The first improvement we may benefit from is the appointment of an Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections. This group would advise officials on customer service improvements and monitor changes.

Also there will be mandatory timeframes for follow-up on customer complaints combined with new regulation for how the complaints are handled. A study currently underway will increase the possibility of the airlines reimbursing travelers for delayed or lost baggage.

Another item on the bill would offer discounts to military passengers and their families. If you travel with a carseat or child safety seat, the airline will be required to post the maximum dimensions prior to a flight on their website. It will also be decided shortly, if travelers with smaller musical instruments can avoid checking them and take them aboard as a carry-on.

Cell phone users will be happy to know that the new bill requires the airline to begin a study that reveals whether usage actually has an impact on airline communication and decides if cell phone use will be permitted during flights. Of course the new bill reasserts that no smoking is allowed on any flights.

Customers who do have complaints can file them with the new DOT hotline, a dedicated line right to the department from the airline.

All and all it sounds like the new bill orders that many things be studied and investigated rather than calling for immediate change. The good news is that it does cover some legitimate territory. Hopefully the friendly skies are about to become a lot more friendly.

The bill Congress approved not only finances the radar-to-GPS switch, it will also allow for unmanned drone flights in U.S. airspace within the next four years. This, of course, is assuming these flights will be of a non-military nature, because Predator drones are already in use over the United States. As for the radar-to-GPS approval, ABC News provides details:

The bill authorizes $63.4 billion for the Federal Aviation Administration over four years, including about $11 billion toward the air traffic system and its modernization. It accelerates the modernization program by setting a deadline of June 2015 for the FAA to develop new arrival procedures at the nation’s 35 busiest airports so planes can land using the more-precise GPS navigation.

If you want an example of what TRACON-strapped air traffic controllers are currently working with, you can watch the following video from AirBoyd’s YouTube channel. It’s a 38 minute play-by-play of Florida air traffic controllers talking a passenger in after the pilot passed out.

While the story itself is incredibly compelling, the video also gives you a great example of the technology that’s available to the FAA:

Instead of time-consuming, fuel-burning, stair-step descents, planes will be able to glide in more steeply with their engines idling. Planes will also be able to land and take off closer together and more frequently, even in poor weather, because pilots will know the precise location of other aircraft and obstacles on the ground. Fewer planes will be diverted.

The FAA’s goal is to have the GPS system in place in the 35 busiest airports in the U.S., and the bill’s authorization of $63.4 billion over the next four years will clearly facilitate the switch.

The last remaining hurdle for the FAA is President Obama’s signature, signing off on the program; however, considering the current President’s spotty record in relation to NASA, is there a guarantee the bill will get executive approval?

The broadest and possibly the most whimsical way in which Wolfram Alpha’s FAA data can be used is with the search query “flights overhead.” Wolfram Alpha will then provide you with information on just that – all the flights that are currently flying over you head (with a small 5-minute delay due to FAA restrictions).

If you’re on a mobile device, then it will use your location data to pinpoint exactly where you are and give you the most accurate portrait of the flights in your area. If you’re searching from a desktop, it will do its best to pin a location from your browser.

The “flights overhead” query gives you a list of all the flights that could technically be seen from your location (on a clear day of course). Not only that, but it lets you knows things like the plane’s altitude, flight angle and model as well as provides a sky map for the more visually oriented folks out there.

You can click on any of the flights listed to find out more information about them like departure time and location, destination time and location, flight capacity, flight altitude over time, and even the history of that particular plane (previous flights). Right now, the Pittsbirgh Jet Center flight 79 that’s flying over my head left from Dupage Airport in West Chicago and is en route to Charleston, South Carolina. It’s a Cessna citation CJ3 with two jet engines and is carrying anywhere from 3 to 9 people. Cool huh?

The blog post about this new feature talks about some of the more practical uses, other than just knowing about the planes flying in your vicinity. One of the cooler uses of the information is to find out exactly where you were when you took that picture from your window seat. Once your plane lands, you can plug the time of your photo, along with the flight number, date, and airline information into the engine. This will give you a pretty accurate description of what you were flying over when you snapped your mid-air shot.

Since all the info comes from the FAA, this real-time flight search will only work with planes having at least one stop in the U.S.

I guess it will always be fun to look up in the sky and imagine where a plane is headed and where it came from. You can then begin to imagine the people on that plane, and their lives, and why they are headed to wherever they are going. It’s a daydreamy type of activity, but one that tons of people have done, I assure you.

Now, if you want, you can know for certain where those sky ships are headed.

A report on EE Times cited an internal FAA memo, obtained by a sister publication, that Vista’s requirements go beyond the FAA’s typical desktop configuration.

In March, FAA CIO Dave Bowen put forth the possibility of recommending an alternative to a Vista upgrade path. The report said the FAA could consider migrating people to Linux desktops running Google Apps as an option.

The memo contained a money quote about Microsoft’s likely sales efforts: “We anticipate that this introduction will be accompanied by significant advertising hype and salesperson activity.” The FAA could be just the first of many federal agencies that publicly balk at a potentially expensive Vista upgrade.

It’s not exactly been a banner year for the Windows brand. Microsoft released Vista in early 2007 only to be met with a lukewarm reception from both the enterprise and personal computing markets. Dell is also ramping up efforts to offer a Linux alternative to Windows for customers purchasing new computers from the store.

