Tag Archives: FAA

Pence’s White Greed National Space Council

06 Tuesday Mar 2018

Posted by in Aging, Business, Discrimination, Ethics, Exploration, Generational, Government, NASA, Politicians, Politics, Public Image, racism, Science, Space, SpaceX, Taxes, Technology, United States, US History, US Space Program, Women

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Mike Pence, who is Donald Trump’s Number 1, but acts like he’s a Number 2, has recreated the National Space Council in his own image. The purpose of the group of is to channel taxpayers money out of government space program projects and give to the wealthy corporations. He seems blissfully unaware that the 29 member Council has the scientific qualifications, and diversity of race and political ideology of Republican fundraiser in Mississippi.

Pence’s Space Council of Non-Diversity

Mike Pence:  The No Science Guy

Pence, who has less charisma and intelligence than former VP Dan Quayle, has put together a Council of primarily investor-owned corporations. No current NASA staff is included, and the former NASA employees on the Council have been retired from the agency an average of over 19 years.

In order to make sure the Council does not get caught up in any science issues, Pence has added five people who were selected because of their politically conservative resume, but devoid of any scientific qualifications.

However, there is one science teacher on the Council. No one seems to know who she is or what her qualifications are, but she is a “Board Certified Science Teacher.” 

The National Space Kangaroo Council 

The qualifications and interests of the National Space Council members are as follows:

Current NASA Staff (0)

None included

Current FAA Staff (0)

None included

Former NASA Staff (7)

Buzz Aldrin, (Retired from NASA 46 years ago)

Walked on the Moon in 1969, retired from NASA 1971, retired from Air Force 1972, a proponent of space exploration, punched faked-Moon-landing-conspiracist Bart Sibrel in the face (Sibrel had it coming.)

Eileen Collins, (Retired from NASA 12 years ago in May)

Flew Space Shuttle four times, speaker at 2016 Republican National Convention

Homer Hickam, (Retired from NASA 20 years ago)

Former NASA engineer and author

Pam Melroy, (Retired from NASA 9 years ago)

Space Shuttle astronaut, former Lockheed Martin staff, former FAA staff, former DARPA staff.

Harrison ‘Jack’ Schmitt, (Retired from NASA 42 years ago)

Apollo 17 Astronaut and former conservative U.S. Senator. Believes climate change is natural, not human-caused

David Wolf, (Retired from NASA 5 years ago)

Space Shuttle astronaut and physician

Pete Worden, (Retired from NASA 2 years ago)

Former Air Force General and NASA Ames Center Director

Minor Space Background (1)

G.P. Bud Peterson, Served as a visiting research scientist for NASA during summers of 1981 and 1982. Chairperson of the National Science Council and President of the Georgia Institute of Technology

Private Corporations Seeking Taxpayer Money (15)

Conservatives Appointed For Their Political Ideology (No space industry qualifications) (5 + 2 Former NASA)

  • Dean Cheng, Political conservative working for the Heritage Foundation, a politically conservative organization
  • Eileen Collins, (See former NASA staff)
  • Steve Crisafulli, Former conservative politician, Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives
  • Newt Gingrich,  conservative politician and former Speaker of the House
  • Governor Kay Ivey, Conservative Governor of Alabama
  • Fred Klipsch, Conservative promoting the defunding of public schools, Founder and Chairman of Hoosiers for Quality Education
  • Harrison ‘Jack’ Schmitt, (See former NASA staff)

Unknown (1)

  • Pamela Vaughan, Science Teacher

Maybe we didn’t win the space race after all.

Air Travel Teaches Us Not To Listen

24 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by in Business, Communication, Customer Relations, Customer Service, Government, Government Regulation, Management Practices, Opinion, Politics, Public Image, Public Relations, Re-Imagine!, Taxes, Technology, Travel

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Zombies are real people forced to listen to airport/airline announcements

Airports and airlines are dedicated to teaching people how to not listen.

