degrees C, it was in the mid 70s on the ground and the wind was less than 5 knots. The people at the FBO told me “you should have seen how bad it was here this morning.” I think I did see that just a few miles north.

That’s the way it is with a cutoff low. Terrible inside, but not far away the weather is fine. Of course, I got to fly back home the next day and the low was still there but had moved just enough that yesterday’s headwind became mostly a crosswind so I had little help. A closed low aloft is surely Mother Nature’s punishment for pilot’s past sins.

This week the rocket motor on the Scaled Composite built SpaceShipTwo was fired in flight for the first time. The Burt Rutan designed rocketplane accelerated beyond Mach 1and reached an altitude of about 55,000 feet during the short rocket burn. It was an important step in testing what will probably be the first civilian craft to carry passengers into space. The initial suborbital flight is expected to happen next year. Price of a passenger ticket is said to be $200,000.

This second space race, one being conducted this time by private industry instead of cold war enemy governments, raises the question of just what is space? Where does space begin? How does one know when they reach space?

Actually, this is a question that has been around for more than 50 years. And the group most interested in what is space and where it begins can be traced more to the FAI (Federation Aeronautique Internationale), the international body that maintains aviation records, than to astronomers and other scientists.

The FAI dates back to the earliest days of flight. In 1905 the leaders of a group of national aero clubs got together to form an international aero club to create uniform standards for establishing and recording aeronautical feats and the FAI was born. The National Aeronautic Association is the U.S. national aero club and is a member of the FAI.

For the first 50 years or so the task of aeronautical record keeping was pretty straight forward. Who flew fastest, farthest, climbed highest, carried the most payload, flew quickest between city pairs and so on were the record holders. And during those first 50 years records were falling like dominos, with many only lasting a few days before they were topped.

But in the 1950s the exploits of the rocket-powered research airplanes such as the X-15 began to bend our traditional understanding of flying and aeronautics. Because the rocketplanes carried their own oxygen along with fuel they could “fly” to unbelievable altitudes at astonishing speeds. Were these craft really aircraft, or something else because their engines did not need air to breath.

In 1957 when the Soviets launched Sputnik into orbit it became clear that every speed, altitude and distance record in the FAI book was a goner. Suddenly a craft could circle the globe in less than two hours at an altitude measured in miles at a speed that made Mach anything seem puny.

What to do? Clearly there needed to be a demarcation between a space craft and an aircraft or aircraft records would be meaningless.

A possible definition of a space craft could have been one that carries its own oxygenator to power its engine. But some rocket planes flew at levels where air breathing engines could operate so that was limiting.

A nice place to split aircraft and spacecraft would be at the point where the atmosphere ends. But where is that? The earth’s atmosphere kind of peters out with tiny amounts of particles extending far above the surface of the earth with no definite line where there is no more atmosphere.

Without any real absolute definition of where flying ends and space travel begins the FAI decided on an altitude 100 kilometers. It’s a nice round number. And it’s pretty high above the earth. Below that level—about 328,000 feet—an aircraft was an aircraft, the FAI declared. Above that height and you were in space.

SpaceShipTwo and the other suborbital space projects use the 100 kilometer altitude definition as the beginning of space. At that altitude gravity is micro, as they say, so people and objects are nearly weightless. And it is certainly high enough to see the curvature of the earth horizon. But you would need to be at least twice as high and traveling much faster to enter orbit. And even in low earth orbit of a few hundred miles instead of 100 kilometers there are enough particles left to drag down a space craft pretty quickly.

The fact that SpaceShipTwo’s “flip-up” tail works to slow the craft demonstrates that it is still flying in some amount of atmosphere. If there were no atmospheric molecules left the flipped up tail would have nothing to drag against and it would be ineffective just as the blunt end of a space capsule does nothing to slow it until it descends back into the atmosphere.

We are all watching the exploits of SpaceShipTwo just as we did the flights of the much smaller SpaceShipOne and cheering for it to succeed employing unique techniques that make private space flight possible. Is 100 km really the edge of space? Who can say, but it sure is one heck of a lot higher than any passenger carrying craft not paid for by taxpayers has ever gone. And that is one for the FAI record books.

The bill that Congress passed with unbelievable bipartisan support late last week directs the FAA to take $253 million from the airport improvement fund to avoid furloughing controllers for the rest of the government’s fiscal year that ends on September 30. That should be enough money to also keep many, even most, of the contract control towers that had been facing closure operating until September.

