The FAA is abdicating its safety responsibility.
The FAA’s primary job is safety, but ever since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the FAA has allowed the ever-growing Homeland Security bureaucracy to bulldoze the agency into putting security above safety. TFRs, for example, have thus far resulted in hundreds of pilots, many of whom were intercepted by fast-moving military jets, being snagged for innocent airspace violations. One pilot ran out of gas trying to negotiate with a controller to fly into the Washington, D.C., special flight rules area. The latest example is the FAA’s ill-considered move to force airlines to remove oxygen masks from airline lavatories.
Matt Thurber, editor-in-chief at AIN Media Group, has been flying since 1975 and writing about aviation since 1978 and now has the best job in the world, running editorial operations for Aviation International News, Business Jet Traveler, and FutureFlight.aero. In addition to working as an A&P mechanic on everything from Piper Cubs to turboprops, Matt taught flying at his father’s flight school in Plymouth, Mass., in the early 1980s, flew for an aircraft owner/pilot, and for two summer seasons hunted swordfish near the George’s Banks off the East Coast from a Piper Super Cub. An ATP certificated fixed-wing pilot and CFII and commercial helicopter pilot, Matt is type-rated in the Citation 500 and Gulfstream V/550. Based in the Pacific Northwest, Matt and his team cover the entire aviation scene including business aircraft, helicopters, avionics, safety, manufacturing, charter, fractionals, technology, air transport, advanced air mobility, defense, and other subjects of interest to AIN, BJT, and FutureFlight readers.
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