Keeping Up

What we too often do not know these days is that Climb Via was rolled out on April 3 and what it’s procedures are, that the Houston Metroplex converted over to an all new airspace management plan on May 29 and all the old STARs and SIDs went bye-bye, that the AIM was just revised, that there is an FAA VOR shutdown program on the horizon, and that there are over 500 ADS-B towers in operation around the U.S today. Conversations with leaders from the NBAA, the FAA, IBAC/IS-BAO, flight department managers, and individual pilots reveal numerous examples of our failures to keep up and agreement that we have a growing problem in aviation.

What to do? It is clear that change and the accelerating rate at which it is arriving is not going to go away. A review of FOMs and job descriptions from a sampling of flight departments and commercial operators reveals that, as an industry, we have not identified the problem and formalized a process solution. No one is designated as the ‘Manager of Keeping Up with Change’, the person responsible for keeping up with what’s happening and getting the word out within the organization. We haven’t identified the need, assigned the task, and described the duties and responsibilities (two examples – getting on the FAA website and signing up for the relevant alerts and notices that are available, and monitoring NBAA Air Mail). So guess what? In a world in which we are understandably focused on a safe and proficient response to owner/client demand that often challenges the resources available, we are not keeping up. Well folks, it’s time for a change.