Washington Examiner: FAA Wrong to Exempt Gliders From New Rule

July 6, 2010 at 2:18 pm | Posted in Aviation Law Current Event | Leave a comment

by Sara M. Langston with the blog faculty

Source: The Washington Examiner

Ensuring safety in the skies is the Federal Aviation Administration’s core mission, but that can too easily get lost under a blizzard of bureaucratic rules and regulations. Consider the FAA’s ambitious “Next Gen” air traffic control system, which by 2020 will replace 300 aging radar stations with a sophisticated satellite-based global positioning system. The FAA could easily have included all aircraft in its final rule requiring pilots to be able to broadcast their position and velocity to other air traffic in the general vicinity. But nonmotorized aircraft, including gliders, were inexplicably exempted despite the fact that nine people have died and dozens more have been injured in accidents involving gliders and airplanes, including two pilots who were killed in a midair collision last November over Middletown, California…more