This is a classic Washington compromise. The budget hawks get the ATC system back up to full speed and the delays of last week should end quickly, but the reduced FAA budget did not increase one cent. The other side didn’t get the larger deal on spending and taxes it wants, but it did get to show the public that it can do something to solve a high profile problem.

What’s left out of this compromise is operation of the rest of the FAA, and the long term future of our airports.

The new law that permits the FAA to move money from one budget to another within the agency to fund controller pay—something the sequestration law that took effect at the end of March forbids—does nothing to end the furloughs of FAA staff who are not controllers. The people who administer the certification of pilots, airplanes, modifications, airports, airways and approaches, and so on are still going to be off the job about 10 percent of the time.

So what, you say? Well, people who aren’t on the job can’t move any project or request that needs FAA certification forward so almost everything is likely to be delayed just as a 10 percent reduction in controller work force brought on large delays that rippled through the ATC system.

Manufacturers big and small will be among the first to feel the delays as there will be fewer FAA inspectors working to approve a new part, a new STC, a new airplane, or new avionics equipment.

Holders of operating certificates to fly charter, run an approved maintenance facility, or even some flight schools can expect all the required paperwork and inspections to take longer. And individual pilots who are waiting for approvals for a special issuance medical, for example, will undoubtedly feel the delay caused by the furloughs.

A longer term concern is the fact that operating expenses are being taken from a capital budget where the funds had been reserved only for physical airport or airway improvements. The money being shifted from the airport trust fund to pay controllers over the next several months wasn’t yet designated for specific projects so airport improvements already in the works won’t change. But the $253 million being spent on controller salaries was collected from specific taxes on aviation fuel and airline tickets to be spent only on airports and infrastructure. And that money won’t be replaced.

The FAA’s budget has long been a political football. The agency operated for six years on “continuing resolutions” where Congress approved temporary funding for only months at a time. However, last year Congress finally passed a bill funding the FAA through 2015. Congress waged a year-long battle over the bill, and it even took a two-week partial shutdown of the FAA to finally get approval for the longer term funding to pay for the transition to the satellite-based NextGen system and for normal operations.

All of us in aviation cheered the passage of a real multi-year FAA budget and hoped it would, for at least a few years, end the partisan squabbling. That lasted just over a year and now the FAA and all of us in aviation are tossed back into budget limbo.

If you ever wondered how important the airline system is to this country you got the answer last week. It took only about five days of controller furloughs and resultant delays to get a group in Congress who can’t agree on the time of day to rush through a bill to band-aid the system.

I wish general aviation had the same clout as angry passengers waiting at an airport, but we don’t. That means all of us must now be doubly vigilant to make sure private aviation is not thrown under the bus in the stampede to cut the FAA budget without causing airline delays.

We all fly the airlines at least some and don’t want to be delayed. But we also don’t want tax money specifically collected to maintain and improve all airports, including GA airports, spent for operations instead of infrastructure.

Non-pilots often ask us what the hardest part of flying is. I think most pilots reply that it is landing. But I believe airspeed control and management is the most difficult and also the most fundamental piloting skill.

Airspeed affects everything we do when flying. For example, landing is a challenging maneuver. But it is also a phase of flight that demands the most precise airspeed management.

Takeoffs—unless there are strong winds—are pretty straightforward piloting tasks, but without good airspeed control you won’t maximize climb performance to build the safety of altitude as quickly as possible.

Even in cruise, which is the lowest pilot workload period, flying the desired airspeed is crucial to achieve the expected range and fuel efficiency, not to mention protecting the airframe integrity when you encounter turbulence.

Airspeed management is so important, and also challenging to master, that many instructors have tried to break the task down into component parts to help explain it. The most common simplification of airspeed control is that the elevator controls airspeed and power controls altitude.

There is some truth in that saying, but there are so many exceptions to such a “rule” that I find it to be essentially useless. For example, in a turn you need up elevator to maintain altitude and need to add some power to maintain airspeed.

Of course the ultimate example of the inadequacy of the elevator airspeed/power altitude old saw is on takeoff. If you buy into that saying just sit on the runway and wiggle the elevator until you reach flying speed and then add power to climb. I know, you may find that unfair criticism of what many instructors believe is a useful teaching aid, but it does make my point about how complicated a job airspeed management really is.

If you want to get a convincing glimpse of how hard it is to control airspeed with great precision fly an airplane with a sophisticated autothrottle system. During an approach, particularly if it’s even a little turbulent, the autothrottle with be making almost continuous small adjustments in power. No human pilot would fly that way because our tolerance on airspeed control isn’t as tight as a well done autothrottle system.

