Membership News & Notes

Publications: AOPA Aircraft Guide now available

Comprehensive listing of aircraft and specs

By Julie Summers Walker

How great would it be to research in one place and find the ideal aircraft for you and your flying needs/wants/desires? AOPA has heard your plea—launching in early 2021 is the AOPA Aircraft Guide, a resource the association has been compiling for several months.

This comprehensive online resource lists more than 88 aircraft that are currently in production. These new aircraft range from single-engine pistons to twins, turbines, and rotorcraft. Additional aircraft will be added regularly. The guide includes model overview, specifications, performance, and limiting and recommended airspeeds. You’ll find links to AOPA articles and pilot reports for each aircraft, as well as stunning photography from our archives. You can then use the Vref aircraft valuation service to determine the value of your trade-in, or the value of older models of listed aircraft.

“This aircraft guide is more extensive than anything like it in the industry,” said Kollin Stagnito, AOPA vice president of publications. “We will continue to add information, making it the biggest directory of used and new aircraft on the internet.”

Use the AOPA Aircraft Guide to find the ideal aircraft for you.

aopa.org/aircraftguide

Email [email protected]

VREF AIRCRAFT VALUATION

Even on the simplest aircraft, the variables are so numerous and complex that prices vary even between consecutive serial numbers of the same make and model. An on-site inspection of the aircraft and its records by a qualified appraiser can reveal a much different value. Additionally, the aircraft resale market is a dynamic environment, and prices can change from month to month. The many intangibles that should be considered include the availability of a particular model, damage history (or lack thereof), maintenance history, and quality of refurbishments and upgrades. The AOPA Aircraft Valuation Service provided by Vref can be used as a good starting point when attempting to determine the general retail value of an airplane. Vref also provides additional services that allow pilots to receive a more accurate appraisal and Vref-verified values. The AOPA Aircraft Valuation Service provided by Vref is only available to AOPA members.

aopa.org/vref

AOPA Air Safety Institute

For your favorite passengers

Promote frequent fliers from passengers to crew

By Alicia Herron

Being a passenger takes an immense amount of trust. To a nonpilot, every aspect of flying in a GA airplane can be a new, baffling, and sometimes overwhelming experience. Passengers likely don’t know the mysteries of lift and thrust, the intricacies of the flight instruments, or how the flight controls work. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t learn, or that they don’t want to.

Beyond the basic FAA-required passenger briefing, involve new passengers in the flight and increase their comfort by explaining some aviation basics. Demonstrate the flight controls, describe a couple of the instruments, and give yourself extra time during preflight to allow for any questions (and to avoid feeling rushed). Before engine start, make sure you demonstrate to your passengers how to adjust their seats and explain the idea of a sterile cockpit, including when they’re allowed to talk and ask questions (and what to expect if you need to listen to ATC). In flight, it’s also helpful to advise passengers of power changes before they are applied—big differences in sound, coupled with the changed sensation a power adjustment brings, can be especially concerning to the uninformed.

If you fly with a certain passenger often, or have a particularly curious and enthusiastic one, it’s a great idea to have them participate more actively. With a little knowledge and training, and patience from you, they can help you with a variety of in-flight tasks, become a valuable part of the crew, and enjoy the flight even more.

Here are a couple tasks that willing passengers can help with:

• Looking for traffic.
• Double-checking that the gear is down.
• Holding on to your chart or EFB.
• Helping you run through checklists.
• Taking cool photos of you for the ‘Gram.

Frequent passengers may have found time to worry about an unlikely (but not impossible) contingency—what will they do if anything happens to you in flight? While pilot incapacitation is rare, that insidious “what if” can be a source of anxiety and, in some cases, may inhibit passengers from flying with you. The antidote to that fear is further knowledge and hands-on experience.

Encourage your concerned frequent flier to take a few flight lessons that will focus on their role as a potential “pinch hitter,” where they would have to land the airplane after you became somehow incapacitated. The lessons will help put their mind at rest—and who knows, after a couple flights, they might decide to continue lessons and become a pilot themselves.

Check out the AOPA Air Safety Institute’s new Pinch Hitter Safety Spotlight for basics of flight plus downloadable lesson plans.

airsafetyinstitute.org/spotlightpinchhitter

Email [email protected]

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Member Products and Services: Medically speaking

Let’s hear it for the FAA

A system that puts safety first

By Gary Crump

The Aerospace Medical Certification Division is the primary repository for all FAA airman medical records. In fact, that facility houses more than 22 million FAA medical applications going back decades and maintains medical records for 3.7 million unique airmen.

Being the resting place for so much data, with more coming in every day in the form of new airman medical applications and supplemental information requested by the FAA for review, the AMCD is a busy place. If you’ve tried to call them since March 2020 for updates on your medical application review, you probably experienced some frustration getting through.

The FAA is made up of nine regions, and each has a regional flight surgeon and medical office with staff to assist pilots with many aspects of the medical certification process. The regional flight surgeons and their staff do medical certification just like the AMCD and serve as “safety valves” to offset some of the huge workload pouring into AMCD. In fact, the regional offices do a significant amount of certification of airmen.

Involving the regional medical offices can lessen the frustration as COVID-19 concerns continue. All the FAA medical offices are still working remotely, as are many of us, so getting through to any of the offices may still require patience—but you will find the staff to be courteous and as helpful as possible.

The AMCD philosophy is to find a way to get to a “yes” for as many medical certification issues as possible. When the dust settles, the FAA medically qualifies about 98 percent of the applicants who submit medical records for consideration. However, getting to the “yes” sometimes requires time and testing. The FAA is addressing that concern, too, and is working to narrow the scope of medical records needed for review. Again, it depends on the individual situation. Every applicant’s medical history is evaluated on the merits of the available medical history and information provided in support of the application. With complex cases involving several difficult medical conditions, more specialty testing, evaluations, and consultations may be needed, especially if the case is being seen by one of the federal air surgeons’ individual or panel specialty consultants.

And finally, I repeat again the need to be concise in what records you provide. When the FAA requests medical records, the agency is usually very specific about what it is asking for, so send them what they ask for, nothing more or less. Unnecessary records only slow down the process, delaying a decision.

aopa.org/pps

Gary Crump is the senior director of medical certification for the AOPA Pilot Information Center.