Ethics in Aviation

                                                                Air Traffic Control Entities     As many of us know ATC plays a huge role in aviation operations. While providing information, ATC also monitors weather, other air players, runway conditions, rerouting, and many other tasks. But how does one group handle all of this at once day in and day out? ATC is not a singular being, think of ATC more as a spider web of different departments. Some of these include the Air Traffic Control System Command Center,  Air route traffic control centers, Terminal radar approach control, Air traffic control tower, and the Flight service station. For this blog let's focus on just two, the Flight Service Station and the Air Traffic Control System Command Center. "The FSS provides information (weather, rout...

                                                                           Icing in aviation     During takeoff and landing there are many environmental factors pilots need to consider. Such as runway conditions, winds, weather, visibility, and so on. I believe one of the biggest environmental factors is ice. Ice has a plethora of impacts, such as subpar runway conditions, freezing rain, and effecting flight instruments. Now ice may not be the most "effective" environmental factor since icing conditions are basically non-existent in normal altitudes around the equator, but it is still serious nonetheless. I believe that ice on runways can be completely resolved in a very simple way. Now growing up in the no...

     Today I will be covering the Labor unrest back in 1981. First and foremost, I had no idea there was such a massive event for ATC personnel. I mean president Reagan gave all 12,300 members who went on strike a two day ultimatum just four hours after the strike was initiated. The amount of people who went on strike took up 82% of the total force, that is insane! Although this act basically ended with PATCO disbanding after the strike, it created the groundwork for the NATCA and the PASS to represent the Air Traffic Controllers and the Electronics Technicians while being unionized. This whole act ended up stopping over 35% of the nations flights, that is a crippling number and should've never gotten to that point. I believe the members of PATCO were well within their rights to demand more for their annual salary, less work hours, and a better retirement. ATC personnel have always been a huge highlight in the aviation community. I constantly hear about the stress of ATC ...

                                                   Human Factors: Crew Resource Management      Going through an aviation focused career you will always hear about CRM. CRM is the number one tool that aviators use to avoid a mishap that could happen solely from user error. The AMT handbook describes human factors as "multidisciplinary fields incorporating contributions from psychology, engineering, industrial design, statistics, operations research, and anthropometry." (page 14-3, What is human factors). From what I understand from my aviation career, human factors are anything going on outside, or inside of the aircraft that could cause distraction while operating. A report from Boeing states that "70 percent of commercial hull-loss incidents are primarily caused by human factors." (openin...

Layers of Security      So after looking at all of the twenty different layers of security the TSA advertise I wanted to cover one that could affect every single person. The most common issue I see whenever I fly commercially whether the person is sketchy or not, is the baggage check. For most of the layers given only really happen or are used very rarely in my opinion. Baggage checks aren't too intensive most of the time, usually they just scan your bag and you're on your way. However, if TSA notices something that they've been trained to spot, everything else gets sidelined. " TSA screens approximately 4.9 million carry-on bags for explosives and other dangerous items daily."(TSA carry-on baggage screening page).       Now some of you might not have had to experience this at all, but even I have first hand. On my way back from my first deployment, we flew commercially for 80% of the route. Once we came back state-side we had to go through customs and...

While the article I have chosen is rather dated, the purpose is to show an in-depth look into the landing gear system. While I fly on a newer C-130 the components haven't changed too much. I have been taught there are two main reasons landing gear can malfunction, hydraulically and electrically. Obviously mechanical issues may happen but isn't as common as the first two mentioned. I have only had two or three landing gear malfunctions and they've all been hydraulic, they have all been cleared out before we had to land belly up however. Landing gear is a massive component and could be the biggest safety issue on the aircraft if lost. Just two years ago there was a C-130 in Little Rock, Arkansas that had it's nose landing gear malfunction and caused serious damage to the plane and could've potentially injured the crew. Preventing this happening is how to work through each type of failure and to follow checklist. This is a type of issue that you will either have no tim...