www.PSFmagazine.com | October-November 2018 | 41 40 | October-November 2018 | Powered Sport Flying Calm Down, Nancy A few days ago (in early October after the aopa event in Carbondale, Illinois), the entire Special Light Sport Aircraft world was turned upside down. Something inaccurate was announced to a crowd, which included plenty of aviation journalists. Those writers raced to file the story. Then the journalists who weren’t there soon heard about it from shared stories, tweets, social media postings, email and even quaint, old-fashioned phone calls from concerned people in the industry. Even me, a not-so-well-known writer, got my share. If you already read Dan Johnson’s column this month, you know what I’m talking about. It was the unlikely story that the faa was going to publish a notice of proposed rulemaking (nprm) in just a few months that would increase the maximum takeoff weight limit on light sport aircraft to 3,600 lbs. If true, that would be a huge story for a number of reasons. But it wasn’t true. This has led to discussions with industry leaders as well as the faa. One of the questions that has come up is, “Can’ t we do better at getting information out?” I’m sure that is true, but it is difficult to do since there are conflicting motivations with different organizations. Let’s begin with the faa. I’m starting there because they are the subject of the comments. They are trying to do the right thing. They are listening to industry, industry organizations, and experts within their own organization. So the truth is they actually are working on a rule change. That isn’t news and we’ve actually reported on it here. But the process is a long one because they are trying to balance the needs of everyone asking for changes against the need for safety. They have a lot of good ideas and good industry input. They also have a few ideas that don’t seem incredibly viable. And there are some areas they seem to be missing entirely, like the gyroplane issue. The point is that with a rule change this big, a lot of ideas get floated; some ideas survive, some survive with change, and some never see the light of day. Those who want complete transparency from the faa as they are working away in their cubicles don’t know what kind of havoc that might wreak on the aviation world. But you have a taste of it from the unfortunate, tiny bit of misinformation that was just published! This is one of the reasons Apple and other big companies don’t announce what they are doing in their labs. It isn’t just about competition. They also don’t want to raise expectations they might not be able to deliver on and they certainly don’t want customers to be discouraged from buying the products that are available today. Face it, if you wait for the perfect computer, you will never buy a computer. Because they always change and more often they change for the better. But membership organizations have different goals. They also want to help where possible in crafting new rules. But they are also businesses that strive to get and keep members. So they end up being motivated to tell their members that they are doing things, even if it might be more prudent not to talk too much about what they are doing. The best case for membership organizations would seem to be to announce accurate information, after there is something solid to announce. The aviation press could also do better. Reporting an offthe-cuff remark without even a little bit of skepticism is just sloppy journalism. As far as I can tell, our own Dan Johnson is one of maybe two aviation journalists who actually reached out to the faa itself for comment on an faa effort. Kudos to Dan! People lose when bad information is reported or even when good information is reported out of context or incompletely. Government, membership organizations, and journalists don’t feel any kind of real pain when bad information is publicized. Instead, it is the guy debating whether or not to buy a new airplane. That’s the guy who may put off buying a great airplane because the aviation establishment has promised some kind of new flying unicorn… someday. Worse, it hurts the people who are trying to make a living producing the new airplanes. The people who build and sell the airplanes can be devastated by the loss of sales that comes from fake news. I like to believe that everyone in aviation is on the same team. There are maybe a million of us who actually fly and roughly 330 million of the other guys. Let’s all try to work with everyone else on our team!
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