Emergency Declarartion Triggers FAA Fishing Expedition

[Clark1961]

Now.... It would be nice if the self exiled expert would re- appear and give a logical and honest explaination on why there are obvious differences in opinions of the FSDO's around the country, and more importantly, why a simple directive from the head of the FAA for a difinitive straight answer to a common question.....

what I don't get is why do Ben and Nate think this one individual would/should/could give them an answer...the guy doesn't run the place, he just works there...repeatedly asking and pointing out the flaws in the given responses is a personal attack in that light

 

[Velocity173]

what I don't get is why do Ben and Nate think this one individual would/should/could give them an answer...the guy doesn't run the place, he just works there...repeatedly asking and pointing out the flaws in the given responses is a personal attack in that light

Exactly. He's just trying to work within the restraints he's been given with his best interpretation of the rules governing his conduct.

What amazes me is that some on this board can't understand how there can be different interpretations and differing policies at FSDOs. Differing opinions and interpretations is what this whole forum is based on. How many times do we "discuss" some reg and its impact on how we operate? All the fricking time.

Heck, I probably have a dozen controller friends that I bring up questions to from this board all the time. I get like three different answers to any of those questions! "Well that's not how we look at the .65." or "That's what the .65 says but we have a local policy that says..." They're always debating about rules at their own facilities. One was just telling me the other day that they were arguing about the requirement of broadcasting a new ATIS code if no one is even on the freq. Same exact thing I went through as an instructor pilot. We would nit pick and dissect but at the end of the day, not everything is black and white and written in stone.

For the person in power who enforces the rules, there has to be some latitude, some "best judgment" involved. Personally, I like it that way.

 

[MarkZ]

Sad, but true.




Again sad, but true.......

+2...

 

[Jay Honeck]

*sigh*

I guess everyone -- even the FAA -- is now a "protected class".

I long for the good old days when we could actually discuss problems, and potential solutions without internalizing the discussion. Now, even our government employees get all snuffly and leave when someone asks them pointed questions, cuz we hurt their feelings?

IMHO, this is a cop out. In today's PC world, whenever someone is unable (or unwilling) to answer a question, it's easier to claim offense and walk away.

Nate pointed out that FSDOs can't even agree on a rule for something as simple as a GoPro mount on a Skyhawk -- and this was "interrogating"? What is happening to us?

 

[Clark1961]

Exactly. He's just trying to work within the restraints he's been given with his best interpretation of the rules governing his conduct.

What amazes me is that some on this board can't understand how there can be different interpretations and differing policies at FSDOs. Differing opinions and interpretations is what this whole forum is based on. How many times do we "discuss" some reg and its impact on how we operate? All the fricking time.

I think both Nate and Ben understand different interpretations. What they would like to see is either central guidance or operationally developed and accepted guidance. Of course neither level of guidance can be imposed externally. Even if congress said "do it" the FAA has shown the ability to avoid action. The FAA is what it is and short of a total overhaul it will remain so...

 

[Palmpilot]

Nate seemed to think that the guy's use of the word "diverse" was an attempt to blame pilots for the variations in FSDO interpretations. When the guy tried to explain what he actually meant, Nate refused to accept the explanation.

I noticed and appreciated the fact that the guy was not claiming that the FAA is perfect.

 

[Everskyward]

*sigh*

I guess everyone -- even the FAA -- is now a "protected class".

I long for the good old days when we could actually discuss problems, and potential solutions without internalizing the discussion. Now, even our government employees get all snuffly and leave when someone asks them pointed questions, cuz we hurt their feelings?

IMHO, this is a cop out. In today's PC world, whenever someone is unable (or unwilling) to answer a question, it's easier to claim offense and walk away.

Nate pointed out that FSDOs can't even agree on a rule for something as simple as a GoPro mount on a Skyhawk -- and this was "interrogating"? What is happening to us?

It's not so much the question that Nate asked as the fact that the question was attached to a bunch of ranting. I guess the backlash to the supposed moment towards PC is to try to be as un-PC as possible. I'm not just picking on Nate. There are many others who do this. Yeah, we get the fact that it is "who you are". However, as I pointed out, people (even FAA employees) participate in this forum voluntarily and some would rather not read all that, especially if they are the target, especially if they are new here. So you can't be surprised if they leave.

 

[Velocity173]

I think both Nate and Ben understand different interpretations. What they would like to see is either central guidance or operationally developed and accepted guidance. Of course neither level of guidance can be imposed externally. Even if congress said "do it" the FAA has shown the ability to avoid action. The FAA is what it is and short of a total overhaul it will remain so...

But that guidance, that standard, takes time. Change in the FAA doesn't occur over night. Maybe they're reviewing mounting an external camera on an aircraft and will be making a ruling in the near future. I don't know. I know it took them several years to come up with a new set of regulations to curb our "unacceptable" accident rate in HEMS. When they were finally ready to implement those changes earlier this year, they decided to push it off another year to give companies time to comply. It's a slow process and I think some people don't realize how extensive the regulatory process is to try and make all sides agree. UAV regs also come to mind.