There are multiple studies, solid scientific research, on how humans respond to communication and how we best learn and retain information. Unfortunately, air travel offers the antithesis of everything we know about communication.

Outdated Audio Technology
Consider the airport. We have the technology for crystal clear sound in any announcement system. Visit a Disney property and you will hear clear announcements. Every word will be perfect with little or no distortion or hiss.

“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls…” 
Disneyland announcement

If we can do it in Disneyland, solely for entertainment purposes, shouldn’t airports invest in the same quality of public announcement (PA) system when it involves matters of even greater importance? PA systems designed to go into ceiling tiles suck. Maybe it’s time we considered a system designed for the airport environment of 2014, not the office building of 1960.

Zoned Out
Every gate at an airport is a different audio zone, and yet few airports have designed PA systems for this environment. Because most airports have overlapping seating at every gate, passengers for one flight could be sitting in any of three gate areas or standing out in the concourse area just outside of the gate. Few airports seem to understand this geographic distribution. Some airports limit gate announcements to one gate area, resulting in flight announcements to be missed by those passengers not in that gate’s audio zone. Other airports group multiple gates into one zone, so that passengers four of five gates away are hearing boarding announcements for every flight in the area.

Over Communication
The greatest sin of airports is over communication. It seems that airports have a perverse need to create ongoing, excessive, annoying noise. Do these sound familiar?

Please keep your bags with you at all times. Unattended baggage may be confiscated and destroyed.

The Federal Aviation Administration allows you to carry up to three containers of liquids, aerosols, and gels. They must be in a clear plastic bag and removed from your luggage for inspection. Please check with your airline for more information.

Do not carry anything in for anyone else….

I have heard these announcements and many more like them while waiting in the gate area. The gate area within TSA’s secure zone. Anyone in this area has been through the security check point and they and their luggage has been searched and cleared. None of these announcements make sense in an area where everyone has been declared safe to board a plane. They are just noise.

At the gate you will also hear multiple announcements by the gate agent. If there is any training involved of gate agents on how to make PA announcements it would not be apparent from my experience in air travel. Recently, I was waiting for a flight in the Newark, New Jersey airport. The longest period I counted without an announcement was nine seconds. Between the meaningless airport general announcements and the multiple gate agent announcements the passengers were bombarded with endless noise.

The Solution
There is important information that passengers need before they board their flight; however, it is impossible for passengers to determine important announcements for the noise generated in an airport. The remedy involves the FAA, Airport Authorities, and the airlines to reevaluate the purpose of airline announcements…actually they need to assign a purpose to their communications.

Better equipment is a must, and better training on how to effectively communicate information over a PA system. Another possibility is to run all announcements through a centralized public address system where boarding announcements would be made by one trained person who filtered information and determined what audio zones would hear it. 

There is another approach but it would involve a complete redesign of the concept of an airport. That’s not likely in an industry that took decades to determine that an iPod isn’t a threat to a plane’s avionics.

FAA + Airlines + Personal Electronic Devices = Public Mistrust

03 Tuesday May 2011

Posted by in Communication, Customer Relations, Ethics, Government Regulation, Information Technology, Management Practices, Public Relations, Travel

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by Paul Kiser
USA PDT [Twitter: ] [Facebook] [LinkedIn] [Skype: 775.624.5679]

Paul Kiser

Recently, a 73 year-old man flying from Minneapolis, Minnesota to Winnipeg, Canada was ordered by the flight crew of an unnamed airline to stop using his Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) device during the flight. The GPS device tracks the user’s current position by receiving (not transmitting) a signal from orbiting satellites. Currently over half the world’s airlines allow it to be used during a flight, but not this airline. The man was arrested and fined for not obeying the flight crew instructions to turn it off and also refusing to buckle his seat belt. Not surprisingly his last name was, Ego…I’m not making this up…his name was Michele Ego (See article in Winnipeg Free Press.)

…the incident was based on the Flight Attendant enforcing an 18 year-old policy of restricting the use of  personal electronic devices (PED’s) that has little or no real experimental data to justify it…

Are these really a threat to airline safety?