An autothrottle tracks changes in airspeed, of course, but the most sophisticated systems also track changes in the angle of attack (alpha). A trend toward faster or slower in airspeed obviously signals the autothrottle to change power. But a change in alpha can give an earlier signal that a change in power is needed. In a way, the autothrottle is using the old elevator controls airspeed saying because when alpha goes up or down it will take more or less power to maintain desired airspeed.

Since almost none of us are flying our own airplanes with an autothrottle all of those minute calculations must be done continuously in our heads. Every change in the alpha, or configuration, or change in the atmosphere in terms of wind and turbulence, demands flight control and power adjustments to stay on target airspeed. It isn’t just power, or elevator. We need all controls available to stay on airspeed.That’s hard to do.

The good news is that we don’t need to fly with the tight tolerance of a good autothrottle system to be safe and precise in our maneuvers. But the closer we maintain desired airspeed the more predictable the outcome of any maneuver, particularly when flying close to the ground for takeoff and landing.

So, if anybody wants to know the most fundamental skill that must be mastered to be a good pilot tell them it’s airspeed management. If you can do that, the rest of a pilot’s job is really pretty easy.

Underwriters consider many factors when deciding what premium to charge a pilot to insure his airplane. But increasingly the age of the pilot is a big factor. In fact, for many underwriters, there is a maximum age cutoff for a pilot where the company will not issue a policy for any price.

I just renewed the policy on my airplane and the premium was almost exactly the same as the year before. So was the coverage in the policy. I have thousands of hours of time in the airplane type, and I do formalized training at least every two years, if not every year. In the past year the training was the excellent program offered by the American Bonanza Society specifically designed for pilots of Bonanzas, Barons and Travel Airs.

In other words, I do what the underwriters like. I fly frequently, have lots of experience, and train regularly. But before too long that may not be enough to be insured.

My airplane insurance agent is one of the most experienced in the business. In fact, Larry told me he just turned 90. If there is an older active insurance agent I haven’t heard of him.

But Larry was in a lather because the underwriter I have used for decades, and I believe is the biggest in the business, had just put an age 69 cap on new pilots it will cover. A pilot’s age has always been a risk factor to consider, but this hard ceiling at 69 was new.

The key here is that the age cap only applies to pilots who are new to the underwriter. If you have purchased insurance from them steadily as you age, the 69th birthday is not a deal breaker. But if you are shopping around and have had your 69th birthday this underwriter is not interested in selling you airplane insurance.

It is essential to understand the difference between an insurance agent and the underwriter. The underwriter is the company that actually issues the policy and stands behind it. The underwriter is the one who sets the standard for pilot qualification, and also establishes the terms of coverage such as the amount of liability protection, how the liability may be divided up, and the amount of hull coverage.

The insurance agent—or agency—is the underwriter’s representative. The agent collects information on the pilot and aircraft and then shops it around to underwriters who may be interested. Agents and agencies, including the EAA Insurance Agency, are independent from underwriters.

The way aircraft insurance is sold is similar to a real estate transaction. The agent matches up the buyer and seller and collects the necessary information to close the deal. Just as a good real estate agent does their best to get a quick sale at the highest price for a home seller, the insurance agent looks for the coverage most suitable for the pilot at the best price.

It’s all well and fine for your agent to shop around looking for a new deal from different underwriters from one year to another when you are younger, but if you plan to keep owning airplanes into your later years, you really should try to lock in on one underwriter before you get too old.

What is too old? I would say that by age 60 you should develop a consistent business relationship with the same underwriter and stick with it. The actual age where an underwriter will not sell coverage to a new insured varies, but you can bet it’s lurking somewhere beyond age 65.

To lock into an underwriter you need to tell your agent or agency that you only want to deal with that same company. That may not be as easy as it sounds because underwriters enter and exit the general aviation market unpredictably depending on all sorts of economic factors. And there are mergers and acquisitions that roil the market. So your best shot for continuity as you age is with one of the underwriters with a longer history of insuring general aviation aircraft.

I know there is no solid evidence that older pilots are a greater risk. In fact, we probably take fewer risks in our airplanes as the years go by. But that’s neither here nor there. Underwriters get to call the shots. It’s their money at stake so they get to pick who they will cover. And increasingly they are unwilling to take on older pilots who have not been clients all along.

