Brian Baker Intro to Aeronautical Sience

  Air Traffic Control Towers and Flight Service Stations         We all undoubtedly know about the tall round building at airports and probably have some idea of what they do. You probably would be surprised that they are just a small part of the bigger picture of your safety and the safety of others. Air Traffic Control Towers (ATCT) handle airport operations, takeoff, landing, and aircraft flight plans. You probably didn't know that there are about 1.5K Flight Service Stations (FSS) scattered across the United States, Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico (Flight, 2021). So what do these entities do? How are they different from each other? An ATCT is usually the tallest building on an airfield and is topped with a glass room that has people controlling what goes on at the airport. The ATCT has three primary operations: ground operations, approving launches, and filing flight plans (Freudenrich, 2021). These operations are done by different people inside the...

Airport Water Runoff      Imagine going to your favorite lake or pond and when you get there you see something like this picture above. This would be upsetting to most people and maybe they would want to find out how this happened. Well, what if I told you it came from the airport? IS there anything you could do about it and who would you talk to? This happens more often than not.      One of our planet's greatest resources is water, and airport water runoff, if not controlled, pollutes the surrounding water. There are many pollutants in aviation, and when it rains, or the snow melts, it gets washed into the storm drains. Pollutants such as Hydraulic fluid, aircraft fuel, motor oil, metal particulates, aircraft firefighting foam (AFFF), and deicing fluid constantly are spilled onto the ground and are sometimes minimally cleaned up. Sometimes it doesn't even come from the aircraft, and it will actually come from support equipment or storage locations. The Ai...

    The Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938      One aviation act that I find the most influential to the national aviation community today is the Civil Aeronautics Act. Signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938, it established the independent Civil Aeronautics Authority (CAA) (FAA, 2017). The CAA was made up of a three-member board that conducted safety investigations and would recommend ways to prevent accidents (FAA, 2017). The CAA also had the authority to regulate airfares and airline routes (FAA, 2017). This is an important stepping stone for regulations we have today and what we call the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).       The Civil Aeronautics Authority was the first sight into a safer, more reliable air travel system. They were tasked with performing air traffic surveys, analyzing mail rates charged by private carriers, examining passenger price complaints, authorizing overseas travel routes, oversight on the...

  Human Factors In Aviation      To me, a working definition of Human Factors in Aviation is defined as; "A person/persons that is either knowledgeable or not with a task. That takes an unnecessary risk in a situation that results in an incident or accident which could have been mitigated had they done a proper risk assessment." This falls in line with many aspects of Aviation and all the people that are involved. Chapter two of the PHAK (2016) talks about how up to 70% of the accidents/incidents are human factors, and it is not only air operation but also maintenance and air traffic management. Everyone from the people working at the check-in counter weighing bags, the ground crew maintaining and fueling the aircraft, and the pilot and crew ensuring they are fit for flight, has a part in safe air travel. Most of the time, we hear the term "pilot error" and think, "oh, the pilot is solely the one to blame," but when looking broader, you find that it is mor...