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May 2008 
LSA Engine SafetyAircraft engines these days come in a lot more flavors and configurations than they used to, thanks largely to the advent of two forms of alternative aviation: most recently, the light sport aircraft (LSA) market and, much earlier, the 1990s surge in experimental/amateur kit-built aircraft. Where some of the more-popular experimental designs and several legacy-S-LSA models employ familiar powerplants, the majority fly with engines from BRP-Rotax in Austria, HKS in Japan and Jabiru in Australia. Who are these companies and what’s their track record in making flying-machine engines? How do they compare to the "traditional," FAA-certified offerings from Continental and Lycoming? Who sets the standards? And what’s their safety record? These newer engines can spur concerns among ardent fans of the familiar, tried-and-true air-cooled flat aircraft engines from Textron Lycoming and Teledyne Continental Motors. Often, it seems, those concerns grow out of unfamiliarity. The differences in care and feeding and in systems fuels debates about their reliability and, in turn, safety of the newer engines. The Problem With Flight Instruction Perhaps you’ve heard the riddle, "What do you call the person who graduates at the bottom of the class in medical school?" The answer: Doctor. The maxim being conveyed applies equally well to aviation: What do you call the pilot who has met the minimum standards set forth in FAR 61.183-187? Answer: Certificated Flight Instructor. Yet whether acting in the capacity of doctor or flight instructor, that individual is directly responsible for another person’s well being. Others literally may live or die based directly on the doctor’s and the flight instructor’s knowledge and skills. The path to becoming a practicing doctor evolved to include a rigorous course of study and years of apprenticeship: college, med school, internship, residency, fellowship. The tradition in aviation, on the other hand, has been to treat flight instructing as the bullpen for corporate and airline flying. Still clinging to this model, many instructors teach largely for their own benefit and not the benefit of their students. Instructing, after all, is supposed to be a transient phase; building time, the primary goal; low pay and high turnover at flight schools, expected. Compensating For Pilot Inexperience Flight time and experience requirements are dropping nearly everywhere pilots are being hired. Some airlines will now hire pilots and put them in the right seat of a jet with no more than a commercial multi-engine ticket and the couple hundred hours required to get it. Critics think this will cause airplanes to fall out of the sky. Others claim improved training and rigorous attention to procedures makes the difference. Let’s take a look at both sides of that debate, and see what lessons we can learn from that to improve our own flying. There’s no argument that experience builds skill and with that experience, hopefully, good judgment follows. Judgment can be taught to some extent, but as the saying goes, there is no substitute for experience. We’re reminded of one instructor we knew who tried to pass along the lessons learned from his own experience. But he was quick to point out that he was just one person and with an infinite number of possible mistakes, he’d only made half a lifetime of his own, so it’s important to have the judgment to avoid as many as possible and the skill to survive the rest. Flying an Aging Airplane In 1985, I purchased a then-39-year-old 1946 Cessna 120. Several times my friends asked, "Is it safe to fly a 40-year-old airplane?" Their question was based on perceptions of the typical condition of 40-year-old cars, tools and houses. My answer was always a version of this: Properly maintained, a 40-year-old airplane is as safe as one much newer. Unlike cars and houses, airplanes are inspected annually and maintained to a high standard. As long as the pilot puts the time and money into it, and takes it to a mechanic experienced in the peculiarities of the type, it is indeed safe to fly a 40-year-old airplane. Fast-forward to 2008. According to AOPA, the average piston-powered general aviation airplane is more than 35 years old. Leisure suits, my high school graduation and the end of mass production of light propeller airplanes—1978 to 1979—were that long ago. Unlike when I bought my Cessna, now it’s not unusual at all for a light airplane to be 40 years old; 50- and even 60-year-old piston airplanes are increasingly common. Are airplanes this old still safe? What does it take to safely operate aging airplanes? Gladden MOA Mess The military operations area, or MOA, is the Rodney Dangerfield of special use airspace (SUA): It doesn’t get any respect. Part of the reason few pilots pay much attention to whether a MOA is hot or not is VFR operations are allowed—at our own risk—in an active MOA. This is much different from a MOA’s more-serious brethren, the restricted or prohibited areas, or even the temporary flight restriction. That doesn’t mean punching through an active MOA is a good idea. In late March, two civilian pilots found out the hard way that what goes on in a MOA probably should stay there. Online sister publication AVweb.com was on this story like a wet blanket—including a podcast with one of the civilian pilots and another with an F-16 driver—and the story generated a lot of comments from rank and file pilots. Many of those comments evidence some misunderstandings of MOAs and SUA: What kind of operations is the military engaged in, anyway? Are civilian aircraft endangering themselves or military pilots by entering? Under what rules, if any, is the military operating when in a MOA? As often is the case in an online discussion, these and other questions got thrown about with no clear answers. But we’re here to help make sense of it all.
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