What I'm saying is, don't complain to the little guy who is trying to comply with the directives they're given. They might be working in a slow, bureaucratic organization but they're trying to do their best from their little "cubicle."

 

[denverpilot]

what I don't get is why do Ben and Nate think this one individual would/should/could give them an answer...the guy doesn't run the place, he just works there...repeatedly asking and pointing out the flaws in the given responses is a personal attack in that light

I never demanded an answer. I called out his excuse for answers not being consistent across FSDOs. He seemed interested in defending it.

I used an example of the camera thing because around here someone will always demand an example if I'd have just said "answers are inconsistent" and left it at that. (Or a useless eyeroll from R&W.)

That changed rapidly to waving his hands and saying it was complex and acting like there was a reason to take the whole thing personally.

No reason to. If you're going to engage the customer and blame problems on the customer, it's probably not going to go too well for you in any business.

Having worked on some high dollar customer service gigs over my career, we had not only the ability but the *mandate* to write up "tech tips" for other CS staff. You did not get a raise if you didn't write them, period. All it took in that organization to find the "company" answer was to search the tip system. If it didn't come up with the answer, you won the lotto that day -- you got to write it. There was a formal review process before it got "published".

Someone pointed out that's not how FAA works. I say, "so what"? Change it. Probably not this guy's responsibility so that's fine, but then don't go out in public and declare it's the customer's fault that you don't have a consistent internal answer for things.

I suppose it's a shocking emotional event to find out that the real world actually can and does handle very difficult questions from customers by empowering everyone to document the answers in a computer system and puts reasonable controls around what's published from that internal system.

The whole system ran on a pair of Linux boxes in California and covered every customer service group in a multinational company with $1B gross revenue. Easily. You didn't have to participate but if you didn't you'd slowly watch your earning power vs inflation erode away.

Everyone from Tier 1 up through Tier 4 qualified support staff and the specialized support staff associated with only a single product as Subject Matter Experts could enter anything. The reality was that sometimes the Tier 1 & 2 folks got it "mostly right" but missed details. That was okay. Tier 3, 4, SMEs, and managers had to hit "approve" before it would publish bad or incomplete info. Any of those folks could edit the document to make it clearer and editing counted toward the "participation" during annual reviews. SMEs rarely wrote the original, they just edited the existing.

I'm only pointing it out as one possible method of doing it, mostly to prove that such a thing is possible. Naysayers will say "that'll never work" while some of us actually lived it and did it.

It requires a cultural shift and mindset shift to do something that customer-focused. It was brought about ultimately by budget and time squeezes. If you didn't want to waste whole days researching stuff customers ran across regularly, you searched the system first.

It also served as a great way to document "pain points" from the field back to engineering. They had read-only access, so Tier 4s and SMEs would simply cut and paste the link to the document describing some awful config problem into the Engineering ticket that they were allowed to open as requests to redesign things. By the time an Engineer got tasked to look at it, there was this "living document" of problems and workarounds they could base a fix on.

Anyway, besides it being really easy to create a system that allows front-liners to collaborate on answers, and back on point...

I don't care if the FAA ever answers the silly question or if they ever answer it consistently. But don't try to blow smoke up my ass and say it's too complex or too hard to answer. No problem was too big for that system, all it took was time to hash it out internally.

You have to empower your front line folks in customer service. The stories about large organizations doing it wrong are just that. More examples of doing it wrong. No point in pointing at the people doing it wrong and comparing them to other people doing it wrong and switching to *that* as an excuse. I call that "navel-gazing".

You hunt for the places doing it right and emulate them.

Most government organizations culturally don't look for ways to improve. As best as I can tell it's rooted in budgetary differences. My customers can choose to leave.

 

[denverpilot]

It's not so much the question that Nate asked as the fact that the question was attached to a bunch of ranting. I guess the backlash to the supposed moment towards PC is to try to be as un-PC as possible. I'm not just picking on Nate. There are many others who do this. Yeah, we get the fact that it is "who you are". However, as I pointed out, people (even FAA employees) participate in this forum voluntarily and some would rather not read all that, especially if they are the target, especially if they are new here. So you can't be surprised if they leave.

Participating here as a professional is a far cry from participating here as a hobbyist.

If someone called out your employer's methodology of what they do in aviation on here, would you make excuses for it, or would you have to say it wasn't your responsibility to set the policy and here's where you can call to discuss it with someone empowered to answer that call and make a decision?

Would you take it personally that someone thought your employer did a poor job? Maybe a little, but if it wasn't your job to set policy, you'd get over it pretty quick, I think.

I doubt you'd make it out to be personal drama or be offended by it.

Its a little hard to make this point since none of us are your company's customers, but I think you can figure out what I'm saying here. If there were some forum full of your customers would you probably not expect everyone there would love you and might ask pointed questions of you if you blamed them for the things your company does?

