Anbody going to that FAA Online chart meeting tomorrow?

TMetzinger said:
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[*]Publicly fund the operation so that they don't have to charge for the data. Tough sell nowadays.

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Not sure how tough of a sell that is.

They're talking 5MIL
Here's some gubmint spending to chew on

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquer...el=TOC_175970&

Grants-in-Aid for Airports:
2011-> $3,515,000,000
2012 -> $5,524,000,000

Why not make it $5,519,000,000 and call it a day?

We got $500,000 of this $ for a snowplow that I have only ever known to run on 2 ocassions. I've frozen up tires and ripped the stem out, busted my ass on the ice (and nearly lost a tooth on the towbar) and taken off and landed in 5" of rutted up iced over snow for weeks on end waiting for our subsidy to crank up and mow the snow off the runway. There's 10% right there.
 
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Numbers like that are what makes me shake my head and think this is more of a "land grab" at an opportune time "the Government is broke! Broke, I tell you!" (remember, they print the money... and the money's not backed by jack...) than a real need.
 
denverpilot said:
Numbers like that are what makes me shake my head and think this is more of a "land grab" at an opportune time "the Government is broke! Broke, I tell you!" (remember, they print the money... and the money's not backed by jack...) than a real need.
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Here is the 870 page budget estimate for the FAA for FY 2012:

http://www.dot.gov/budget/2012/budgetestimates/faa.pdf

Budget growth (FY 2012 is requested):
FY 2010: $15.6B
FY 2011: $16.2B
FY 2012: $18.7B

Personnel growth, full-time equivalents (FY 2012 is requested):
FY 2010: 47,973
FY 2011: 48,256
FY 2012: 48,539

Sorry I rounded only to the nearest $100,000,000 on the budgets (their numbers are rounded to the nearest $1,000,000.)

I feel bad that they've become so impoverished over the years. Shed a tear, folks, shed a tear. Their budget needs to grow faster than your investments in the stock market because - well - just because.
 
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Jim Logajan said:
Sorry I rounded only to the nearest $100,000,000 on the budgets (their numbers are rounded to the nearest $1,000,000.)
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A $100,000,000 here, a $100,000,000 there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money.:D
 
So after reading it, I'm no less angry at the FAA than before.

Overt dislike of small companies ("people in basements"), no hard data, called this meeting way before they had their fiscal ducks in order to be able to present a case that actually shows their "shortfall", and their fake number is all fixable with $0.03/gal on fuel.*

* I recognize that the fuel tax is overly "progressive" and hurts the airlines and turbine operators more than the piston operators, so it's not a great solution, but it shows the tiny magnitude of this whole fiasco in the overall budget.
 
Don't be too mad at the FAA in general. What I've heard is that none of this was coordinated by AeroNav with the HQ boffins.
 
Interesting. I'm pretty sure if any department in my company called a meeting that would interest the Press, without the knowledge of HQ... a whole lot of heads would roll.
 
rainsux said:
> all fixable with $0.03/gal on fuel.*

0.03 CENTS/gallon is what Hilton wrote.
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He may have written that, but $5M/186Mg is $0.0269/g, so closer to $0.03/g than to $0.0003/g.
($5M/year is what Aeronav is saying needs to be made up, and Wikipedia says avgas usage is about 186M gallons/year: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avgas )

Classic case of an error due to switching units somewhere during the computation. His example of a 100 gallon fill up actually costs you $3.00 more, not $0.03 more (e.g. you might see a bill of, say, $553 instead of $550.)
 
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Jim Logajan said:
He may have written that, but $5M/186Mg is $0.0269/g, so closer to $0.03/g than to $0.0003/g.
($5M/year is what Aeronav is saying needs to be made up, and Wikipedia says avgas usage is about 186M gallons/year: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avgas )
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Aeronav will spend 5 million just to hold meetings to discuss this problem. :yesnod::yesnod:
 
It looks like both numbers are basically right, if you include Jet-A, then it's about $0.0003/gallon and if it's just 100LL then it's $0.03/gallon
 
chartbundle said:
It looks like both numbers are basically right, if you include Jet-A, then it's about $0.0003/gallon and if it's just 100LL then it's $0.03/gallon
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If you are counting Jet-A, are you including airlines? I was under the understanding that they don't pay the fuel surcharge because they fund it by ticket taxes.
 
I don't like the tax fuel method except for the fact that it's in place, if you can cut something to donate the 5 Mill to AeroNav then do that but don't increase the gas tax for it. A chart is a chart. it costs the same to download it and use it once as it does to download it and use it everyday for 6 months. The latter would be subsidizing the former. Just send the FAA a flat per year fee for every pilot when you renew your medical. If you're on 5 year medical cycle, it's $500 if you're on year to year SI, then it's $100. I want the charts "Free as in Freedom" not "Free as in Beer"
 
> What I've heard is that none of this was coordinated by AeroNav with the HQ boffins.

I can confirm what you heard. When I shared what I found on the website
and what Abby told me with Aviation Safety, they went to the official FAA
media relations folks ... who dismissed my info/report.

Then, a few days later, after checking w/AeroNav, they acknowledged the
correctness of the websitie posting and declined to explain, discuss or engage
on any level regarding the matter.
 
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> Just send the FAA a flat per year fee for every pilot when
> you renew your medical.

I expect that those that seldom venture off 1 or 2 sectionals will disagree
with your proposal.
 
rainsux said:
> Just send the FAA a flat per year fee for every pilot when
> you renew your medical.

I expect that those that seldom venture off 1 or 2 sectionals will disagree
with your proposal.
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So, they'd rather pay for t hem all year long via a gas tax? I don't venture out of my area much, $150 is what my paper chart subscription is, granted that's the IFR charts too. So charge 50/per year due at medical time for VFR rated pilots and 150 per year for IFR rated pilots.
 
