Kerry Lynch stepped into the role of editor of the&nbsp;Aviation International News&nbsp;monthly magazine in May 2022 after serving with&nbsp;AIN&nbsp;for eight years. She joined&nbsp;AIN&nbsp;in December 2014 as a senior editor covering Washington and business aviation news. She has also served on Convention News teams, including as editor of&nbsp;HAI Convention News. Lynch previously spent 25 years with Aviation Week. During her time there, she reported for and later steered&nbsp;The Weekly of Business Aviation, oversaw business aviation content on the&nbsp;Aviation Week Intelligence Network, served on the&nbsp;Show News&nbsp;staff, and held roles as the Washington columnist for&nbsp;Business &amp; Commercial Aviation&nbsp;and&nbsp;Overhaul &amp; Maintenance&nbsp;monthly magazines. In 2021 she was honored with the National Business Aviation Association Platinum Wing Award for lifetime achievement in journalism and was the 2004 recipient of the National Air Transportation Association’s Aviation Journalism Excellence Award. She also has been a recipient of an Aerospace Media Award for business aviation (2022) and NBAA Gold Wing Award (2003, 2024). Lynch graduated from The Ohio State University with a bachelor of arts in journalism.

Editor, AIN monthly magazine

Kerry Lynch

The U.S. House of Representatives is set to begin consideration today of a government-wide funding bill that would give a $127 million boost to the FAA’s budget for the current fiscal year—$500 million more than the White House requested. The spending package, H.R.244, which heads to the Senate for consideration this week after House action, also places particular emphasis on a number of areas of interest to general aviation, including certification, advanced materials and alternative fuels research and NextGen.


Lawmakers on Monday unveiled the $1 trillion spending bill for Fiscal Year 2017, carving out $16.4 billion for the FAA. The bill would bump the FAA’s operation spending to $10.026 billion, more than $30 million over the request, and include aviation safety funding for acceleration of funding of drones into the National Airspace System.


An additional $1.5 million is provided to enable the FAA to hire more specialists to support certification of new technologies and expand organizational delegation authorization (ODA). Congress specified that the additional funding is intended to provide the FAA necessary resources “to work with industry to achieve the goal of full utilization of ODA to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of product certification.” The spending package includes language directing the agency to review and remove ODA limitations on activities deemed to be of low or medium risk.


Further, the bill praises the FAA for efforts that should result in streamlined validation of type certificates and directs the agency “to ensure that the efficiency of foreign validations is consistent” with bilateral agreements. Congress also directed the FAA to assist U.S. companies that experience significant delays.


Other measures include $159 million for the contract tower program and a prohibition on eliminating the contract weather observers program.


The bill provides $2.855 billion for the&nbsp;FAA’s facilities and equipment expenses, including $7 million more than requested to advance space-based ADS-B technology. The $176.5 million for research, engineering and development efforts includes $2 million for research in composite materials and structures testing and development and $7 million for alternative fuels for general aviation. Congress established a $3.35 billion obligation limitation for airport funding.


Additionally, the bill returned some provisions that have been included in past spending bills, including a prohibition on altering the weight limitation at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey and privacy protections surrounding the display of aircraft registration numbers on flight-tracking websites.


Industry welcomed the long-awaited agreement. National Air Transportation Association president Martin Hiller praised the bill’s recognition of “general aviation priorities, including full funding for the contract tower program, additional funding for alternative fuels research and more than one billion dollars to continue NextGen modernization.” He also pointed to other initiatives such as the effort to accelerate certification and a measure that would examine the effect of collegiate flight training on the future pilot workforce. “Continued work by congressional appropriators is an important part of making the FAA an effective safety partner with the general aviation community,” Hiller said.


Congress is considering the FY2017 budget, even though the government is already halfway through the fiscal year. Government agencies have been operating under a series of short-term extensions since the fiscal year began on October 1, the most recent of which—passed on Friday—gave Congress until the end of this week to pass the comprehensive spending bill.

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