Tom

I don't suggest disobedience is the answer, but saying one should deal with customer service on the outside is completely unrealistic. There is practically zero recourse available short of a legal action. Bottom line....if the airlines keep playing the over-selling game and scenes like this are repeated, regulatory penalties will be developed and enforced. Really, the airlines are the root cause....this is their f'ing business. One shouldn't blame the victim.

Neglected to mention Ab Initio and other rapid-sequence flight training programs, which arguably constitute the most significant demand for new trainers (with their glass cockpits). These programs are military-like, meaning individuals training to be pilots as their full-time job. Living, eating, dreaming about the syllabus, next flight, debrief, etc. There's the joke about learning to fly (that I think also applies to medicine): you could teach a monkey to do it if you could bribe him with enough bananas--the monkey being too smart to voluntarily engage in such a foolish activity...

I don't know what the arrangements are currently at LRO, but the Charleston County Aviation Authority board meetings from 2013 indicated that the Authority was paying Atlantic $5,000 per month to operate at LRO. This isn't unusual. But the "pigs-get-fat-hogs-get-slaughtered" rule needs to apply in these circumstances. https://www.iflychs.com/CCAA-Reports/Meeting-Minutes/04-25-13-Minutes-Operations-Committee.aspx?feed=69d21f19-6e95-4667-8569-61ae1cca5e29 Also, NATA published a report last week including many not even half-truths, background for which has been referenced earlier in this thread (e.g. no real competition possible in most locations). Really...bush league obfuscation: http://nata.aero/data/files/gia/nata formal response on state of the industry.pdf

It'd cruise at 201mph, burn mogas, cost <500K out the door, and look like this:

-"They [FBOs] get "fee'd" and regulated up the wazoo by the local airport commission." -"coercion of the FBOs" -"inflicting excessive charges on the FBOs knowing the FBOs will pass those charges on to users" With fairly rare exception, the three points mentioned are myths that need to be dispelled. Most municipalities operate on some type of "percent of gross profits" capture for revenue from all operators on the field...not on special fees/charges/etc to specific FBOs. The "they don't want GA" idea is a non-productive self-imposed victim stance that needs to be dispensed with. The opposite is true...most municipalities do want what GA brings (i.e. increased local economy on and around the airport) and this is our strength. I've been to two "airport commissions," FAA, and AOPA in trying to open a FBO. The airport managers would like to help...but they have to apply the standards--they are stuck between a rock and a hard place. A brief take of status quo cluster: -Airport "Minimum Standards" are individual airport business rules developed by local municipalities with oversight from FAA -FAA via mandate requires municipalities to provide a business environment on the airport that allows for competition, etc -In the olden days, the Minimum Standard might have been "Office, a hangar, insurance," but this has morphed over time -Modern Minimum Standards read like the blueprint and business plan of a Landmark Aviation operation (hangars, services, and all) -FAA watched the Minimum Standards morph over time, basically acknowledging that the newer standards were bad for business, but did nothing -New MegaFBOs were built complying with the expensive standards (that they maybe helped develop???) -MegaFBO prices are getting out of control Where things will go: -If FAA goes to the municipalities and requires them to change the Minimum Standards in a manner that will promote competition, consistent with the funding mandate, this will allow new guys (like me) to come in and open little FBO services, but we'll steal revenue from the resident MegaFBO. Then MegaFBO will have a legitimate case against the municipality for changes in the business requirements, lost revenue, etc. The city, in turn, can cry foul to FAA for not having said or done anything earlier, asking for relief. For the time being FAA isn't motivated to take action against unreasonable minimum standards unless someone trying to open a business at one of these airports literally wants to make a federal case about it. For now, this isn't me. Whether the Feds take antitrust action against Landmark and friends for "supply side price fixation" I don't know. Certainly agree.

