I recently heard the FAA is making informal inquiries of such things, at least at towered airports, on the possibility they involve airworthiness issues, but this is the first one I've heard actually taking place.
Airworthiness is this decade’s “stabilized approach”. LOL. Always something being harped on, and it’s airworthiness right now.
It's not difficult. Let it go to voicemail. It's actually one of the first two pieces of advice I give when representing an airman, but letting all unknown numbers go to voicemail is not a bad general policy.
Better yet, have a separate phone number for such things. Google Voice is free.
This.
They outa ditch "asking how many souls". Too death oriented. Just ask how many people on board ok?
Someone should act offended that FAA thinks they have a soul and that’d stop. Ha. “How many live humans on board?” would make the lawyers happier. Ha.
Nope. Definitely not that. Not in this period of heavy budget cuts. ASIs are overworked and have far more important things to do with their time. Yes, there will always be "cowboys" out there who feel the need to puff out their chests and show off their power. But for the most part, these kinds of investigatory jobs are extra work. And ASIs like extra work without extra pay about as much as we do.
All workers government and not can find ways to be “too busy” and government folks may or may not be too busy doing *useful* things. It’s somewhat self-correcting in the private sector, enough people doing useless stuff, the company doesn’t make numbers and the people are tossed or the company goes under. In government, there’s no real motivation to do the most important stuff first, unless you’re in an operational type job, like ATC or firefighting. Anything that mostly requires paper pushing is always suspect as a useful endeavor.
A good point raised. I think a call from the FAA would get my favorite response:
“You have called a number on the Federal do not call registry. Are you aware that this call is in violation of federal statute?” If that didn’t get rid of them on the spot it would slow them down. If not, doesn’t it suck when those phone calls get dropped?
They want to contact me by mail they’d better send it registered.
Sorry to let you know, but government exempts itself from that particular law. You might hit an inspector who doesn’t know that, but once they figure it out, all you’ll have managed to do is make them angry.
And now for the joke...
ADS-B version II will have a bit for “questionable pilot decision” and your avionics will just send it every time something in the flight doesn’t follow the proper computer profile. LOL.
Think snitch box for the controllers tied to your GPS. Hahaha.
You laugh. But that’s the mentality of data stream technology. Even shove all that crap in a database to see if you’re a pilot who flies the profiles or is a cowboy. Hahaha.
Automatic get out of jail free card for the Cirrus drivers, the bit is never sent when the autopilot is engaged. LOL LOL LOL.