The budget sequestration deadline came and went at the end of March and very few of the predicted dire consequences have happened. Yes, the military has been forced to end its air show participation, and the FAA is threatening to close many control towers, but the air traffic delays and other painful cuts in service just haven’t happened.

But we have been living in the eye of the storm. By Sunday the major impact of the sequestration budget cuts will begin to take hold.

The reason the world didn’t end on April 1 is that the government must give federal employees advance notice before any furlough. That notice period is up on Sunday. Beginning then FAA employees, including controllers, can expect to be furloughed at least one day every two weeks.

One day every two weeks is a 10 percent cut in a 10 workday pay period. Remove 10 percent of the controllers from any of the nation’s busiest facilities and there will be very noticeable delays. The major airline hub airports are actually scheduled beyond capacity at rush hours so take away at least 10 percent of capacity and you can imagine how the airplanes will stack up.

The actual impact will be more than 10 percent loss in capacity because the sequestration law requires the cuts to be uniform across the board. So 10 percent of the fully qualified controllers will be furloughed, not just 10 percent of the trainees. And each control position must be fully staffed which can require as many as three people or that position would be closed, or in trail separation extended dramatically.

There are estimates that the busiest airports could lose 40 percent, or even half of their capacity, during rush hour when the furloughs begin. If that doesn’t make sense to you, think of a freeway running at capacity. The cars are barely moving. If even a few percent more cars enter the roadway traffic stops totally.

The nation’s busiest airports and ATC Centers run at 100 percent of capacity during the peak periods. Any change that alters capacity ripples through the system, just like those few extra cars coming down the freeway ramp bring things to a halt. And unlike cars, airplanes can’t stop, or even slow down. The only solution to reduced capacity is to keep airplanes on the ground until there is capacity in the system to handle them.

This is stupid, you say. This is a political game. And you are right. The sequestration law was crafted to be so stupid, so disruptive, so inefficient and so just plain crazy that it would never be allowed to happen. Well, it turns out the government is capable of anything. And now we are about to see what a true across the board, no exceptions, furlough of controllers will do to capacity in the system at peak periods.

I don’t think the airlines and Congress understand, or believe, what the impact will be. There was so much crying wolf back in March, and then nothing happened because of the furlough delay, that few believe anything will happen starting on Sunday. But I believe.

Of course Congress can change all of this because it was Congress that passed the sequestration law in the first place. If the law were changed to allow agencies such as the FAA to move funds around and spend them where they are most urgent big delays would almost certainly be prevented. But that’s not how the law is written. The law as it stands was crafted to inflict maximum pain on the public, who in turn would retaliate against Congress and the administration demanding that they do something.

If the ATC system delays are as bad as I expect starting on Sunday I think the stupidity of sequestration will have the desired impact and the law will be changed to at least allow agencies to spend their reduced budgets in the most useful way. Stand by. And I plan to avoid the busy airspace on Sunday and next week.

Sun n Fun was blessed with darn nice weather this year. Temps were in the mid 80s, but by central Florida standards, humidity wasn’t bad, and a breeze kept it comfortable. Perfect summer weather.

It was a different story at home on the shore of Lake Michigan. Spring still hasn’t shown up. The snow—except the huge piles plowed up during March—has melted, but there have been flurries in the air almost every day during the first two weeks of April.

So, for our trip home from Sun n Fun to the Muskegon Airport in western Michigan, Stancie and I were going to traverse the seasons from summer to winter. The distance is nearly 1,000 miles and somewhere in between we had to transition from one air mass to a very different atmosphere.

When warm moist air collides with cold dry air we all know the result is usually thunderstorm formation. And that is what was happening for this trip. A cold front was advancing across the country and had produced killer tornados in Arkansas and Mississippi the day before our departure.

We all worry about weather fronts and their location, but when it comes to strong cold fronts the action is well ahead of  the actual frontal boundary. It’s interesting to look at the surface maps and see where the front is depicted, but pay more attention to what’s going on ahead of the front.

On this day as we prepared to depart from Tampa where we had left our Baron the big cold front was well north across Georgia and stretching into the Carolinas. And there were storms near the front, but it was also kicking up big storms just north and west of Tampa. As we climbed out we were below the bases and in light rain, the lightning and heavy rain were to our west, but the air felt like it had been attacked by a giant egg beater. Turbulence was never more than occasionally moderate, but it was continuous. As bad as it was, I know when moist warm air is that rough, big storms will be growing soon so we were glad to be through it when we did.

