"Unfit for Flight" Part I

A few weeks ago, USA Today and its syndicates ran a story entitled "Unfit for Flight," the first of three articles criticizing general aviation's safety record over the last five decades.  It was pretty scathing - the long form is entitled "Safety last: Lies and coverups mask roots of small-plane carnage." This first story is divided into six subsections with objective, non-sensational headings like "Post-crash fires threaten helicopter passengers: IF IT'S CHEAPER TO LET YOU DIE THAN FIX IT, YOU'RE GOING TO DIE."

Predictably, general aviation advocates have lashed back in force, saying the article mischaracterizes the industry and ignores a vastly improved safety record over the same period.  They say the report unfairly "paints GA aircraft as death traps, pilots as amateur, and aircraft manufacturers as villains, and pits pilots against manufacturers" while selectively ignoring information running counter to the shock value of the story.

So...who do you believe?  Is general aviation dangerous?  Has its safety improved?  Is anybody here telling the truth?

Maybe.

I listened to a radio story a while back about the relationship between a prisoner in jail and his corrections officer.  The officer had ordered the prisoner to pick up dandelions as a disciplinary action.  It's worth a listen, but here's the excerpt "Unfit for Flight" brought to mind: *1

Lt. Cecil Dooley

OK. So you're still upset over the dandelion deal?

Antwaun Wells

Yes, I really am. That really actually frustrated me.

Lt. Cecil Dooley

If you wouldn't have bucked up against that officer that day--

Antwaun Wells

But see, that's what I'm saying. You never came and asked me exactly what happened.

Lt. Cecil Dooley

Don't need to.

Antwaun Wells

Exactly. You took your officer's word and you left it at that. It's always three sides to each story. My side, his side, and the truth.  You left two sides out and you went off of what your officer said. You never came to me as a man and asked me. You know what I'm saying?

The amalgamation of this article and its backlash are one side and another, and neither seems to be particularly concerned about objectively portraying the truth.  As a card-carrying member myself, the most interesting reading has been the comments from other AOPA members on our association's own PR.

"Seems this guy had an idea for ["Unfit for Flight"] and a direction he wanted to go with it ..... evidence to the contrary be damned. Imagine if every car on the road was required to pass an annual inspection, every driver to be proved medically fit, any modifications made to that factory built car required an STC and driver needing to prove their driving skills every 2 years minimum." 

"The AOPA response reads like it was written by a lobbyist for aircraft manufacturers instead of a group supporting owners and pilots ... Does the NTSB’s reliance on manufacturer reps and exclusion of pilot reps makes sense? Since NTSB conclusions are not admissible in court, what is wrong with allowing a pilot representative to participate in the investigation? What are the manufacturers afraid of?"

"I find it hard to believe the timing of this piece is not somehow connected to the pressure the FAA is feeling regarding the third-class medical. I doubt a sudden ostensible expose trying to paint GA as extremely dangerous appearing now, despite the recent dramatic decline in incidents that it fails to even mention, is a coincidence."

I called this post "Part I" because I imagine I'll be coming back to debunk some of the mischaracterizations and misinformation from both sides.  For my part, I'll call them out on this: block-quoting legalese to add shock value to general journalism is inaccurate, unethical, and contrary to USA Today's mission "to serve as a forum for better understanding and unity to help make the USA truly one nation."  Shame on the author and editor.  On the other hand, the article does bring up some legal questions that have piqued my curiosity.  Stay tuned.

In the end, we all need to do our own reading and come to our own conclusions.  I'll keep trying to help you wade through the muck.

--

*1 The irony that I'm excerpting a long piece in my story about an article that selectively picked and chose information is not lost on me.  The whole thing really is worth a listen, and I'll even give you a teaser: the cop looks like the bad guy now, but in the end the prisoner almost sees the situation his way.

Part 23: Reset

In November of 2013, both houses of the least productive Congress in recent memory unanimously passed a sweeping overhaul of an entrenched administrative agency.  If you're an American and that doesn't make you sit bolt upright, I'm not sure how else to grab your attention.  The Small Airplane Revitalization Act of 2013, as it was eventually named, directs the FAA to scrap Part 23 and replace it with performance-based regulations and consensus standards for new small plane design and technology.  This article will explain what Part 23 is, why it needed to change, and what we might expect going forward.