I've had it happen. "Hey! You work for brand X! Why don't you guys do it like Brand Y and Z?!" I posted the correct phone number to call to bring that to the attention of product management and have the group a heads up with a link to the discussion and that they might receive a call. Done. Not my job to defend them.

 

[Jay Honeck]

The bottom line, Nate, is that you approached a government employee with the assumption that he was interested in addressing customer service issues. This is a paradigm that simply does not exist in large government bureaucracies, dooming the conversation from the start.

I've known many wonderful government employees. Not one has ever cared about the overall mission of the organization they worked for. In fact, to care about such things was seen as a career-threatening attitude.

Once you understand this, their actions (or inaction) becomes logical and predictable.

Your dialogue was doomed to fail. You might as well have been speaking different languages. In some ways, you were.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk

 

[Palmpilot]

Re: Emergency Declaration Triggers FAA Fishing Expedition

I think it's possible to have civil discussions about how the FAA does their job, but I'm starting to regret starting this thread.

 

[Everskyward]

Participating here as a professional is a far cry from participating here as a hobbyist.

That is not true. Everyone here is an individual. They don't represent their employer unless they decide that is their role.

If someone called out your employer's methodology of what they do in aviation on here, would you make excuses for it, or would you have to say it wasn't your responsibility to set the policy and here's where you can call to discuss it with someone empowered to answer that call and make a decision?

Would you take it personally that someone thought your employer did a poor job? Maybe a little, but if it wasn't your job to set policy, you'd get over it pretty quick, I think.

I doubt you'd make it out to be personal drama or be offended by it.

Its a little hard to make this point since none of us are your company's customers, but I think you can figure out what I'm saying here. If there were some forum full of your customers would you probably not expect everyone there would love you and might ask pointed questions of you if you blamed them for the things your company does?

I don't come here representing my employer and I would not discuss our policies other than in a very general way. Some of you know who it is but I don't voluntarily make that claim on an open internet forum. If people here constantly trashed my employer I would not participate. In fact, if I knew that this forum was full of customers I wouldn't participate either. But you're correct in that I wouldn't give everyone the "goodbye I'm leaving" speech. I would just be gone.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

Nate,

The bottom line is that someone who likes aviation came here to talk about airplanes. They happened to work for the FAA, you took them to task, and I'm sure that talking about work is NOT what they want to do in their free time!!! So a potentially valuable contributor is gone. You're never going to get answers about the FAA by grilling an employee on an internet message board. I'd have left too.

 

[Lindberg]

That changed rapidly to waving his hands and saying it was complex and acting like there was a reason to take the whole thing personally.

No reason to. If you're going to engage the customer and blame problems on the customer, it's probably not going to go too well for you in any business.

I didn't get the impression that any of us are here to "engage customers" or as a matter of customer service, save maybe the actual business reps. The rest of us are just here to participate in an internet forum, learn, and shoot the ****.

 

[coloradobluesky]

The FAA does a lot of good things too. I know they have talked to manufacturers and pursuaded them to solve real problems with aircraft maintenance, longevity, reliability, comfort and safety. Lots

 

[Mason]

If someone called out your employer's methodology of what they do in aviation on here, would you make excuses for it, or would you have to say it wasn't your responsibility to set the policy and here's where you can call to discuss it with someone empowered to answer that call and make a decision?

Would you take it personally that someone thought your employer did a poor job? Maybe a little, but if it wasn't your job to set policy, you'd get over it pretty quick, I think.

I doubt you'd make it out to be personal drama or be offended by it.

That's pretty much the way I handled it when I was working at the airline and somebody commented about some stupid policy or procedure. My posts were limited to trying to explain, as best I could, why things were the way they were. Not to make excuses, but to explain things someone may have not understood or overlooked. Never took it personally. Never got mad.

Been out of that for awhile and seldom get sucked into such discussions any more.

 

[denverpilot]

Nate,



The bottom line is that someone who likes aviation came here to talk about airplanes. They happened to work for the FAA, you took them to task, and I'm sure that talking about work is NOT what they want to do in their free time!!! So a potentially valuable contributor is gone. You're never going to get answers about the FAA by grilling an employee on an internet message board. I'd have left too.

I didn't "take him to task" prior to him making irrational excuses of "diversity" of his customers causing his employer's problems. He didn't have to go there.

You guys can make me out to be the bad guy all you want, but he claimed to have the answer or at least an answer. I simply disagreed with his excuse as not accurate for a whole lot of cases.

Like I said, if you regularly go out in public and start blaming your customers for your employer's organizational and leadership problems, one should probably expect a bad day.

(*Especially* a customer who fought hard politically to get you your budget.)

Note there was no... "We are working to fix that." or, "Here's the manager who can address that problem we've been aware of for half a decade." Or... "I've opened your information request and here's the ticket number you can track the progress through."

Even just, "Wow, I didn't realize it was that bad!" might have been a white lie I could digest.

