The January CFI Class in Las Vegas is Filling Up

If you didn’t already know, we do a quarterly Initial CFI class at the North Las Vegas airport in Nevada.  The class can be taught under the Chennault Flying Service Part 141 program, so VA benefits and the like are accepted through them.  CFI Bootcamp teaches our program and any additional topics to cover the 141 requirements.  The next class will be January 8 - 14, 2024.  Seats are filling up faster than usual.  The classroom can hold ten maximum, and around five are already taken.

If you want to finish your CFI before the Spring season, this is a good class for you.  You do the Class and Flight or just the class.  You also have the option of attending remotely via Zoom.  We use a special camera with a whole class view and subviews of the instructor and anyone who speaks.  The camera centers on whoever is talking in a subview but continues to show the entire classroom and instructor.  It’s like three views in one big window.  It also has built-in microphones, so the audio of who is speaking is excellent.  It makes the online experience like being in the classroom.

The time to book this course is now if you intend to complete both the class and flights.  We need six weeks to book checkrides and arrange flight training.

Book online at cfibootcamp.com, click on the calendar choice at the top of the page, and select the class.  

FAA is Doing a Lot of Work on New Airport Specific Runway Incursion Avoidance Videos

The runway incursion avoidance team at the FAA is working hard to produce some excellent videos highlighting airport operations with historically more runway incursions.  For example, one video is about operations at KPDX (Portland International) in Oregon.  These are great teaching tools for flight instructors.  AOPA’s Air Safety Institute also has done much work in the area.  To access the AOPA content, you need to be a member of AOPA.  The FAA information is, of course, free.

The good news is that runway incursions and GA accidents are trending downward.  At all the conferences I attend, there is usually someone from the FAA or NTSB, and a common topic is safety.  That almost always ends up being a conversation about the accident trends and the number of runway incursions.  To shore up your knowledge of Runway Incursion Avoidance, here is a checklist:

1. Read the Pilot’s Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge - Airport Operations chapter.  Ensure you understand the airport signage, pavement markings, and so on.

2. If you use ForeFlight, watch the video on runway proximity advisor.  This feature tells you when you are approaching a runway and how much runway is left if you enter the runway at this point.  It does this verbally.  It also announces the runway number.

3. Go to https://www.faa.gov/airports/runway_safety/resources You’ll find many resources, including a runway safety quiz there.

4. Read AC 91-73B.  It addresses SOPs for avoiding runway incursions.  You can find it here https://www.faa.gov/documentlibrary/media/advisory_circular/ac%2091-73b.pdf

5. Watch this YouTube video from the FAA about Runway Incursions Mitigation and Avoidance.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KU2vCR5nYbc

6. If you are an AOPA member, visit https://www.aopa.org/training-and-safety/air-safety-institute to see what the Air Safety Institute offers about Runway Incursion Avoidance and other safety-related items.

The Weird Class G Airspace is Almost Gone! - Plus Other Airspace and Regulations You May Not. (The Odd Items.)

In our 159th Power Hour on November 18th, we covered graduate-level work on Airpace and Charts.  In that hour, I brought out some of the oddities regarding airspace.  Here are a few of the lesser-known airspace oddities and potential Checkride Questions!

Class G airspace in the CONUS (Continental United States) ends where Class E begins in some places as high as up to but not including 14,500 MSL.  Why?  The Continental Control Area begins at 14,500 MSL.  What is that?  It was where all controlled airspace started in the US during the early years of high-altitude flight.  At that altitude, a controller would not steer an airplane into terrain.  Mt. Whitney is the highest terrain in the CONUS at 14,494 MSL (depending upon who you ask.)  Below 14,500 MSL, controlled airspace was around controlled airports and airways; the rest was Class G.  If you haven’t noticed, the FAA is recharting almost all of the places that Class G can go up to, but not including 14,500 MSL.  It’s where you see the Cyan Vignette cutouts.  The area inside of those cutouts, the hard side of the vignette, is Class G from the surface up to, but not including, 14,500 MSL.  It’s almost all gone as of this newsletter date.  Why?  Because controllers can send IFR traffic direct, not on an airway, but the airspace can’t be Class G.  Because of that, they are eliminating Class G cases above 1200 AGL.  There are still places, such as in New Mexico and near Mt. Denali in Alaska, but they are getting fewer and fewer.

RVSM.  Reduced Vertical Separation Minimum.  To flle an IFR flight plan at altitudes between FL290 and FL410, your airplane must be equipped to meet the RVSM requirements.  Additionally, pilot training is also required.  ATC can lower the vertical separation between aircraft from 2000 ft to 1000 ft between these flight levels. You can find more about this here https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/separation_standards/rvsm  It’s a dense read to get the whole thing down.  The ICAO requirements are more complex, but fortunately, operating domestically is easier.  

A few takeaways from the domestic regulation are:

1. There are additional equipment requirements for the airplane, which is expensive.  

2. The pilot training for domestic RVSM is simple and can be completed with an online course that takes an hour or so.

Do you know the Oxygen requirements in FAR Part 91.211(a)?  I’m sure you know the classic three:

1. More than 30 minutes above 12,500 but below 14,000 - Crew.

2. Above 14,000 anytime - Crew.

3. Above 15,000 anytime - Crew and Passengers must be provided with O2.

What about pressurized airplanes - 91.211(b)?  This has been coming up on some of our Initial CFI checkrides lately. 

1. Above FL250, each occupant must have at least a 10-minute oxygen supply available.

2. Above FL250, if the cabin pressure is greater than 14,000 feet, one crew member must wear a secured and sealed mask with oxygen automatically supplied at all times unless operating below FL410, and each pilot has a quick donning mask that can be reached with one hand and put on within 5 seconds.  In this case, neither pilot needs to wear a mask.

3. When one pilot needs to leave the controls of the aircraft above FL350, the other pilot must wear a secured and sealed mask with oxygen automatically supplied at all times while the other pilot is not at the controls.

In the power hour, we covered everything to do with airspace. The above was just some of the odd ones.  You can see our past 159 power hour shows by joining our Bootcamp Plus member site.  There is a free Basic membership with around a dozen shows, and the regular membership has them all.  You can cancel anytime.  Go here to see the options.  https://www.bootcamp-plus.com/Bootcamp-Membership  

You can also see a short video and recap of the airspace power hour and other ones for free here.  https://www.cfibootcamp.com/power-hour-lessons

ProTips

1. Do a risk assessment before every training flight with your student. Make it part of the students and your culture of safety. This should only take ten minutes if you use the right tools. Use the Wx briefing capability in ForeFlight and the Risk FRAT using the iPhone app - 172 performance.  Also, use the 3D view and the Profile View in ForeFlight. 

2. When coming to a full stop, just before the airplane stops, momentarily release the brakes and allow the plane to coast a few inches before applying the brakes again. This technique delivers a smooth stop without the last-second jerk that usually occurs. 

3. When giving or planning on completing a flight review, use one of the “Focused Flight Review” scenarios from AOPA’s Air Safety Institute. They set the expectations and tell the pilot what to study/do prior and what will be done on the ground and in flight, including the completion standards. These focused flight reviews take the guesswork and subjectivity out of the process.