As part of its ongoing process of phasing out obsolete approaches at airports with new GPS approaches, the FAA has released a new list of instrument procedures that it plans to decommission. The list includes 154 VOR and NDB approaches, including some early GPS overlay approaches, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association reported. All of the GPS approaches and most of the VOR approaches are circling procedures that do not guide planes in to a specific runway. And nearly all of the airports are served by more precise ILS or GPS approaches. Even still, AOPA wants pilots to review the list for their local airports to ensure that needed procedures aren’t being cut. As the FAA has cut old non-precision approaches over the last few years, it has created nearly 1,700 precision WAAS approaches that use GPS to provide lower minimums without having to install or maintain ground-based approach equipment at each airport. But to take advantage of those approaches, pilots must install newer and more costly GPS units in their planes.

New information released last week into a December accident in which a Continental Airlines flight skidded off a runway at Denver as it tried to take off indicates that winds may have been a factor. The flight crew said they were unable to keep the plane centered on the runway, even with full rudder deflection, the Denver Post reported. While a nose wheel steering cable was found broken after the accident, the National Transportation Safety Board hasn’t said yet whether that was a factor. The crosswind component at the time was 25 knots. While the Boeing 737-500 involved in the accident has a demonstrated crosswind component of 35 knots, the maximum crosswind for a plane with the winglets installed, as that one did, is just 22 knots. The records released last week include transcripts of air traffic control communications, as well as maintenance logs, interview notes and weather information. Just 26 minutes after the crash, first responders told the tower controllers that everyone had gotten off the plane. “Two sweeps through the plane, 105 people and crew … I have no word of casualties at all,” a person in an airport operations vehicle said. Several transmissions later, the controller in charge responded, “Man, you made my day, you made my day.”

With a week to go until a Transportation Security Administration directive aimed at general aviation goes into effect, pilots across the nation are concerned about what the new rules mean and how they will be implemented. There was no public comment period before the TSA rolled out the directive in December, requiring GA pilots based at airports with commercial flights to get special security badges,
the Grand Junction (Colo.) Daily Sentinel reported. The TSA has not provided any reasoning behind the rule. After pilots objected to the rule earlier this year, the agency said it would review comments and make revisions – but so far, there is little indication of what changes will be made. The TSA has said the security directive is needed because of potential threats from terrorists trying to gain access to airports and use light aircraft in future attacks. The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, along with other aviation groups, has opposed the directive not only for singling out GA pilots without cause, but also because it puts the burden on local airport officials to conduct background checks and produce security badges without any extra funding.

Officials in Santa Monica, Calif., are violating the terms of federal airport funds and a 1984 agreement by trying to restrict what types of planes can use Santa Monica Airport, the FAA said last week. The city has been trying to keep large jets from landing there, arguing that they could run off the end of the runway and into nearby homes, the Los Angeles Times reported. Offers from the FAA to install arresting devices haven’t done enough to dampen the concerns of residents and officials. City officials enacted the restrictions in late 2007. They ban jets with landing speeds above 139 mph from using the airport. Because of a cease-and-desist letter from the FAA and a court injunction, the ban has never been enforced. An FAA hearings officer said last week the restrictions “unjustly and unreasonably” restrict large planes. The airport improvement funds the airport gets require that it be open to all aviation uses. And a 1984 agreement gives final say on safety issues to the FAA, not the city. No large plane targeted by the city ordinance has ever crashed at the airport. Santa Monica officials aren’t done fighting, though. They will appeal the issue to an FAA administrator and then in federal court if needed.

An airport in Phoenix and one in Louisiana are the newest recipients of federal funding to help upgrade them from their former use as military bases. Phoenix-Mesa Gateway and Alexandria International Airport will share $23.7 million this year with 10 airports already receiving the funds, according to the FAA. At Alexandria, the funding will pay to overhaul an aging and outdated fuel farm. The airport supports daily commercial flights to Houston, Dallas, Memphis and Atlanta. Phoenix-Mesa will use its share of the funding to upgrade a small passenger terminal that quickly become overwhelmed when Allegiant Air began flights to the airport in late 2007. The airport recorded 120,000 passenger boardings in the first nine months of last year, due in large part to Allegiant’s flights. The Military Airport Program funding is a subset of the money available through the Airport Improvement Program.