Like Jay says, I may as well be speaking from a different planet. Customer service is my bread and butter.

I'm understanding in that he's apparently soft-hearted about it, but the reality is, it's broken. I didn't attack him personally other than to say the excuse he gave, simply wasn't true.

I can't tell ya how many times I've been on the phone with a customer and they voiced significant real concerns about my company or its products to me. The correct answer is not to blame the customer, ever. This is covered in every Customer Service 101 course ever taught.

I always take the honest road. "Here's what I can do for you and here's what I can't do for you. Let's work on the first part and I'll find a manager for you to discuss the second part after we at least fix the first four problems of your ten you listed. It also sounds like you're concerned you were sold something that doesn't do what you need it to do, and I can get you in touch with your Sales representative as well. Shall we fix those first things you mentioned?"

He didn't have to explain. He didn't have to defend. He CHOSE to.

I think customer service is fun. That's why I do it. To fix customer's problems and give them a solid person to turn to who will not ever blow smoke up their ass.

It has the opposite effect of knowing almost intuitively when smoke is being blown up mine.

He's really in a cool position. Front line, seeing operators daily, able to make a real difference.

Instead of being upset about customer feedback, he should take it and run with it. If he can't, then just say so. What better advocate than to have a customer call your boss and say, "I think this guy wants to help but it appears that your organizational structure won't allow it. How about you figure out how to empower him to do so?"

Of course I already see the problem with that. In the private sector that would trigger conversations that might lead to a change. In the public sector the bad leadership would see that as a threat and punish him, make an example of him, make sure no front-liner ever attempted to change things ever again.

 

[Captain]

Denver, your posts do show an obvious disdain for all thing related to the government. You keep trying to compare government to business...particularly service orientated business.

News flash, the government is not a corporation. Corporations have zero accountability. If you're mean to your customers and they leave and the business folds then so what? See? Zero accountability.

Government, on the other hand, is accountable to ALL of us. And I mean ALL. You don't like taxes on gas as a pilot? Well many other non-pilots don't like paying for runways. Government has to find a balance. You want to make an example of GoPro cameras being regulated differently? Well maybe most people in f'ing Alaska don't give a flying flip if a camera falls off a plane with a one in ten godzillion billion trillion chance of hitting anything near a man made structure while folks in LA would prefer a little more protection from your after market strap on camera bomb.

Point is the government isn't the boogie man and you clearly have a personal agenda regarding anything government. My guess it's a recent development, as in the past 7 years or so...but that's just a guess.

Stop watching fox would be my advise, but it's up to you. Pray on it,

 

[Everskyward]

I didn't "take him to task" prior to him making irrational excuses of "diversity" of his customers causing his employer's problems. He didn't have to go there.

You guys can make me out to be the bad guy all you want, but he claimed to have the answer or at least an answer. I simply disagreed with his excuse as not accurate for a whole lot of cases.

Like I said, if you regularly go out in public and start blaming your customers for your employer's organizational and leadership problems, one should probably expect a bad day.

(*Especially* a customer who fought hard politically to get you your budget.)

Note there was no... "We are working to fix that." or, "Here's the manager who can address that problem we've been aware of for half a decade." Or... "I've opened your information request and here's the ticket number you can track the progress through."

Even just, "Wow, I didn't realize it was that bad!" might have been a white lie I could digest.

Like Jay says, I may as well be speaking from a different planet. Customer service is my bread and butter.

I'm understanding in that he's apparently soft-hearted about it, but the reality is, it's broken. I didn't attack him personally other than to say the excuse he gave, simply wasn't true.

I can't tell ya how many times I've been on the phone with a customer and they voiced significant real concerns about my company or its products to me. The correct answer is not to blame the customer, ever. This is covered in every Customer Service 101 course ever taught.

I always take the honest road. "Here's what I can do for you and here's what I can't do for you. Let's work on the first part and I'll find a manager for you to discuss the second part after we at least fix the first four problems of your ten you listed. It also sounds like you're concerned you were sold something that doesn't do what you need it to do, and I can get you in touch with your Sales representative as well. Shall we fix those first things you mentioned?"

He didn't have to explain. He didn't have to defend. He CHOSE to.

I think customer service is fun. That's why I do it. To fix customer's problems and give them a solid person to turn to who will not ever blow smoke up their ass.

It has the opposite effect of knowing almost intuitively when smoke is being blown up mine.

He's really in a cool position. Front line, seeing operators daily, able to make a real difference.

Instead of being upset about customer feedback, he should take it and run with it. If he can't, then just say so. What better advocate than to have a customer call your boss and say, "I think this guy wants to help but it appears that your organizational structure won't allow it. How about you figure out how to empower him to do so?"

Of course I already see the problem with that. In the private sector that would trigger conversations that might lead to a change. In the public sector the bad leadership would see that as a threat and punish him, make an example of him, make sure no front-liner ever attempted to change things ever again.

