Doper aviators - what would you change about the FAA?

Yes, I know - the words “change” and “FAA” don’t usually go together. To say the FAA moves at a glacial pace would be to insult glaciers. But if you were the new guy in charge of the FAA with a magic wand, what would you do?

Me? I’d get rid of coded METARs and TAFs.

I’m a flight instructor, and right now I’m preparing a ground school lesson on reading METARs, TAFs and other weather materials (example below).

And it occurs to me that if I wanted to disseminate weather information as inscrutably as possible, I’d create something close to the current system.

METARs and TAFs were designed for slow teletype machines in the 1930’s, hence the brief and cryptic codes. But I see no reason why this should continue given two factors:

  1. Weather information is really important, and should be as easy to understand as possible.

  2. Current technology can translate it into plain language.

I’m sure there are people who know that FU means smoke and BR means mist, but why are we keeping this crazy system? It’s needlessly complex, and very discouraging to flight students.

So what are your aviation peeves?


Here’s an example of a METAR, which is an aviation routine weather report:

KLAX 082035Z AUTO 30012G22KT 10SM CLR 19/03 A2973 RMK AO1

From this you’re meant to know that on the 8th of the month at 2035 Zulu time, via automatic reporting, the winds are coming from 300 degrees (true, not magnetic!) at 12 knots, gusting to 22. Visibility is 10 statute miles, sky clear, temperature 19 C, dewpoint 3, altimeter setting 29.73. The remark at the end refers to an automated report.

Simple enough, you say. But this is a basic one containing no fancy weather conditions. Then you find out that other aviation weather products use similar, but different coding schemes. That makes learning all of this a confusing chore, one that I don’t feel should be necessary.

Right. They were outdated 20 years ago - incredibly silly today.

It’s partly an FCC issue, but the FAA should long ago have pushed for digital radio. It’s simply astonishing that IFR clearances (to take one example) are still routinely given and confirmed by voice.

I’d certainly like to see more FAA folks who are active pilots. They exist, but are decidedly thin on the ground.

I would like to see them loosen up some of the drug restrictions in the medical requirements for private pilots. I don’t know a lot of pilots, but among the members of my flying club I’ve known two already that have had to hang it up because of treatment for depression.

It seems the FAA would rather have depressed pilots than medicated pilots… :dubious:

Why couldn’t the weather reports keep their coded format, but be ‘expanded’ by the receiver to a more readable format, just as you’ve done here by hand? That would have the advantages of:[ul][]Preserving the low-bandwidth transmission format in case high-bandwidth transmission is impossible;[]Not requiring transmitter upgrades at the source;Allowing vendors to introduce new receivers as they are ready.[/ul]It would be a good idea for the industry to agree on a standard expansion format. Perhaps to XML for storage, than any number of existing platforms could be adapted to format and display it.

I’d have no problem with that, as long as I don’t have to see the coded crap anymore.

I want to be a pilot using understandable weather information - not an Alan Turing wannabe decoding a lot of cryptic nonsense.

I would require that they be subject to more over site and if caught doing stuff like they did to Bob Hoover, the arrogant ignorant asshats are fired and forbidden from all government jobs.

All subjective decisions made against general aviation pilots have a real review process available to the shafted pilot.

More ramp checks and pilots flying without current maps punished more stringently on the second offense.

As noted, more intelligent medical regs for non-commercial pilots especially.

More instruction on decision making. “Continued flight into …” is so big that it really needs addressing in a better manner.

I thought of another one…

Allow students to review the written exam upon completion.

As it stands now, you cannot see which questions you missed or answered correctly. At the completion of a an aeronautical knowledge exam you are issued a sheet with subject area codes for questions you missed. This is not good for the student, and a pain in the ass for instructors.

Using the subject codes, there is no way for the CFI to know what precise elements the student missed. Airspace, for example, is a very broad topic.

This goes against all good practices of testing, if we stipulate that testing is part of the learning process. If not, then it’s just a hurdle thrown up in front of prospective pilots.

While they’re at it, they could modernize the written exams. They’re still using some old material that no longer exists in the real world, such as airport advisory areas and disused TAF formats.

Not to be disagreeable here, but I think it’s easier to read METAR’s than plain-language reports - if you know the code, you can digest it faster. What irritates me about them is something set by international agreement, outside the FAA’s control - the weird mixture of units. Life would be *so * much easier if the US had standardized on metric back in WW2 when it gained dominance of the industry.

On the exam stuff, that’s become a farce since the Freedom of Information Act opened up the actual questions to the public. It’s easy to get books listing all the possible questions and the multiple-choice answers, and just as easy to look back through it and find the ones you had trouble with and why.

Count me in on relaxing medical requirements. The Sport Pilot license was a great step forward, but still too restrictive. I agree with the AOPA’s position about extending the medical waiver to Recreational Pilot next, and that frankly would cover most of the noncommercial flying out there. Too many of the remaining requirements, all the way up through the First Class, are outmoded relics of the generations where flying did require significant physical capabilities.

But the thing I’d like to change most, from the POV of the industry overall and not just of pilots, would be the bureaucratic mindset on the enforcement side. Inspectors seem trained, and oriented, to look only for paperwork issues, not actual airworthiness issues. When they visit a facility, or a pilot, they too often don’t bother with anything physical, they just go right to the office or the logbook and that’s it. When they find a discrepancy in the records, that gets reported as a “safety” issue when it has nothing to do in the real world with safety at all.