What could possibly have been important enough to cut across the most divisive party lines my generation has ever seen?  Well, according to the bill's findings, we lost 10,000 active private pilots per year between 2003 and 2013, at least partly due to a lack of new, small, and cost-effective airplanes.  Small planes constitute nearly 90% of all certified aircraft, but the average small airplane in the United States is now 40 years old because "the regulatory barriers to bringing new designs to the market are resulting in a lack of innovation and investment in small airplane design." Believe it or not, airplanes haven't always been prohibitively expensive for the average consumer.  In 1946, brand new light personal aircraft could be purchased at your favorite department store for under $2,500 - about $30,000 in today's dollars.  In other words, general aviation is (not slowly) dying because excessive and unwieldy regulation has impeded its ability to grow.  The situation was bad enough to light a fire under even the most ensconced of butts, but pilots everywhere should be excited about this law and what it says about the direction of general aviation.

Part 23 contains the FAA's airworthiness standards for normal, utility, acrobatic, and commuter airplanes - essentially anything smaller than a transporter but bigger than a recreational or light-sport aircraft (LSA).  We won't worry about transporters here, but LSAs will actually play a pretty big role.
As you can see in the FAA's own diagram at right, the rule making process under Part 23 is old, clunky, and inefficient.  It replaced US Civil Air Regulations Part 3 in 1965 and has been amended 62 times.  It is really an amalgamation of 1) the written regulations, 2) a system of overlapping Advisory Circulars (ACs), and 3) industry standards from SAE, RTCA, and others.  Together, these define acceptable means of compliance (MOCs) with the Part 23 requirements: they tell manufacturers and mechanics what the minimums are, but also how to meet them.  Planes must meet those requirements to earn a type certification under Part 21, which is its own costly and tedious process.

Most people know that in its 2004 Final Rule, the FAA decided to allow certain pilots to fly LSAs using a "driver's license medical" rather than a third-class medical.  This was a big deal in that it allowed many highly capable but medically disqualified pilots to return to the air, and I'll be doing another article soon detailing Congress's latest attempt to expand that privilege.  What fewer people seem to know is that the FAA also completely revamped its airworthiness requirements for this new class of aircraft.  It took airworthiness standards for LSAs out of the exclusive control of the FAA and instead put the agency on an ASTM committee (F37) made up of regulatory bodies, manufacturers, and other stakeholders that reached what came to be known as consensus standards.  These standards focused on the complexity and capability of planes, rather than weight and engine type.  That might seem a little less sexy than the medical issue, but it was hugely effective in bringing down the exorbitant cost of type certifications for LSAs: estimates for LSA certification run something like $125k-250k while estimates for a Part 21 type certificate range from $25 million to $75 million for a normal four-place aircraft.  The rule making process is also much quicker and, at least according to FAA administrator Randy Babbitt, its safety record has met or exceeded the FAA's expectations.  In the end, the proof is in the pudding: new LSAs have been certified at a rate of more than one per month for the ten years since the Final Rule went into effect.

The findings in the Revitalization Act aren't news to the FAA: many of them are copied from or mirrored by the FAA's own 2009 Study of Part 23's effectiveness.  The FAA has known for awhile that its policies were stifling innovation and that it could do something about it, but they sat on their hands for a little too long.  What the Revitalization Act really does is give the FAA a deadline of December 15, 2015 to issue a final rule accomplishing a number of specific objectives it was already considering:

1. Create a new regulatory regime for small airplanes to lighten the regulatory burdens on the FAA and the aviation industry.
2. Establish broad, outcome-driven safety objectives to spur innovation and technology adoption.
3. Replace the airplane weight and engine-type requirements in Part 23 with performance-based regulations.  This is important because the old "bigger = more complex" paradigm no longer accurately reflects the aircraft in production and their safety risks and benefits.
4. Adopt and use consensus standards to clarify how the safety objectives of Part 23 may be met using specific designs and technologies.  This will replace the overlapping ACs and other standards that currently lay out the acceptable MOCs.

This emphasis on outcome-driven safety objectives, consensus standards, and performance-based regulations, along with a trimming down of the Part 21 process, has been projected by the FAA (p. ix) to achieve certification with twice the safety in half the cost.  You can track the progress of the ASTM Committee revamping Part 23 (F44) on their website.

In short, pilots and the aircraft industry can expect a faster, cheaper, and safer certification process in which they actually have a say about a year and a half from now.  If that doesn't get your gears turning, you'd better see a doctor: you've got even less of a pulse than Congress.