It’s not just the private sector, however, that is displaying hesitancy to upgrade to Windows Vista. Government agencies such as the Federal Aviation Administration have publicly acknowledged the fact that finding alternatives to Microsoft products, such as Linux-based operating systems and Google’s Premier Apps office suite, is becoming a higher priority.

The FAAs efforts in this regard seemed to have worked their way up the pipeline, as now the Department of Transportation, the entity under which the FAA is affiliated, has officially prohibiting upgrades to Windows Vista, as is the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Here’s an excerpt from a January DOT memo documenting the rational behind such a decision:

Based on our initial analysis (from internal recommendations and analysis provided by Gartner Group), there appears to be no compelling technical or business case for upgrading to these new Microsoft products. Furthermore, there appears to be specific reasons not to upgrade including:

·    The cost of performing the upgrade (hardware/software upgrades, application upgrades, labor for planning and implementation, etc.)

·    Previous version compatibility concerns regarding Office 2007 suite components (primarily Word)

·    The protracted FY07 Continuing Resolution (CR) which limits available funding

·    The more to the new Headquarters DOT building that would be competing with the same IT expertise required to support the migration to any of these products

So, not only are these government agencies effectively banning the implementation of Windows Vista, but they are also preventing users from upgrading to the latest versions of Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer, a move that the top brass in Redmond can’t be too thrilled about.

Fans of the open-source Linux operating system have had a lot to chew on over the past several weeks, beginning with rumors that Dell is possibly exploring the option of offering Linux as one of the operating system choices to users that purchase new PCs through the online store.

Follow that up with today’s revelation that the Federal Aviation Administration is moving forward with an exploratory effort to gauge whether or not a switch to Linux would be in its best interests when Windows XP no longer becomes a viable option.

“We’re considering the cost to deploy [Windows Vista] in our organization. But when you consider the incompatibilities, and the fact that we haven’t seen much in the way of documented business value, we felt that we needed to do a lot more study,” says FAA spokesperson David Bowen in a TechNewsWorld article.

Along with considering a move to Linux, the FAA is also studying the feasibility of switching its office applications to Google’s new Premier Apps – a move that would most likely become a necessary consequence of an all out switch to the Linux operating system.

All told, the FAA will need to completely replace its fleet of 45,000 PCs within the next several years. Considering not only the cost of the hardware, but also of securing licenses from Microsoft for both Windows and Office for all of the machines, the alternative of implementing low-cost, open source software begins to look more and more appealing to organizations looking to tighten up the bottom line figures.

A Government Accountability Office report (GAO-05-712) to Congress on information security and the FAA found that while progress has been made, many issues need to be resolved. The report said controls over air traffic control systems need to be improved.

“A key reason for the information security weaknesses…is that the agency had not yet fully implemented its information security program to help ensure that effective controls were established and maintained,” the 37 page report said.

GAO listed in the report the kinds of security management lapses found at three airports and FAA headquarters: “The agency has not adequately managed its networks, software updates, user accounts and passwords, and user privileges, nor has it consistently logged security-relevant events.”

Those findings in a publicly traded business would probably incur the wrath of shareholders as well as the SEC. As a government agency, FAA will now have to wait and see how urgently Congress prods it on the security issue.

The air traffic control systems in use contain proprietary software and specialized code. FAA officials claim risks to the system are limited due to their specialized design. GAO countered in its report by claiming these designs “cannot fully protect them from attacks by disgruntled current or former employees who are familiar with these features, nor will they keep out more sophisticated hackers.”

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.

This typically happens after a design flaw or faulty part has been discovered. To communicate the required changes the FAA publishes an Airworthiness Directive or an “AD” for short.

You can find the recent ADs listed on the FAA’s web site. If you’re a pilot, they make for interesting reading sometimes. I’m considering writing a scraper that’ll make RSS feeds for ‘em.

Anyway, this Boeing 737 AD caught my eye.

The FAA is adopting a new airworthiness directive (AD) for Boeing Model 737-300, -400, and -500 series airplanes modified in accordance with STC ST00127BO. This AD requires installation of bonding straps to the safe side harnesses of the digital transient suppression device of the fuel quantity indicating system. This AD is prompted by the results of fuel system reviews conducted by the STC holder. We are issuing this AD to prevent unsafe levels of current or energy from entering the fuel tank, due to hot short faults or threat conditions associated with the safe side harness assembly, which could result in a fire or explosion of the fuel tank.

More details in this PDF document.

It’s good to know that 737 fuel tanks will be that much less likely to catch fire, isn’t it?

Jeremy Zawodny is the author of the popular Jeremy Zawodny’s blog. Jeremy is part of the Yahoo search team and frequently posts in the Yahoo! Search blog as well.

Visit Jeremy’s blog: Jeremy Zawodny’s blog.

727s, older 737s, 757s, and 767s, are among the models that would be affected by the FAA’s proposal.

According to an Associated Press article,

John Hickey, director of the FAA’s aircraft certification service, said the agency does not believe the problem poses an imminent danger. However, he said, “Fire and airplanes are a bad mix, so when you have the opportunity to reduce the risk you take it.”

Airlines will get six years to complete the work, which involves replacing the insulation between the jets’ skin and cabin. Civil aviation authorities around the world usually follow the FAA’s lead and issue similar directives. About 1,600 planes would be affected worldwide.

The whole thing would cost an estimated $200 million to $330 million over six years.

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