The Nexrad images sent down by satellite showed a line of storms across our route, with at least a few breaks. Nearing Valdosta I deviated west of our route to London, Kentucky, for a fuel stop to miss much of what Nexrad was showing.

But it was a day for eyeballs and onboard weather radar more than Nexrad. The cells were apparently collapsing faster than the time it takes for the Nexrad mosaic image to be created on the ground and sent to the satellite. Areas where Nexrad showed level three red returns had nothing but puffy clouds I could see and go around. But I could also see new buildups forming in areas that Nexrad showed as clear. And our Garmin GWX 68 radar in the nose showed returns building where Nexrad had nothing. It was one of those days when the onboard radar would show a cell go from all level one green, to some level two yellow, to areas of level three red in just a few sweeps. Just one more reminder that satellite Nexrad is the best thing ever for avoiding areas of thunderstorms, but has limitations when trying to pick your way between cells or find gaps in a line.

On the northwest side of the cold front the air was clear and unexpectedly smooth given the winds at 8,000 feet were blowing at 50 knots and more from the west. The wind was about 100 degrees to the left of our course which, you would think, would be at least a little tailwind. But the reality is the airplane must crab into the wind to maintain course so the wind that is slightly behind you becomes slightly ahead and creates at least a little headwind. But I can’t complain about a 10 knot headwind component on a day like this.

By the time we flew over Cincinnati the sky had become solid overcast. The satellite picture sent down by XM Weather showed the cloud cover extending for hundreds of miles and covering more than half a dozen states. The tops soon chased us up to 10,000 feet, but cruising along in the sunshine with a blue sky above and nothing but solid cloud below is one of the most satisfying things about flying your own airplane.

There was a trace of ice—not enough to cycle the boots—on descent. I flew the LPV approach to runway 24 with the runway showing clearly on the synthetic vision while snow flakes blew past the windshield. With just over a mile to go to the threshold the real runway appeared directly ahead and the cold, gusty wind had the decency to blow pretty much down the centerline.

Personal aviation is all about flying what you want, when you want, and where you want. Many pilots think you can’t beat a sunny day for fun flying. For me, going where and when we want in almost any kind of weather is the challenge, and being able to do it is the fun. It is the freedom to choose what, how and when we fly that matters. Being able to change summer into winter on our schedule is amazing. Now, if mother nature would just look at the calendar everything would be perfect.

A story in Sport Aviation raised many questions from readers. The writer had been told that he had a disqualifying medical condition. He then went on to build an E-LSA that he could fly as a Sport Pilot using his driver’s license as medical qualification.

Many readers jumped to the conclusion that the writer had been denied a medical certificate. If that had been the case, he would not be eligible to fly as a Sport Pilot using his driver’s license.

But the story never said he was denied. It said he was told by the doc he didn’t qualify. That is a very different issue. Any wise pilot will talk to a medical expert before they ever fill out the FAA Form 8500, the application for a medical certificate.

Once the medical application is submitted—and you can only do it online now—you can’t take it back. There are only three possible results after the application is in the system and those are approval, denial or deferral. And the deferral can only be for a limited time while additional information is collected.

The actual physical exam is not likely to uncover many disqualifying conditions. Perhaps your blood pressure may be too high, but that can typically be successfully handled by your AME. Or maybe the urine test could discover diabetes you were unaware of. But the reality is the application form is essentially what determines whether you will get the medical certificate or not.

We all know, for example, that most common heart and circulatory conditions such as bypass surgery or stents or strokes are disqualifying. But nowhere in the FARs will you read that many types of cancer are also disqualifying, for example. You can almost always get a medical after a cancer has been successfully treated, but it will go through the special issuance process, take time, and a number of medical reports. Put down on the application that you have had doctor visits to treat a cancer, and most likely you will be denied by the AME.

That is the type of information you need to know before you fill out the medical application. You want to know that you have a disqualifying condition in advance so that you don’t submit the application and be surprised. You need to plan your future. Do you want to go through the process of getting a special issuance certificate with the added medical testing and probably some limitations, or do you want to fly under the Sport Pilot standards? Those are the questions you should ask, and answer, before submitting the medical application.

The rules require that to fly as a Sport Pilot using the driver’s license as a medical you can’t have a disqualifying condition. And you can’t have been denied a medical certificate after applying. Those two sound like the same thing, but they are not.