I doubt that management of most private sector companies would think highly of employees discussing policy on the Pilots of America open forum. From what Mark (?) has posted, that's probably true of the FAA too. There are places for those things and this is not it.

 

[Velocity173]

Denver, your posts do show an obvious disdain for all thing related to the government. You keep trying to compare government to business...particularly service orientated business.

News flash, the government is not a corporation. Corporations have zero accountability. If you're mean to your customers and they leave and the business folds then so what? See? Zero accountability.

Government, on the other hand, is accountable to ALL of us. And I mean ALL. You don't like taxes on gas as a pilot? Well many other non-pilots don't like paying for runways. Government has to find a balance. You want to make an example of GoPro cameras being regulated differently? Well maybe most people in f'ing Alaska don't give a flying flip if a camera falls off a plane with a one in ten godzillion billion trillion chance of hitting anything near a man made structure while folks in LA would prefer a little more protection from your after market strap on camera bomb.

Point is the government isn't the boogie man and you clearly have a personal agenda regarding anything government. My guess it's a recent development, as in the past 7 years or so...but that's just a guess.

Stop watching fox would be my advise, but it's up to you. Pray on it,

+2.
Not to mention, for the 1 millionth time, he's complaining to the wrong person!
It's like complaining to an AF pilot at your local base because you don't like the jet noise late at night. Don't complain to them, they don't handle those complaints. They're not staff (mgmt) and don't make policy. You complain to the people who write the regs, not the ones who follow them and in some cases bend them.

I for one thought Knox brought some excellent insight into the challenges they face as ASIs...even if it was for only one day. Sounds to me like he's one of the ones out there doing what's best for the aviation community and would have been an invaluable source of information on POA. Instead, he gets run off by the usual anti-govt trite and criticism of an honest answer of "diversity" at different FSDOs.

 

[RotorAndWing]

+2.
Not to mention, for the 1 millionth time, he's complaining to the wrong person!
It's like complaining to an AF pilot at your local base because you don't like the jet noise late at night. Don't complain to them, they don't handle those complaints. They're not staff (mgmt) and don't make policy. You complain to the people who write the regs, not the ones who follow them and in some cases bend them.

I for one thought Knox brought some excellent insight into the challenges they face as ASIs...even if it was for only one day. Sounds to me like he's one of the ones out there doing what's best for the aviation community and would have been an invaluable source of information on POA. Instead, he gets run off by the usual anti-govt trite and criticism of an honest answer of "diversity" at different FSDOs.

Yup......

 

[nauga]

It's like complaining to an AF pilot at your local base because you don't like the jet noise late at night.

+3
I was going to compare it to berating the cleaning lady at the local Hilton because the stock price is dropping.

If you think every member of a 4+ million(1) person organization is lazy, corrupt, or incompetent then the problem is likely not the organization.

If you've never met a government employee who cared about "...the overall mission of their organization" then get out and introduce yourself to a few Marines.

(1. source: OPM 2012 stats, assuming that by "the government" you mean *federal* government only. If you include state and local the number is larger and your problem is worse.)

Nauga,
former sandcrab

 

[RotorAndWing]

If you've never met a government employee who cared about "...the overall mission of their organization" then get out and introduce yourself to a few Marines.

 

[Jay Honeck]

If you've never met a government employee who cared about "...the overall mission of their organization" then get out and introduce yourself to a few Marines.

Do not ever equate a Marine with the run of the mill, pathetically unmotivated, counting the days till retirement government bureaucrat. That's an insult to every member of the military.

They aren't even remotely related.

 

[Jay Honeck]

News flash, the government is not a corporation. Corporations have zero accountability. If you're mean to your customers and they leave and the business folds then so what? See? Zero accountability.

Government, on the other hand, is accountable to ALL of us. And I mean ALL.

Wow. That's the most bass-ackwards view of the world I think I've ever seen.

In a private business, your fate absolutely, positively, 100% rides on the success of the organization. You have absolute 100% accountability. Failure is utter, ruthless, and awful.

In government, the organization continues regardless of the success of the mission. Customers happy, customers sad, it matters not. You're going to drift your way to a happy retirement, no matter what happens, no matter how awful your performance is, no matter how worthless (or worthy) your job is. There is ZERO accountability to ANYONE.

Which is precisely why we assign jobs that cannot be done any other way to government. Or, rather, that's how we used to do it, back when America was solvent.

 

[RotorAndWing]

Do not ever equate a Marine with the run of the mill, pathetically unmotivated, counting the days till retirement government bureaucrat. That's an insult to every member of the military.

They aren't even remotely related.

The military is a part of the US Government, and thus are "government employees".

Your "run of the mill, pathetically unmotivated, counting the days till retirement, government bureaucrat" slur is an insult to those who are employed by the government that try very hard to do their jobs to the best of their ability.

 

[Jay Honeck]

The military is a part of the US Government, and thus are "government employees".

Your "run of the mill, pathetically unmotivated, counting the days till retirement, government bureaucrat" slur is an insult to those who are employed by the government that try very hard to do their jobs to the best of their ability.