The market isn't free. The supply-side in most places is unnaturally manipulated. You neglect to appreciate the supply-side of the market. 1) In many areas pilots do not have a choice...all available choices (e.g. all the FBOs in a metropolitan area) operate without real competition. 2) I suggest allowing competition. Where not feasible (e.g. FBO in the middle of nowhere) operate on a cost-plus-profit model, similar to a water/electric utility. But the concern related in the AOPA piece is about price gouging (for want of competition in my opinion). But today the market isn't free. In most places, it's an unnatural oligopoly. -Respectfully, this is a form a Stockholm syndrome of sorts. I've heard it many times that the FBO is "just the unfortunate middle-man" who is passing on fees from the municipality to the pilot. Except in rare circumstances, this is nonsense (or at least the fees are passed on with an exorbitant markup). __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ -I have a full-time career but have been trying to open a FBO for the least 3+ years. -Where the tire meets the pavement on the entire FBO oligopoly issue......if you want to see what is preventing competition in FBOs....... look at the "Minimum Standards for Commercial Activity" requirements for any airport in a metropolitan area. These are online. Compare the requirements to Minimum Standards at airports on the opposite side of the country. The requirements are remarkably similar (the result of regulatory capture). The Minimum Stanards read as a basic business plan for a Signature-like organization and look nothing like the mom and pop FBOs of yesteryear...which is what most of us long for and what GA needs. -Airport Minimum Standards typically require EACH AND EVERY FBO on the field to offer: -tens of thousands of feet of hangar space -maintenance capability for turbine and piston -office space volume that far exceeds the space ever required for a traditional piston FBO -Signature-like FBOs have no problem with these Minimum Standards. Everyone else does (i.e. little-guy competitors and consumers). -I'm ready/willing to offer fuel, ground transportation, pilots lounge, flight planning, aircraft rental, and ramp space at a cost <20-25% than the sole (oligopoly-like) FBO on the field. But I can't. Municipality won't allow it. So GA piston guys continue to get hosed. It's the Minimum Standards. GA guys literally pay a premium (i.e. the extra 20-25%) to subsidize the palatial FBOs that the turbine guys enjoy. Yet people defend the oligopoly FBOs. I mean you can't make this stuff up.

-I've owned a Varieze. -Velocity has no practical luggage space. -Meticulous behind the firewall hygiene is in order to avoid minor or worse prop and engine issues. -Canards enjoy good glide ratios but the safety circle diminishes proportionate to the lower altitude you intend to fly. -Engine-out touchdown speeds on the canards are well into the red zone if not decelerating smoothly on touchdown. -Composite structures do not deform well unless designed to do so, and in these planes, they are not. In an accident sequence where energy must be dissipated, one would generally choose another type of construction (if worried about the unlikely scenario of an off-airport landing). -I'd factor in the price of a set of Continental jugs into the maintenance equation. -The difference in cost between experimental and certified panels is decreasing by the day. -If you're comfortable tinkering with the Velocity's panel and innards, a friendly IA will keep your maintenance costs minimal. -TN 20Fs hit the market for far below the price of a Velocity and it'd take many years of maintenance costs for a TN F to equal the out-of-pocket cost for the Velocity. I'd borrow/rent/steal a TN Mooney or TR-182 for one of these trips before going to the Velocity. The kids may not like the 02 but you'd probably like the extra altitude capability.

Worth re-posting this:

If not an AOPA, please join.

To loosely paraphrase Erasmus, in the career field where people don't RTFM the guy who does RTFM is king (or at least enjoys a good Yelp rating). Congratulations on choosing a relatively simple career where you enjoy the luxury of an assured good outcome if you simply RTFM. Others of us are not afraid toil in much more complicated endeavors where bad outcomes are a natural occurrence even when everything is done right and are more resilient in the face of failure We stopped equating our sense of self worth with Gold Stars somewhere in grade school.

If I suffered a prop strike and the crank dialed okay I reckon 15k spent installing a chute would offer equal or better aggregate safety than a 13K teardown (in addition to significantly increasing the utility offered by the plane). Also feel much better flying beyond TBO further saving money. To each there own, and this isn't an option with a Mooney.

With respect, the entire argument is analogous to the "VMC roll-overs occur because pilots aren't properly taught how to perform single-engine go-arounds." How many deaths did it take to realize that the treatment was worse than the disease? I have no immediate evidence to support this, but I strongly suspect that more pilots die from botching tight patterns than from flying/botching 747 patterns. More plainly, one is more likely to spin in because of an imprecise tight pattern than die than doing an engine-out straight ahead somewhere on a 747-sized downwind-base-final. Do you disagree? I not asking about what a proficient pilot should be able to do. I'm asking about reality. ...and if a 152 guy wants to fly a 747 pattern to make himself feel safe for himself and his passengers, any proficient single-engine pilot ought to have the skills (and minimal patience) required to accommodate him.