Clearly Mr. Ego was in the wrong by refusing to obey the instructions of the flight crew; however, the incident was caused by a flight crew enforcing an 18 year-old policy of restricting the use of personal electronic devices (PED’s) that has little or no experimental data to justify it. The zeal of some flight attendants in following this baseless policy creates a source of conflict and mistrust between the flying public and the flight crew, all of which could be avoided, if not for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the airlines.

…the policy uses decades old research that could only pose a theoretical threat by PED’s, without any experimental proof…

The lack of evidence for the restrictions on PED’s (such as MP3-4 players, GPS, cell phones, etc.) is well-known, and yet, airlines stick to a policy of restricting them, especially during takeoffs and landings because of the FAA’s order issued in 1993, that each airline must prove a PED will not interfere with the plane’s avionics before passengers are allowed to use them during a flight. The reasoning for the policy uses decades old research that concluded that PED’s pose a theoretical threat.

During a Congressional Hearing on the issue in July of 2000, over a year before the first generation of Apple’s iPod was sold, the issue of PED’s impact on a plane’s avionics was discussed. During the hearing a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) database of anonymously submitted in flight incidents was presented. Of 69,000 reports, 52 flight crews blamed passenger PED’s for the plane’s avionics problems. In most of the cases from 1992 to 1998, incidents on planes as small as a Cessna and large as a Boeing 757, related problems in navigational readings that seemed to be corrected when passengers were asked to turn off the devices.

…In each case the problem could not be duplicated under controlled test conditions…

In several of those cases, the alleged offending PED was purchased from the passenger and attempts were made to reproduce the problem. In each case the problem could not be duplicated under controlled test conditions. These results were fortified by two commissioned studies of PED’s, including cell phones, in 1983-8, (a study for the airlines,) and 1992-6, (a study for Congress.) Both studies offered no real evidence of avionics interference caused by PED’s.

(See Blog article: Why Your iPad Won’t Kill You)

Regardless of the lack of evidence, neither study could prove that PED’s were absolutely incapable of interference, and in a British study on cell phone transmissions, it was determined that the threat from PED’s was from pre-1984 devices that could theoretically cause interference with a plane’s avionics. Despite a lack of real evidence of a threat, the FAA issued its 1993 ruling that said that airlines should restrict the use of all PED’s below 10,000 feet (for takeoffs and landings) and only allow use of PED’s above 10,000 feet if they could prove it didn’t interfere with the plane’s avionics.

The fact is that today’s commercial airliner has been designed with shielding on all electronic systems to protect it against all types of electromagnetic radiation, including a strike from a lightening bolt, which seems far more likely to happen than an incident of electromagnetic interference caused by a PED like an iPod, GPS device, or cell phone*.

(*Interestingly, it was not the FAA, but the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) who issued a rule in 1991, that cell phones could not be used by any aircraft –including private planes and lighter-than-air balloons– because of the fear that phones in a line of sight of multiple cell phone towers could cause problems with ground-based cell phone traffic.)

With the airlines blessing, both the FAA and FCC have created an environment that forces flight attendants to be the voice of ‘Chicken Little’, by enforcing flight rules governing PED’s that make no sense in 2011. The ineptness of the FAA and the airlines in their handling of the issue of PED’s undermines the relationship of trust that passengers must have in the flight crew if they are to be believed and obeyed during critical situations involving a real threat to passenger safety.

The question that remains is whether or not the mythological threat of PED’s to aircraft safety is greater than the loss of trust of the flying public.