Sorry, apples and oranges. Do not ever equate military service with being a bureaucrat. Our military men and women deserve our highest admiration.

BTW: When I run across a motivated, effective, non-military bureaucrat in government "service", I will be the first to celebrate it. I'm almost 56 years old, and there's always hope that I will run across one of them.

 

[denverpilot]

Denver, your posts do show an obvious disdain for all thing related to the government. You keep trying to compare government to business...particularly service orientated business.



News flash, the government is not a corporation. Corporations have zero accountability. If you're mean to your customers and they leave and the business folds then so what? See? Zero accountability.



Government, on the other hand, is accountable to ALL of us. And I mean ALL. You don't like taxes on gas as a pilot? Well many other non-pilots don't like paying for runways. Government has to find a balance. You want to make an example of GoPro cameras being regulated differently? Well maybe most people in f'ing Alaska don't give a flying flip if a camera falls off a plane with a one in ten godzillion billion trillion chance of hitting anything near a man made structure while folks in LA would prefer a little more protection from your after market strap on camera bomb.



Point is the government isn't the boogie man and you clearly have a personal agenda regarding anything government. My guess it's a recent development, as in the past 7 years or so...but that's just a guess.



Stop watching fox would be my advise, but it's up to you. Pray on it,

"News flash" ... Any response here to your incorrect assumptions about who businesses and government are accountable to, would be SZ material, as is your post. Feel free to take it over there.

And you're arguing for situational laws and regs? Really? That'll work out well for the guy who flies his airplane from Alaska to LA when an LA inspector sees it.

Kinda like only two inspectors who ever saw Hoover fly decided he needed his medical yanked. Or maybe we need a different PTS for Alaska vs LA?

Let's shoot for that quality level. Sounds wonderful.

Inconsistency breeds contempt.

Plus, taking the "diversity" argument to the extreme, you're making the logical argument that State run local Aviation enforcement would be better than Federal, if you think hard about it.

Either there's one set of consistent, available, Federal regs or there's not. Either there's a professional police force who knows the rules, or there's not.

If an FBI guy showed up and said he gets to interpret and enforce the rules differently in Alaska vs LA, you'd jump on that in a heartbeat.

Same with an IRS Agent.

It just ain't true.

I doubt that management of most private sector companies would think highly of employees discussing policy on the Pilots of America open forum. From what Mark (?) has posted, that's probably true of the FAA too. There are places for those things and this is not it.

Quite right. So why did he? He opened the door.

If he didn't want to discuss company policy on an open forum, he shouldn't have.

It's a discussion forum after all. Discussion. He posted it. I responded.

+2.

Not to mention, for the 1 millionth time, he's complaining to the wrong person!

He presented himself as the guy with the answers on a public forum. I responded.

This is what public forums are for.

If he misrepresented himself, or his position, fine. He can say so and point to where to get the answer.

+3
I was going to compare it to berating the cleaning lady at the local Hilton because the stock price is dropping.

If you think every member of a 4+ million(1) person organization is lazy, corrupt, or incompetent then the problem is likely not the organization.

If you've never met a government employee who cared about "...the overall mission of their organization" then get out and introduce yourself to a few Marines.

(1. source: OPM 2012 stats, assuming that by "the government" you mean *federal* government only. If you include state and local the number is larger and your problem is worse.)

Nauga,
former sandcrab

So he's not an inspector, the front line rule interpreter and first stage of law enforcement for the entire Agency? And didn't present himself in public as such?

I'm sure he's not the cleaning lady.

Ironically I gave him the benefit if the doubt and assumed he could actually address the topic he brought up.

You're "defending" him by lowering his status and worth? Nice.

It's more like asking a Detective of 30 years what the rules are on jaywalking, and the detective runs away crying that he didn't expect anyone to be so "mean".

Feel free to point out where I said everyone at any organization was corrupt or didn't care. This guy acted like he cared and wanted to speak for his employer, and then bailed on the softball question about camera mounts, crying that his feelings were hurt.

That camera thing wasn't even a hard question. It was a softball.

Y'all enjoying making up things I didn't say?

Dog pile on. It's getting all Kum Bah Yah here in the pile. The whiners that this isn't the "front porch" sure are enjoying a nice good old fashioned lynch mob.

Sure... Go after the Private Pilot and aircraft owner with a valid question, of someone who held themselves out as being THE front line job role person in the FAA organization/expert capable of determining if a violation of the regs has taken place. And I know he has to have significant knowledge and background to even hold that position...

Who would have thought a lowly Private Pilot even asking such a softball question was "too harsh" for a professional law enforcement agent?

ROFL. Y'all are adorable. Really. R&W with his one word responses that add no value are particularly cute.

He hasn't provided that list of inspectors and answers from the various FSDOs yet, I see.

 

[RotorAndWing]

Sorry, apples and oranges. Do not ever equate military service with being a bureaucrat. Our military men and women deserve our highest admiration.

