For the last blog post I want to talk about my experience as a student so far.  Specifically, the difference between my student experience and the transition into the real aviation world.  The problem I have found is that even though organizations like the AAAE, AOPA, EAA, etc., have there own separate student level memberships, there still feels like there is a large gap between the students and the industry for aviation management majors.  The dissemination of information and the exposure student management majors get has been lack luster in my time in the program.  In this regard, the best thing that has happened to me here was discovering the AAAE, which I found by chance while doing a job search assignment. I wish there was something more.  A bridge to cross this divide for us who really haven't been there or done that yet. 

This year I have done more things to advance my career than I have in all four previous years combined.  I joined the AAAE, joined their certified member program, job shadowed at DTW, applied for an internship, produced my first career-level resume, and I networked more than I ever have before.  I don't know of a one-stop source for internships, entry level jobs, articles, support, discussion boards or anything of the sort geared to young aviation professionals.  I wish there was a place to go to get help that goes beyond your local airport or college professors.  They are undoubtedly great resources, but I would never have found the internship I am trying for if not for the job search engine on AAAE.org. They have nation-wide resources. If there was something that could pool that together with the articles AOPA has for students and other student resources and just bring the whole package together, it would be amazing for students like us who are trying to step into this new world.

Since that doesn't exist, I have a lot of legwork to do. I already mentioned some of what I have done, but as it goes, I still have to take a dispatch practical, make it through one more semester of school, continue to network, and find that first real job.  Its tough with all the information scattered. Except for two job websites that I know of, which only ever has a few entry level jobs at one time, you have to go to each airport website or municipality individually and sort through jobs until you find ones that are relevant.  With hard work, however, I know I will be fine in the end.

The Import-Export Bank

The Export Import Bank of the United States is a lending institution created to support companies that need loans for various business deals where private lenders will not accept the financial risk.  It could be because the risk is too high, political reasons, or other reasons, but the bottom line is these businesses will not be able to continue operate without financing from the Export-Import bank.

Aviation companies play a huge role in the exporting industry of the U.S. Boeing is a global leader of aircraft manufacturing and plays a central role in trade between the U.S. and other countries.  This Article goes into detail about how Aircraft manufacturers are affected by the Ex-Im bank.  It states that 1/3 of the orders annually delivered are financed through Ex-Im financing.  Without the Ex-Im bank, many jobs would be lost because of a lack of financing for large orders of aircraft.

Companies and advocacy groups (Aerospace Industries Association) in the U.S. like the Export Import bank.  It creates and sustains jobs, it costs the tax payers nothing to operate, it allows companies to maintain competitiveness in a market struggling to come back from recession, it allows for deals to be made that would otherwise fall through, and it keeps us on an even playing field with other countries who also use government loan guarantors to help finance projects for companies such as Boeing.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or alternatively Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) used to seem like future tech that was unreasonable and didn't really have an application everyday life. That time has come to pass.  Amazon announced last year plans to start same-day drone delivery within a certain radius of a distribution center within a few years. And this story showcases five current uses of drones that are purely civilian in nature.  The coolest one is search and rescue operations.  FAA regulations are scarce for UAS operations at the present moment, but the FAA does have a published fact sheet of information.  The fact sheet explains current rules for operating a UAV in U.S. airspace:

"Obtaining an experimental airworthiness certificate for a particular UAS is currently the only way civil operators of unmanned aircraft are accessing the NAS. Experimental certificate regulations preclude carrying people or property for compensation or hire, but do allow operations for research and development, flight and sales demonstrations and crew training...COAs are available to public entities that want to fly a UAS in civil airspace. Common uses today include law enforcement, firefighting, border patrol, disaster relief, search and rescue, military training, and other government operational missions. 
Applicants make their request through an online process and the FAA evaluates the proposed operation to see if it can be conducted safely.
The COA allows an operator to use a defined block of airspace and includes special provisions unique to the proposed operation. For instance, a COA may require flying only under Visual Flight Rules (VFR) and/or only during daylight hours. COAs usually are issued for a specific period—up to two years in many cases.
Most COAs require coordination with an appropriate air traffic control facility and may require a transponder on the UAS to operate in certain types of airspace.
Because UAS technology cannot currently comply with “see and avoid” rules that apply to all aircraft, a visual observer or an accompanying “chase plane” must maintain visual contact with the UAS and serve as its “eyes” when operating outside airspace restricted from other users.
"

This is, frankly, a lack of comprehensive regulation.  The NAS must grow to accommodate UAS operations.  The same FAA fact sheet also talks about working them into NextGen as the FAA researches the appropriate way to regulate UAS in the United States, "The FAA is working with civilian operators to collect technical and operational data that will help refine the UAS airworthiness certification process.  The agency is currently developing a future path for safe integration of civil UAS into the NAS as part of NextGen implementation."

