What's Up
by LeRoy Cook
3-10-2025
Suggested Banner: Ground Them Pilots
After hunkering down for a threat of snow and wind, last
week’s flying weather turned more benign and air traffic resumed to near-normal
numbers. There were some B-2 Spirit bombers departing out of Whiteman AFB for
parts unknown and reader Rodney Rom reported seeing the Piper Navajo survey
plane making passes.
At the local runway, we saw a Mooney M20 and a Piper Archer
executing circuits and bumps, and an unidentified twin-engine bird arrived on
Friday. Out of our hangars, Jon Laughlin’s Piper Cherokee 180C returned from
the shop and Delaney Rindol resumed training students in her Cessna 150s after
the weather hiatus.
On the week’s national aerospace news scene, Elon Musk’s
SpaceX Starship #8 only made it to Florida this time, after a launch from Boca
Chica, Texas, repeating the “rapid unscheduled disassembly” of #7. At this
point, Starship development resembles Thomas Edison’s pursuit of the
incandescent light bulb; “at least we know what doesn’t work.”
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy was quoted as saying the
pilots involved in the Flexjet runway incursion at Chicago Midway airport last
week “should have their certificates pulled.” To be sure, there will be FAA
repercussions over making a Southwest Airlines 737 take a waveoff, but it’s
unclear what penalty will be assessed. In most cases of inadvertent mess-ups,
retraining is called for. In more grievous scenarios, the pilot gets his/her
license suspended for months or a year while contemplating their sins, after
which they can resume flying. If rules were willing flaunted and public
endangerment resulted, revocation of the pilot’s credentials is done, meaning
that if they ever want to fly again they have to get a student certificate and
do all the training and tests from zero.
We presume lighter penalties will be assessed for the three
general aviation airplanes that took turns busting the Mar-A-Lago presidental
restricted airspace in Florida last week. F-16 fighters were dispatched to wave
the errant pilots off, who evidently had no evil intent. These temporary flight
restrictions come and go with the movements of the President, so it’s hard to
know when it’s safe to fly. South Florida is a maze of airspace borders even in
non-Trump times.
Boom Supersonic recently ran its XB-1 test-bed concept
airplane through the sound barrier over the California desert, successfully
proving that it doesn’t create a sonic boom, so the company is hoping to move
ahead with its plans to make 30-passenger fast flyer. The last sonic boom I
heard was 20 years ago at Tullahoma, Tennessee at Arnold AFB, probably by an
F-15 on their test range.
Last week, we asked
“how much does a certified air traffic controller get paid, on average?”
The answer is $163.000, but that includes a lot of entry-level training wage,
and 80% of those taking the test never finish. For next time, tell us how long
B.F. Goodrich has been flying blimps over sporting events. You can send your
answers to [email protected].
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