AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - January 2012 - 14

AOPAACTION

COMPILED BY KATHY DONDZILA

What AOPA is doing to keep you flying

Keep flying: Looking beyond medical certificates
esponding to member concerns, AOPA and the Experimental Aircraft Association will request an exemption that would allow many pilots flying the most common single-engine aircraft recreationally to use a driver’s license and self-certification medical standard. Some members have asked, “If a third class medical certificate, with its costs and burdens, isn’t necessary for pilots who fly small, single-engine aircraft for recreational purposes, why not request that it be eliminated?” The FAA’s negative responses to past requests to modify the requirement for pilots to hold a third class medical certificate clearly demonstrate that doing away with it is a large leap that the agency is not ready to take. The industry has had success, however,

R

in seeking incremental changes, such as allowing pilots under the age of 40 to obtain a third class medical certificate that expires 60 months after the date of examination instead of 36 months. The FAA also had at one time considered allowing pilots flying for recreational purposes to fly without a medical. When the FAA proposed the recreational pilot certificate in the mid-1980s, an option for self-certification was included in the proposal; however, when the rule was implemented, the agency decided to require a third class medical

certificate. AOPA’s proposal builds upon later action taken by the FAA to allow the driver’s license medical for sport pilots by extending the same privileges, with the addition of an educational course, to pilots flying recreationally, which is the next logical step. Petitioning for an exemption also offers a potentially quicker process of FAA review than would a full rulemaking effort to abolish the third class medical certificate. And there is history to suggest that the chances for a positive outcome are greater: In recent years, the FAA

granted exemptions from drug-testing requirements for pilots of charity sightseeing flights, and allowed training in some Beechcraft Bonanza aircraft equipped with throw-over yokes— exemptions later codified as rules. With statistics indicating that medical incapacitation is virtually nonexistent as an accident cause among self-certified pilots of light sport aircraft, balloons, or gliders, the associations hope that the petition will prevail, strengthening the case for further self-certification.

NATIONAL

FCC urged to squelch LightSquared’s spectrum
he Coalition to Save Our GPS is seeking the immediate revocation of LightSquared’s ability to transmit in its upper band of the mobile satellite spectrum. The company’s proposed telecommunications network has become a bureaucratic battleground over signal interference with aviation navigation and other GPS users. The coalition recently filed its request with the Federal Communications Commission, citing test eviAOPA PILOT •

T

dence that it said shows that LightSquared could never be able to use the upper band for the terrestrial operations portion of its network. The FCC should issue a “prompt ruling” that forecloses the option of using the upper band, an action that would “also create a much more constructive and solutions-oriented process for completion of consideration of LightSquared’s proposed lower band operations,” the coalition said in a news release.

AOPA is a member of the multi-industry coalition that was formed to resolve the “serious threat” posed by the network to the reliability of GPS, described as a national utility used daily by millions of Americans. Those users include “federal agencies, state and local governments, first responders, airlines, mariners, civil engineering, construction and surveying, agriculture, and everyday consumers in their cars and on handheld devices.” Much of the opposition to LightSquared has focused

on its plan to “repurpose” its allocated spectrum to accommodate ground-based signals. Tests ordered by the FCC as a condition of its January 2011 grant of a waiver for the terrestrial component of the network have shown that such use can overwhelm the much-lower-powered adjacent GPS transmissions. In its filing, the coalition told the FCC that LightSquared has “offered no solution—because none exists—for resolving interference” from upper-band transmissions.

12 • JANUARY 2012
http://www.aopa.org/info/certified/medical/index.html http://www.aopa.org/info/certified/medical/index.html http://www.stopairtaxnow.com http://www.stopairtaxnow.com
AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - January 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - January 2012