As for the military application of UAVs, they have revolutionized military strategy.  Now the military can run an entire strike operation without using a-10's, bombers, or the personnel it takes to man them.  That saves resources and lives. The most glaring problems seem to be the ease and willingness to use them.  The large amount of drone strikes that have taken place have allegedly killed a lot of unarmed civilians, which could be classified as war crimes. If the government is using drones to spy on its citizens, that would also be cause for alarm. The drones can be a great asset to our government, but there has to be a limit to what we let the government do.

Future civilian UAV jobs would likely include a pilot, ground crew, Chase plane pilots, operations department, research team etc. for what ever the UAV is and if your amazon, a fleet of ground crews and a tech department that runs the computers that fly the drones. 

Aviation Organizations I Will be a Part of in My Future

As I move ever closer to graduation and leaving EMU in my past, I have begun searching for jobs and paying much closer attention to the industry's hiring trends.  I have talked with as many people who have my degree as will listen.  They have really all told me the same thing: "I wish I wouldn't have gone this route with my career."  That is striking to me because they spent 4 or more years and thousands on a degree and are not happy.  These people have basically told me that I made a poor decision.  One of them works as a ramp agent at Delta, so I understand his pain, but the others I have talked to gave reasons like there are no jobs for this degree, you have to know someone, or other reasons for not being employed in their field.

I don;t feel like they are wrong, but there are reasons they are not happy or haven't been successful.  The biggest problem is that they aren't willing to move.  That is paramount to finding a job in this industry, traveling great distances is inherent to aviation and the job you can get might be across the nation. The other reason I surmise is that they aren't members of the appropriate organizations and don't network hard enough. I don't see myself having the same problems others I have talked to have because I am willing to move, I am networking, and I am a member of the right organization. 

As a future airport employee, I am a member of AAAE.  The AAAE is specifically geared towards airport advocacy and airports alone.  They are the only group in America that does this.  I am currently in the C.M. program they offer which is a huge resume booster.  It looks very good to potential employers to have this in progress or already done.  It shows you care about the industry you are getting into and trying to be proactive about learning.  They have many different tools and services to help their members, such as the training program I am in, conferences all over the country every year about different topics related to airports specifically, and much more. Utilizing them will help me move much closer to obtaining employment at an airport.

Beyond the AAAE, I still plan on becoming a pilot so I plan on joining AOPA.  They are a leading organization that is concerned with pilot issues in the U.S. and they offer a slew of member benefits.  They have student memberships, but I don't feel like I would be able to utilize it enough while I'm not flying.  They offer a magazine, flight planning software, discounts on things like cars from FBO's, financing programs for aircraft, insurance, and much more.  As a member of AOPA, you have access to all these services and become a part of a very large flying community.  I can't imagine being a part of the aviation community and not joining an organization like this.  The benefits are worth the money in both organizations.

Flying Cheap and my career

When I finish school, I foresee myself working for an airport authority for a long time.  There are other potential career paths that I will look into such as ATC and dispatching, but my primary focus is in the executive and administrative world for now.  I want to end up as a director of a department of a large airport authority or as a director of a smaller airport entirely. I need to be somewhere warm and around water. I feel like the perfect airport authority would be someplace like Tampa.  Director of Operations at an airport of that size would be a large responsibility, but by that point in my life, I will be able to handle it.  The operations department is responsible for maintaining compliance with 14 CFR part 139 and part 77 as well as TSR 1542.  As the director of the department, this would all fall under my responsibility.  This includes topics like snow removal, ARFF, airport security, surrounding airspace, airport inspections, etc.

The biggest safety issues for an airport authority include security breaches and the safe operation of aircraft (including the pavement and airspace around the airport).  The way to mitigate these issues is to adhere to the ACM that the airport has developed to most effectively and safely run the airport.  Beyond that, updating that ACM with new techniques and policies as they become viable.

Professionalism encompasses a few concepts.  In this industry professionalism is about working efficiently, going above the requirements to ensure safety, being a good communicator, a good leader, and maintaining high ethical standards.
In the Flying Cheap documentary, a tremendous lack of professionalism was demonstrated.  The two most ridiculous instances of it involved forging paperwork for duty time by a V.P. and also a captain forging a load manifest.