Unlike you, I am a veteran (USNavy). And unlike you I understand how government works. The military is part of the US Government whether you approve or not.

BTW: When I run across a motivated, effective, non-military bureaucrat in government "service", I will be the first to celebrate it. I'm almost 56 years old, and there's always hope that I will run across one of them.

I could use your same analogy on owner motels, all being decrepit, roach infested, run down flea bags. I've yet to run across one that wasn't.

 

[RotorAndWing]

"News flash" ... Any response here to your incorrect assumptions about who businesses and government are accountable to, would be SZ material, as is your post. Feel free to take it over there.

And you're arguing for situational laws and regs? Really? That'll work out well for the guy who flies his airplane from Alaska to LA when an LA inspector sees it.

Kinda like only two inspectors who ever saw Hoover fly decided he needed his medical yanked. Or maybe we need a different PTS for Alaska vs LA?

Let's shoot for that quality level. Sounds wonderful.

Inconsistency breeds contempt.

Plus, taking the "diversity" argument to the extreme, you're making the logical argument that State run local Aviation enforcement would be better than Federal, if you think hard about it.

Either there's one set of consistent, available, Federal regs or there's not. Either there's a professional police force who knows the rules, or there's not.

If an FBI guy showed up and said he gets to interpret and enforce the rules differently in Alaska vs LA, you'd jump on that in a heartbeat.

Same with an IRS Agent.

It just ain't true.



Quite right. So why did he? He opened the door.

If he didn't want to discuss company policy on an open forum, he shouldn't have.

It's a discussion forum after all. Discussion. He posted it. I responded.





He presented himself as the guy with the answers on a public forum. I responded.

This is what public forums are for.

If he misrepresented himself, or his position, fine. He can say so and point to where to get the answer.




So he's not an inspector, the front line rule interpreter and first stage of law enforcement for the entire Agency? And didn't present himself in public as such?

I'm sure he's not the cleaning lady.

Ironically I gave him the benefit if the doubt and assumed he could actually address the topic he brought up.

You're "defending" him by lowering his status and worth? Nice.

It's more like asking a Detective of 30 years what the rules are on jaywalking, and the detective runs away crying that he didn't expect anyone to be so "mean".

Feel free to point out where I said everyone at any organization was corrupt or didn't care. This guy acted like he cared and wanted to speak for his employer, and then bailed on the softball question about camera mounts, crying that his feelings were hurt.

That camera thing wasn't even a hard question. It was a softball.

Y'all enjoying making up things I didn't say?

Dog pile on. It's getting all Kum Bah Yah here in the pile. The whiners that this isn't the "front porch" sure are enjoying a nice good old fashioned lynch mob.

Sure... Go after the Private Pilot and aircraft owner with a valid question, of someone who held themselves out as being THE front line job role person in the FAA organization/expert capable of determining if a violation of the regs has taken place. And I know he has to have significant knowledge and background to even hold that position...

Who would have thought a lowly Private Pilot even asking such a softball question was "too harsh" for a professional law enforcement agent?

ROFL. Y'all are adorable. Really. R&W with his one word responses that add no value are particularly cute.

He hasn't provided that list of inspectors and answers from the various FSDOs yet, I see.

 

[Clark1961]

I never demanded an answer. I called out his excuse for answers not being consistent across FSDOs. He seemed interested in defending it.

I used an example of the camera thing because around here someone will always demand an example if I'd have just said "answers are inconsistent" and left it at that. (Or a useless eyeroll from R&W.)

That changed rapidly to waving his hands and saying it was complex and acting like there was a reason to take the whole thing personally.

No reason to. If you're going to engage the customer and blame problems on the customer, it's probably not going to go too well for you in any business.

Having worked on some high dollar customer service gigs over my career, we had not only the ability but the *mandate* to write up "tech tips" for other CS staff. You did not get a raise if you didn't write them, period. All it took in that organization to find the "company" answer was to search the tip system. If it didn't come up with the answer, you won the lotto that day -- you got to write it. There was a formal review process before it got "published".

Someone pointed out that's not how FAA works. I say, "so what"? Change it. Probably not this guy's responsibility so that's fine, but then don't go out in public and declare it's the customer's fault that you don't have a consistent internal answer for things.

I suppose it's a shocking emotional event to find out that the real world actually can and does handle very difficult questions from customers by empowering everyone to document the answers in a computer system and puts reasonable controls around what's published from that internal system.

The whole system ran on a pair of Linux boxes in California and covered every customer service group in a multinational company with $1B gross revenue. Easily. You didn't have to participate but if you didn't you'd slowly watch your earning power vs inflation erode away.

Everyone from Tier 1 up through Tier 4 qualified support staff and the specialized support staff associated with only a single product as Subject Matter Experts could enter anything. The reality was that sometimes the Tier 1 & 2 folks got it "mostly right" but missed details. That was okay. Tier 3, 4, SMEs, and managers had to hit "approve" before it would publish bad or incomplete info. Any of those folks could edit the document to make it clearer and editing counted toward the "participation" during annual reviews. SMEs rarely wrote the original, they just edited the existing.