Rogue Flight Attendant shows his arrogance, Airlines dislike for customers

16 Monday Aug 2010

Posted by in Business, Communication, Crisis Management, Customer Relations, Customer Service, Ethics, Government Regulation, Lessons of Life, Management Practices, Passionate People, Public Relations, Rotary, Travel, Violence in the Workplace

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by Paul Kiser
USA PDT  [Twitter: ] [Facebook] [LinkedIn] [Skype:kiserrotary or 775.624.5679]

Paul Kiser

Last week Steven Slater was anointed as the working person’s hero by CNN and based on Internet response it would seem that most admire this jetBlue flight attendant and his dramatic act of quitting his job over the intercom, grabbing two beers, opening the plane door, inflating the emergency escape slide, and leaping into history. His behavior was allegedly in response to a passenger that refused to listen to his order to sit down as the plane taxied to the gate, and it has somehow elevated Slater to fame and offers of mega-financial deals.

Yet, the facts indicate that he is anything but heroic, and more accurately described as an arrogant, customer-loathing, self-obsessed man who betrayed the passengers on his plane and showed how control-obsessed some flight attendants have become in putting their petty desires over customer service.

Steven Slater - It's all about him

First, the facts of the alleged incident that supposedly drove him to his tantrum are in dispute. He claims that while the plane was taxiing to the gate a passenger stood up to get his bag and that while confronting the passenger the bag came down and hit him in the head. Yet, passengers claim the injury to his head was there earlier in the flight and no one can validate his fight with a passenger. By his own admission, Slater said he has thought about doing this act for 20 years.

Also, when Slater opened the starboard door and blew the slide, the plane was at the gate with the jetway in place. If the port side external door was not open, it could have been easily opened and he could have exited without the big show that took a plane out of service….but it wouldn’t have been as dramatic.

I do not doubt that there was some incident, but it seems that the facts according to Steven Slater don’t quite match the story. If a passenger stood up and began getting his bags before the plane had made a complete stop then that passenger was certainly in the wrong, but here is the catch, flight attendants have almost unlimited authority and if there was a major issue Slater only had to report the incident and the passenger would be spending some quality time with the New York Police. The passenger has no such power over the flight attendants, so why would Steven Slater portray himself as some beaten down victim at the mercy of a passenger?

Note that Steven Slater’s drama not only disrupted and punished the passengers on his flight, but his act also affected the passengers waiting to board that plane when it left New York. The plane had to be taken out of service leaving hundreds of people stranded. Slater’s co-workers were left to clean up his mess and he is a hero? To whom? What possible positive example does this petty, childish, little boy set for anyone? That bad behavior is rewarded?

Of course there are problem passengers. I have witnessed people who are rude, offensive, and ignorant of everyone around them. I will not defend these people, but I will say that most passengers are well-behaved even when they are dealing with a ground staff or flight crew that has belittled and/or humiliated them.

What I see more often on planes is not rude passengers, but rude flight crews that revel in power over their customers. No where in the business world do employees hold more power than flight attendants have over their passengers. Bizarre rules that have no meaning are enforced beyond common sense.

My favorite rule is turning off all electronic devices. Most Southwest flight attendants use the phrase, “..anything with an on/off switch must be completely turned off.” The rationale is that electronic devices will interfere with the plane’s ‘sensitive’ avionics, which is not true. Every urban area is blanketed with cell phone towers, microwave towers, and millions of electronic devices that transmit electromagnetic signals. Below 10,000 feet are electromagnetic waves that are far more powerful than anything a passenger can carry on a plane. If there were a danger of electronic interference it is more likely to come from external signals, rather than internal signals. In addition, the FAA and the airlines have yet to re-create an avionics problem that they could trace back to a mobile phone or an passenger’s electronic device. However, every airline enforces these rules even though they are only FAA advisories, NOT requirements.

The mix of petty rules and petty flight attendants, along with airlines that see passengers as the evil that they must deal with in order to gain a better dividend for their investor has created an abusive situation in the skies and on the ground. It’s not an excuse but passengers are reacting to the way they are being treated. I don’t condone bad behavior by passengers, but I’ll be damned if some drama queen* should be glorified for being the worst customer representative in an industry that hates their customer but still wants their money.

(*I know Steven Slater is openly gay and I am not slamming gays with the ‘drama queen’ remark. In theatre, and in life, there are drama queens, both male and female, and if the shoe fits…)

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