While I move forward with my career, I intend to stay professional; the most important thing to me is to be ethical and to be safe.  In this industry, corner cutting like that shown by Colgan Air is inexcusable.  It doesn't even make sense for a company to operate recklessly in the long run.  In the short run they make more money, in the long run, they have an accident and have their certificate pulled.  I will maintain a clear conscience and keep everyone at my airport safe and I will not encourage blatant rule breaking and endangerment.  That just seems like common sense to me.

NTSB Most Wanted list

two of the items on the most wanted list for the year are: address unique characteristics of helicopter operations and identifying and communicating hazardous weather to GA aircraft.


The statistics show that in GA accidents, between 1 and 5 and 1 and 6 accidents are fatal. In IMC 2/3 accidents are fatal. The majority of these accidents have to do with hazardous weather. The NTSB is examining the dissemination practices of weather to GA pilots. The weather information needs to be made available and properly understood by the pilots flying.


This problem is not the most serious problem that the NTSB should be going after. The recent near-tragedy of the Southwest flight that stopped a mere 40ft short of a cliff, along with the multiple other instances of wrong airport landings, should be a glaring warning to those involved in the industry. There is clearly not enough being done to prevent aircraft from landing at the wrong airport. with the number of these wrong landing incidents being reported, we are already overdue for a fatal one. If that 737 had gone over the edge, you would have seen a number of fatalities from one accident that equaled a quarter of the GA deaths each year.


With the Most Wanted list citing GA weather protocol and helicopter operations has things to be aware of on the 2013 list, new jobs could be created. The first that come to mind are new positions in helicopter operations if new regulations come about and force new departments, procedures, etc. The first job I can think of for GA weather would be some new specific weather service that is designed specifically for GA pilots that is better than the current weather services.

Landing at the Wrong Airport?

The two recent incidents of aircraft landing at the wrong airport in such a short time period has brought the issue to the forefront of the media.  I imagine the response on the Southwest Airlines pilots by management has been so harsh because of the large amount of media coverage the incident has gotten.  But this is not new.  I found a website that contains a long list of incidents of aircraft landing at the wrong airports, which is current enough to include the recent Southwest incident and the Dreamlifter incident late last year.  I feel bad for the pilots who make these mistakes and then come under so much scrutiny from their management and the media.

Is it justified though? The implications of such a mistake can be deadly.  The Southwest flight that landed at the wrong airport landed on a much shorter runway that ended with a cliff.  It would seem that the media have reason to be so interested in this, there was only a reported 40 feet of runway left before the drop off.  If the aircraft hadn't been able to stop on that runway for any reason, like even if it was just raining, this story would probably have ended with a large number of fatalities.

So why does this happen?  the Southwest pilots have recently been said to have been confused by the runway lighting. This seems plausible, but there are redundancies in aircraft to keep things like this from happening.  Instruments that provide a heading, GPS that provides exact position, air traffic controllers who should have the aircraft on their scopes, etc. In most cases this type of error should be inexcusable because it shouldn't happen.  Is this different? the pilots were flying a VFR approach to runway 14 at 6 p.m..  Just by sight.  The captain of the flight had never been to Branson.  The FO had been there one time during the day.  On their way to Branson, one of them called ATC and called the runway in sight.  ATC cleared them for a visual approach to the airport and the flight continued on to land at the airport they thought was Branson.  So the cause of this will likely be attributed to pilot error.  I just don't understand why ATC didn't notice the airport descending and slowing down 8 miles too short of where it was supposed to be. It would seem that there is fault on the part of ATC and the pilots.  If they had been forced to fly IFR rules because of the lack of experience with this airport, this may not have happened.  I believe this would have prevented this incident, but not likely applicable for a large number of other wrong airport landings.  Something should be done about this issue however, the list of incidents I provided earlier is too long.

As a manager you are almost forced to suspend the pilots from duty while the investigation continues.  The public would be more than a little upset if they found out that there was a pilot who was involved in a major incident still flying, especially if later it was revealed that he was incompetent or impaired in some regard.  Will they ever get their job back? not likely, but it will depend on the conclusion of the investigation.  There was reported to be a dispatcher in the cockpit as well. He was also suspended on paid leave until the investigation concludes.  I can't see how he has anything to do with this incident overall.  He wasn't the dispatcher with operational control of the flight so this didn't really make sense to me.  I hope that they find out there was nothing the pilots could have done, but I fear that most likely won't happen.