Heckuva Week For News...

March 23, 2007
...in aviation. Perhaps the most astounding was the report that Boeing is building a 1,000-plus passenger airliner. The report (from a well-recognized online source that will remain nameless) included beautiful pictures of the proposed airplane with a blended wing and body. Very exciting news. The next day I received a report that the massive Boeing was a hoax or a mistake. It ain’t gonna happen. Boeing is doing research for the guvmint on the blended wing and body concept, but not for a 1,000-seat airliner. In fact, Boeing is asking everyone to spread the word. I’m doing my share. The biggest news remains the battle over user fees. Seems like every day I get a big pitch from one side or the other. Lord knows how it will turn out. I do have a dog in this fight, of course, and I have one question: If everybody in the airline business is doing more and more with less money while charging less and improving safety, how come the guvmint can’t do the same? Seems like a reasonable question to me. Speaking of safety, another online news source, AIN, put out the word that every segment of civil aviation reduced accidents in 2006. GA had the lowest number of accidents in 40 years of record keeping. Airlines and Part 135 operators also had fewer accidents. But there is a thorn on that rose bush… AIN reports that "The decline in the number of GA accidents was due in part to a steady decrease in the amount of flight activity. Since 1990, GA hours flown have declined 20 percent…" We can be proud that the GA accident rate has stayed steady at roughly 7.5 accidents per 100,000 flight hours, but that’s about it. So why have flight hours gone down so drastically? You could write a book on that subject, but it wouldn’t fit here. We'd love to post your comments. Please click the comment tab at the top.