The "Flight Bonus" STC'd speed mod kit for the Skylane included Astroturf on the front of the cowling to decrease slippage of air behind the spinner (and associated drag). http://www.hortonstolcraft.com/Flight_Bonus_ACM.pdf

Content deleted.

There in no comparing the liability exposure of sports, scout, scuba, and summer camp physicals to the BasicMed physical. Most pilots know at least one, if not several, other pilots who have died in small plane crashes. In my medical career I can't recall ever meeting anyone who has ever met someone who has known a child who died playing sports from a heart condition, or during scouts, summer camp, nor any adult who has died while scuba diving. To ambulance chasers, every accident is an opportunity to fleece someone, pure and simple. Every aviation accident where the pilot is killed is grounds for a suit. Dead men tell no tales, so if Mr. Pilot augers in for absolutely any reason and the autopsy finds that Mr. Pilot had heart disease (which is almost the norm after age 40-50), it will be obvious to the attorney that Mr. Pilot was incapacitated by his heart condition and crashed as a result. In all reality, such cases will settle out of court. Many people do not understand that after accidents many medical lawsuits occur in effort to help the survivors pay for medical costs associated with the accident (i.e. the survivors wouldn't normally sue, but if there are grounds to get money to pay the medical bills, they might pursue a suit). This is one of the negative consequences of having a a system where we have neither a ~socialized healthcare system nor a system that requires people to carry the insurance coverage required to pay for care if/when injured. It has not been mentioned here that dentists, chiropractors, and naturopathic physicians all will be able to sign off on BasicMed (if they are a state licensed physician). With all due respect to my colleagues in healthcare, for certain you can always find someone in one of the more "bankruptcy prone" fields to sign off on anything. I don't agree with a "time will tell" approach to BasicMed. AOPA/EAA should get hot on getting rid of this "physician certification" issue before the cement really hardens.

This is not correct, see: AC 68-1. https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/AC_68-1.pdf

AOA indicators and stall warnings can not be relied upon to avoid these accidents. Watch the RV video below, noting the AOA warning during a level power-off stall and the lack of an AOA warning in the accelerated stall (until after the plane is on it's back). This RV video and the ASI low-altitude video should be considered must-watch videos on a somewhat routine basis for the very safety-minded. Start at 1;20- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJCMbzKt5Yk

Bob, People are wired differently. Some people witness what they perceive to be immoral acts and respond one way, other people witness the same event and do no see an immoral act and/or rationalize things differently. No one can legitimately claim to have the superior moral compass. In this instance the OP sees it one way, I see it another. It's fine if you feel more comfortable on the fence. If the OP is right, he's saving you and others from LASAR ripping you and others off. If the counter-argument is right, you and others will benefit from this pissing match by not having to subsidize the OP's tank fix. It's funny how people hate ATLA and govt regulations but they feel real uncomfortable about self-policing. Maybe (tangentially) these articles can introduce some better understanding of pissing matches and thus could be constructive, if tangentially: https://news.brown.edu/articles/2011/12/moralilty http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/26/health/brain-moral-judgments/

There is no "complete story" to be told. Nothing is in dispute other than the owner's willingness to pay for having his plane fixed. LASAR fixed the damn tank. The initial estimate was low for what ended up needing to be done. It's a freaking airplane. It's precisely in this type of situation why going to a place like LASAR is the way to go, and why you pay for what you get. "Justice" is other people not having to subsidize the OP's fix next time they are at LASAR because of this tightwad. If LASAR was crooked, the story would be different, but LASAR isn't. Contributing requires putting personal information into the payment (i.e. can't do anonymously). What is with the $7500 industry standard price? It's being thrown about like it's a fact. I understand Paul Beck does great work and certainly do not mean to imply anything negative about his work, but who on this board entertains a client who comes in and insists on only paying the price that the prospective client could pay if the prospective client went to that corner of the US (or world) where the board-member's service could be done for less money. Does everyone on this board guarantee price-matching for all their services in their lines of work? I think not.