Got a call from my senator's office, the lady said she did speak directly with the senator about it, she sounded confused about what it exactly was and read back his points, but the jist I got was It's not before the Senate so there's not much he can do at this time but he is aware of the issue and agrees that the charts should stay openly available to anyone on the internet, if there is something he can do, he will.
 
From a recent FAA publication on the subject:


While FAA users do pay for the production of the paper charts and related products, the digital ATC Publications, charts, and other products are available at no cost to FAA employees or authorized contractors for official use.
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To me that makes a compelling case that Aeronav has to produce the charts for government use anyway, so the only "costs" they should be able to recoup from users are the small and incremental cost of distribution to folks who get it directly.
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TMetzinger said:
From a recent FAA publication on the subject:



To me that makes a compelling case that Aeronav has to produce the charts for government use anyway, so the only "costs" they should be able to recoup from users are the small and incremental cost of distribution to folks who get it directly. ​
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Didn't I mention that in post #43. :dunno::dunno:

N801BH said:
Bingo.... To the best of my knowledge the AOPA and the EAA are a non profit.... They just need to set up a arm of their organization that provides aero data and then the FAA has to give them all the gathered info free.... After all, we paid for that information once with fuel taxes... :yesnod::yesnod:
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Ben.
 
N801BH said:
Didn't I mention that in post #43. :dunno::dunno:




Ben.
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You made the argument (as I had earlier). What I posted shows that the FAA internally has use for the charts on their own, meaning that the taxpayers have to pay for the creation of them regardless of whether any non-government entity ever buys any.
 
So where it stands as of now?
The fees will be introduced in April as was planned?
 
I wouldn't mind paying a little for internet access of charts but unless they remain "free" we will no longer have the ability to post a link to an approach chart for discussion on forums like these. And losing that ability is very likely to lead directly to a decrease in safety.
 
gismo said:
I wouldn't mind paying a little for internet access of charts but unless they remain "free" we will no longer have the ability to post a link to an approach chart for discussion on forums like these. And losing that ability is very likely to lead directly to a decrease in safety.
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Hallelujah, somebody else sees it my way, Hell I don't mind paying $1,000/year as long as we ALL get to do that. I don't want to pay MORE for LESS and locking the charts behind a fee would decrease the value of them SOOOO MUCH. According my my Senator's office, he feels the same way... And I don't like him but his opponent is spearheading the cause of "keeping a Jesus statue on top of the local ski hill"... I'll vote for the one that actually did at least have an intern call me and read back talking points with the senators stance on an issue that actually matters to me.
 
So, I've not heard any official changes, but I noticed that the FAA On-Line ordering site is now allowing subscription orders for the digital products for 6 months after April,(through October). So, this means I don't have to hit the site every cycle to try and buy the next DVDs.

The problem, of course, from a business point of view is that I don't want to put any time or effort into my site if I'm just going to have to shut it down in October instead of April. So, we'll see what's next on "As the FAA Turns"
 
chartbundle said:
So, I've not heard any official changes, but I noticed that the FAA On-Line ordering site is now allowing subscription orders for the digital products for 6 months after April,(through October). So, this means I don't have to hit the site every cycle to try and buy the next DVDs.

The problem, of course, from a business point of view is that I don't want to put any time or effort into my site if I'm just going to have to shut it down in October instead of April. So, we'll see what's next on "As the FAA Turns"
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Like sands of the hour glass.
 
chartbundle said:
So, I've not heard any official changes, but I noticed that the FAA On-Line ordering site is now allowing subscription orders for the digital products for 6 months after April,(through October). So, this means I don't have to hit the site every cycle to try and buy the next DVDs.

The problem, of course, from a business point of view is that I don't want to put any time or effort into my site if I'm just going to have to shut it down in October instead of April. So, we'll see what's next on "As the FAA Turns"
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Hmm I need to renew my d-Tpp DVD in March. Will be interesting to see if they'll let me renew it for a full year.
 
Well, the nice folks at the FAA have posted an update now:

http://www.faa.gov/news/updates/?newsId=67438

As usual, it says nothing of any substance, except perhaps for this gem:
"However, some digital products the FAA made available were replicated and resold without authorization."

I'm not entirely sure who they expected were going to ask them for authorization to replicate non-copyrighted works produced by the federal government.
 
chartbundle said:
Well, the nice folks at the FAA have posted an update now:

http://www.faa.gov/news/updates/?newsId=67438

As usual, it says nothing of any substance, except perhaps for this gem:
"However, some digital products the FAA made available were replicated and resold without authorization."

I'm not entirely sure who they expected were going to ask them for authorization to replicate non-copyrighted works produced by the federal government.
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What I read is that "we'll scream safety though there's no real risk and charging for current charges might actually be counterproductive to safety. We'll charge what we damn well want because we have authorization to and here's a lie about unauthorized reproduction.

My Senator actually called me back after I left some rants, (He's up for re-election in a heated race and the entire population of MT is about that of a small city). He basically said he supports leaving the charts out there for free but his hands are tied until something hits the senate floor that he can vote on. My argument to him was that we'd all be fine with a 20 year old gazetteer except for the fact that the laws that we're compelled to abide by are on those charts, so it's like charging us to know what the laws are. I don't know how much that argument holds water but, I went with it.
 
Well SOMETHING will happen, that's for certain. I just went to renew my approach plates DVD from Aeronav, and could only renew through the set that runs out in the middle of October.

Oh, and it looks like the price doubled. Last year the DVDs were 13 for $115. My renewal of 6 just cost me $99.
 
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"There is no inflation going on. Pay no attention to the Bernanke behind the curtain." [cue smoke and flames...] :(
 
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