AOPA and other industry groups are working with the FAA as it develops a new classification system for general aviation airports. The agency is conducting a year-long study that seeks new, expanded GA airport categories for use in a national integrated systems plan.
The study will consider replacing the two current classifications—general aviation and reliever—with as many as five that would provide more definition of airport services and activities in the National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems (NPIAS). Airports included in the NPIAS are considered significant to national air transportation and therefore eligible for federal airport improvement grants.
“Adopting additional classifications would parallel the method by which the FAA categorizes commercial-service airports,” said Greg Pecoraro, AOPA vice president of airports and state advocacy.
A final report is expected to contain a complete and categorized list of almost 3,000 airports, and detailed descriptions of the new categories. That information also will appear in the 2012 NPIAS Report to Congress, to be published next fall.
AOPA’s focus in discussing the study with the FAA has been to emphasize the importance of every kind of GA airport in the national airports system. Association staff told the FAA that it is important for the report’s final version of the classification system to make clear that each of these airports makes an important contribution to aviation and its home community.
No medical, no problem
AOPA and EAA work on exemption plan
Imagine if every time you completed a flight review you also took a free online course on medical self-certification that allowed you to continue flying—using your driver’s license as the baseline of health.
That could become a reality if the FAA accepts a request that would allow pilots to use their driver’s license and medical self-certification to fly aircraft of 180 horsepower or less and carry one passenger. AOPA and EAA are working to extend the driver’s license medical from sport pilot privileges to include pilots flying recreationally in slightly larger aircraft.
The associations are proposing that pilots would have to complete a medical self-certification online course every 24 calendar months in addition to determining that they are medically fit before every flight; pilots could align it with their flight review dates.
The online course, which would be developed by the Air Safety Institute, would be open to all pilots and explain the self-certification steps along with the pilot’s responsibilities associated with certifying fitness for flight.
"Pilots visit the aviation medical examiner every six months to five years, depending on the class of medical and age of the pilot. The rest of the time they self-certify prior to each flight that they are medically qualified," said Kristine Hartzell, AOPA manager of regulatory affairs. "This would follow the same principle, using a driver’s license, completion of the online course, and self-certification in lieu of the medical certificate.
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