The U.S. Postal Service has reversed course on a $46,000 cost-cutting measure that would have eliminated weekly airmail service to a backcountry airstrip in central Idaho. The only way to get to the 20 families and a research station located there to get their mail is by plane, hiking, or jetboat — there are no roads in the exceptionally rugged part of Idaho about 135 miles north of Boise, National Public Radio reported. A plane brings the mail once a week, or once every two weeks in the winter. But the post office said earlier this year it couldn’t justify the expense of the flights, offering residents free post office boxes instead. The catch: Reaching the boxes would require a three-day hike, or else hiking four miles and driving 250 miles each way. Under pressure from Idaho’s senators, the post office relented and said the flights would resume uninterrupted.

Anchorage International Airport remained closed for much of the day Sunday as a thin layer of ash from Mount Redoubt, 100 miles away, covered the airport and the city. Redoubt began erupting intermittently a week ago and erupted twice on Saturday, cancelling dozens of flights at Anchorage and sending cargo flights to Seattle instead, the Associated Press reported. The volcanic eruption came as politicians seized on $140 million in the federal stimulus package tagged for volcano monitoring. But pilots and geologists in Alaska haven’t had to do much to defend the benefits of that system in the last week. The instruments gave scientists a heads-up that an eruption was imminent, allowing pilots to steer clear of the region (a temporary flight restriction had been in place above the volcano for several months). Even before it was clear exactly how much ash had been ejected or where it would travel, many airlines cancelled flights and parked planes in hangars. The last time Redoubt erupted, in 1989, a KLM flight passed through the ash cloud and had all four of its engines fail. The plane descended more than 10,000 feet before the pilots could restart the engines and make an emergency landing in Anchorage; the plane required millions of dollars of repairs to its engines. So far, there have been no aviation accidents or incidents as a result of Redoubt’s most recent eruptions.

By 2015, the nation’s busiest airports are supposed to have 1,000-foot safety zones at the ends of each runway under a new Congressional mandate. But 11 airports, including those in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston and New York City, may have difficulty meeting the requirement, the Los Angeles Times reported. Part of the issue is that the process of designing and approving fixes – including getting support from nearby residents – can take a decade or longer. The rules require each end of the runway to have an unobstructed safety buffer 1,000 feet long and 500 feet wide. At many of the problem airports, busy roads, businesses and homes are within that safety zone. A stopgap measure could involve repainting runways to provide displaced thresholds that would effectively provide the needed buffer. But that would shorten the runway’s useable length and could prevent large aircraft from using such a runway. According to a federal report on the issue, 12 people have died and 200 have been injured in the last 10 years in 75 incidents that involved a plane overrunning the end of a runway.

Boneyards for surplus airliners across the Southwest are filling up faster than many predicted as airlines cut schedules and decrease capacity. In all, hundreds of planes sit idle on taxiways and aprons at these desert airports, the Los Angeles Times reported. Mechanics drain fuel, oil, hydraulic fluid and other liquids from the planes, often removing and storing avionics as well. Planes with a future either with their original airline or slated to be sold overseas may get moved every few weeks to keep even pressure on their tires. Other planes are stripped of their engines and useful spare parts before being shredded for scrap. The companies that run these desert boneyards expected business to pick up in two or three years, as airlines had planned to retire older planes and buy newer, more efficient models. But traffic started picking up last fall and each gets an increasing number of calls from airlines looking to park their planes. Some are expecting dozens more planes on their ramps by summer as airlines take everything from small 737s and MD-80s to unneeded 747s out of service.

The FAA is taking a close look at the maintenance program at a flight school in California’s Central Valley whose planes were involved in two emergency landings in recent months. Two of the Sierra Academy of Aeronautics’ planes experienced engine failures within a three-week period in January and February, the Modesto Bee reported. In October, the flight school got a warning from the FAA because it hadn’t been making required 100-hour inspections. Sierra has a history of warnings before that, including $3,500 worth of maintenance-related fines prior to 2002 and warnings in recent years for keeping improper repair records and allowing planes that weren’t airworthy to fly. Sierra has 51 planes and caters mainly to students from China who come to the United States for flight training and then return to China to work for airlines there. Sierra is based at Castle Airport, about 100 miles southeast of Sacramento. That’s the same airport where another operator shut down in June after it didn’t pay its water bills and its students, most of whom were from India, were evicted.