I'm only pointing it out as one possible method of doing it, mostly to prove that such a thing is possible. Naysayers will say "that'll never work" while some of us actually lived it and did it.

It requires a cultural shift and mindset shift to do something that customer-focused. It was brought about ultimately by budget and time squeezes. If you didn't want to waste whole days researching stuff customers ran across regularly, you searched the system first.

It also served as a great way to document "pain points" from the field back to engineering. They had read-only access, so Tier 4s and SMEs would simply cut and paste the link to the document describing some awful config problem into the Engineering ticket that they were allowed to open as requests to redesign things. By the time an Engineer got tasked to look at it, there was this "living document" of problems and workarounds they could base a fix on.

Anyway, besides it being really easy to create a system that allows front-liners to collaborate on answers, and back on point...

I don't care if the FAA ever answers the silly question or if they ever answer it consistently. But don't try to blow smoke up my ass and say it's too complex or too hard to answer. No problem was too big for that system, all it took was time to hash it out internally.

You have to empower your front line folks in customer service. The stories about large organizations doing it wrong are just that. More examples of doing it wrong. No point in pointing at the people doing it wrong and comparing them to other people doing it wrong and switching to *that* as an excuse. I call that "navel-gazing".

You hunt for the places doing it right and emulate them.

Most government organizations culturally don't look for ways to improve. As best as I can tell it's rooted in budgetary differences. My customers can choose to leave.

I'm sorry the FAA doesn't work the way you want it to work.

 

[Jay Honeck]

I could use your same analogy on owner motels, all being decrepit, roach infested, run down flea bags. I've yet to run across one that wasn't.

Yes, but you could always go somewhere else, if you found the motel owner to be incompetent.

I've tried that with government, and it just doesn't work. From Wisconsin, to Iowa, to Texas, over three decades, it's been the same level of mediocrity, from the same type of unmotivated workers. It's like dealing with the walking dead, and it's really sad.

 

[RotorAndWing]

Yes, but you could always go somewhere else, if you found the motel owner to be incompetent.

I've tried that with government, and it just doesn't work. From Wisconsin, to Iowa, to Texas, over three decades, it's been the same level of mediocrity, from the same type of unmotivated workers. It's like dealing with the walking dead, and it's really sad.

Yea I hear ya!

Same with those motels, I keep going to one after the other, and yet they are always crap! So I guess they are all crap.

Really sad there are no nice clean decent owner motels in this country.

 

[denverpilot]

I'm sorry the FAA doesn't work the way you want it to work.

Never been one to stand around saying "it can't be fixed" when someone is spending my money on something.

He showed up here, professional law enforcement, and claimed his bureaucracy can't possibly answer simple questions about the regulations that the very same organization writes, consistently. I didn't say that. He did. Fact.

Sounds like an excellent reason to push for some cost-cutting. Fool me once...

 

[Everskyward]

Never been one to stand around saying "it can't be fixed" when someone is spending my money on something.

He showed up here, professional law enforcement, and claimed his bureaucracy can't possibly answer simple questions about the regulations that the very same organization writes, consistently. I didn't say that. He did. Fact.

Sounds like an excellent reason to push for some cost-cutting. Fool me once...

Kmox, along with some others, gave you an answer. You didn't like it and kept pushing.

 

[wsuffa]

Participating here as a professional is a far cry from participating here as a hobbyist.

Most employers, including the government, prohibit individuals from participating in any public forum as an "official" or "professional" representative without specific permission. Participating as an individual, with views that may or may not represent those of the employer are usually OK. Every major organization I've worked for has had a similar policy - the last one even required approval of any technical paper presented at scientific or engineering forums.

 

[Captain]

Jay:

You've never served?? Not that that is a huge problem but you have some nerve telling me and others that have ACTUALLY BEEN MILITARY how to feel about the military. You just lost a ton of respect right there sir.

Military gets respect for the job they do, but they ARE government employees.

Denver:

If this needs to go to the SZ it's because you can't defend your position without the safety net of your SZ herd mentality. I'm fine right here in the sun shine, thank you. You'll notice I haven't posted in that cess pit of right wing hell stew for quite some time. I just now am starting to feel clean again.

 

[Fearless Tower]

I guess I need to accept the fact that some people hate the government/FAA so badly, that nothing I say will make any bit of difference.

This is very true. Overall POA is a good place, but you will find the anti-authority sentiment very thick here.

 

[Fearless Tower]

We used to be a lot better.



I kinda think more of us need to get to the PoA fly-ins like Gaston's and the FlyBQ. When more of us knew each other in person, this was a much friendlier place.

I think there is some truth to that. I think you are less likely to treat people disrespectfully that you have met or know in person.

But, how do you explain Ed? He claims to have been to more POA fly-ins than anyone.