For example, if you have one of the all too common heart problems that would be disqualifying on a medical application and applied for the medical certificate, you would be denied. That means you would have to get a special issuance certificate before you could fly Sport Pilot. But, if you have your heart condition successfully treated, and are cleared by your physician to resume driving and other normal activity, you no longer have the disqualifying condition and can fly as a Sport Pilot.

If you have the same successful treatment and want a medical certificate you will need to wait typically six months, and then apply for a special issuance medical. You won’t need more actual treatment to get the special medical, just lots of paperwork and probably additional tests that your own doctor won’t require.

Bottom line is to keep control of your options know what your medical status is and don’t apply for a medical certificate until you have a plan. EAA members can call headquarters and get advice from the EAA aeromedical council. Or you can search online at faa.gov to see more about disqualifying conditions. Or you can look for an AME with experience in handling special issuance medicals and talk before you fill out the application. Or you can hire one of several services that will help you prepare for the special issuance.

Whatever you do don’t fill out that FAA medical application without knowing the outcome in advance and having a plan. You should know that you qualify, or don’t, before you ever submit the application. If you plan to go the special issuance route you will be initially denied or deferred on your application, but at that time you have your reports and other paperwork in order and can minimize the hassle factor. If you are happy to fly on as a Sport Pilot get the medical treatment you need, regain your health, and never touch that medical application again.

This will be even more important if the FAA grants the EAA/AOPA petition to allow pilots to fly day VFR in a single engine airplane with 180 hp or less, no more than four seats, and carrying no more than one passenger. Many thousands of pilots commented favorably on the petition and it is still under consideration by the FAA. Approving that petition would do more to reduce the hassle and cost of the way so many pilots fly than anything I can think of.

The closing of nearly 200 control towers has been getting the attention as the FAA cuts spending to comply with the federal budget sequestration. But other spending cuts that are coming raise even more troubling questions about the FAA’s future programs that will affect all of us who fly in one way or the other.

The FAA NextGen program is already years into development and mandated spending cuts will slow or even derail its completion. The core of NextGen is a move to satellite-based air traffic control to replace radar. The ADS-B equipment required to be installed by 2020 in nearly all aircraft is a key component of NextGen and many airplane owners are already installing equipment to meet that demand. But will there be a NextGen up and working by 2020? Not unless the development budgets are restored.

You may ask who cares about NextGen. Actually, all pilots and airplane owners do. The FAA’s current position with NextGen is like having one foot on the boat and the other on the dock. It is committed to deploying NextGen with that system’s advanced traffic separation and navigation and is gradually retiring the current equipment. If NextGen is delayed by the funding cuts the radars, navaids and communications network in use now will not have been maintained for the indefinite future. The transition to NextGen is already underway and a delay will leave gaps where we don’t have the reliability from the existing system or the advantages of the new system.

Another likely victim of FAA spending cuts is the transition to a lead-free avgas. Industry and the FAA have formed a partnership to identify and test candidate fuels to determine which formula will be least disruptive in the move away from lead. The FAA’s part of the program demands lots of dough to establish testing methods to create a lead-free avgas specification. If even part of that funding is cut out of the budget the process slows down, probably way down.

Even when the best possible unleaded avgas formula is identified every certified airplane-engine combination will need to be recertified to use that fuel. And only the FAA can do that. Even in some airplanes that will not need modification to burn a new fuel, there still must be certification approval, and that requires manpower and that costs money. And many, perhaps most, airplanes will need to be modified at least to a small extent to use an unleaded fuel, even if that modification is “only” new operating limitations, and perhaps performance data changes.

Even homebuilders are likely to feel FAA budget cuts in the form of delays. Most E-AB are signed off by an FAA designee (DAR) instead of an FAA employee. But the DARs are certified by FAA staff, and must be recertified on a routine schedule and that requires FAA manpower. The result will be longer waits for approvals of all types.

You may think we don’t need an FAA, or we need less FAA. But that’s not the question here. What the across the board spending cuts do is remove manpower and resources but do not eliminate any rules or procedures. So just as TSA lines to board an airliner grow longer, or the wait to clear customs increases, our personal flying will be made more complicated and cumbersome by the FAA budget cuts.

Closing cost effective privatized contract control towers was the first and in some ways easiest way for the FAA to cut its budget. The coming cuts won’t have the drama or headline grabbing attention of the tower closings, but they will make our lives as pilots and airplane owners more complicated, probably more costly, and certainly less predictable. All aspects of general aviation will carry an unfair share of the impact of FAA funding cuts.