-LASAR did my prebuy which I had converted to a blank-check annual. They repaired/replaced some stuff, deferred other stuff with tolerance advice to monitor. Completely honest, pleasure to do business with. -The OP seems like the kind of guy who'd buy a Bentley but skip the dealership maintenance to save a few dollars, then threaten to sue the poor corner gas station mechanic for over-charging him. The beauty of going to a place like LASAR is that when you get a $4k bill, you know that your bird needed $4k worth of work. That $4k worth of work maybe could have been done a little cheaper down the street, but not by someone who knows Mooneys so well. There's a greater chance that down the street you'd get a $6K bill for people learning on your plane AND end up with a sub-par job in the end. -My home IA tells me stories about guys like this. There's a special place in heaven for IAs who have to deal with these whiney new-money clowns who have no appreciation for the true value of what an honest and skilled shop provides. I'll pay your bill in total if you agree to completely get out of aviation and agree to never let anyone know that you tainted a Mooney with your presence in it.

Like the 3rd class medical, Special Issuances (SI) are not going away. FAA will handle them as before. No change is foreseen, planned, or desired (this from the horse's mouth). Withstanding the above, in a PBOR2 world, opting out of the medical might particularly make sense for those requiring an SI that is onerous and expensive to maintain (e.g. treadmill testing every couple years). Again, though, what AME would PBOR2 "certify" you if you haven't met standard FAA medical testing requirements for flight? In a PBOR2 world, the best doc probably is over 80 years old and doesn't have flying magazines but rather John Birch Society pamphlets scattered about the office with a picture of Ron Paul and family hanging on the walls...

In this instance we can use the word never. This will never happen. FAA will continue to issue Special Issuances to pilots, including 3rd class. FAA/NTSB philosophically doesn't like the idea of pilots flying around without medicals and technically FAA is obligated to certify pilots who meet medical criteria (even if by special issuance). I would be wrong on this if FAA unilaterally did away with the 3rd class, but this is regulatorially (if that's a word) unfathomable. Look at the truck driver world...they now let chiropractors do DOT physicals, but they did not get rid of the DOT physical requirement. -I'm medical, not legal. Somewhere in the bowels of your insurance policy are requirements that you have a valid medical. -If an accident occurs where medical factors were not contributory, and the required (contracted) medical is out of date, case law seems to differ in different states regarding insurance company's abilities to get out of paying (many aviation attorney webpages have info on this). Some states abhor insurance "gotchas" while others see a contract as a contract and don't require causality findings to allow denials of coverage. -Obviously if there is any medical concern in an accident and the insured did not have the medical that the policy required, good luck -The LSA analogy is quite dynamic and I think too often over-simplified. LSA can't fly at night, can't make flights associated with business, are limited to slow and simple planes, and at least in early days were ranks full of seasoned pilots. I don't think it fair to compare the LSA plane/pilot risk pool to the plane/pilot/operational risk pool that PBOR2 affords. I'm not an actuary, but that's my strong impression.

http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/us-airman-spots-aircraft-fuel-leak-at-35000-feet-on-narita-bound-flight This is an example where being able to have gauges that provide high-fidelity information to the pilot would be essential. Despite the text of the article, my understanding of the event is that the stewardess initially discounted the claims of the airman witness (she supposedly told him it was a normal contrail from the wing). It was only after the pilot saw the video on the airman's phone that the flight was diverted. But again, the entire incident makes me question the validity of the fuel gauge where even high-fidelity gauges are available. Something $hit is going to happen. Supposedly, once the follow-on flight was made, the airman was given a first-class seat (where he wouldn't be able to notice a safety-of-flight problem).

I have three EIS units waiting to instal on aircraft in an unrelated business venture. My understanding is that: 1) EIS units don't have reliability problems 2) Because they don't wear out, EIS units pay for themselves after a couple thousand hours of not overhauling/replacing the mags that they replace 3) You can save some fuel burn, at the expense of increased CHTs. The fuel saved helps the units pay for themselves independent of not having to rebuild the mag it replaces, but CHT concerns and cylinder wear costs may offset. Thus the supposition that a PF exhaust lowering the CHT may offset the CHT increase from the electronic ignition, and that a PF exhaust and and electronic ignition might be a nice match, especially on a vintage Mooney. I've paid $2-300 per annual for exhaust welds/repair on my vintage Mooney.