Tristar
Pattern Altitude
My Aviation Career Development class received the opportunity to take a tour of some of the FAA facilities in Oklahoma City, ok. The place is actually pretty big!
We arrived at the visitors center at about 10:30 this morning. Getting in reminded me of the entrance procedures for an air force base. They had security guards and requested license plate tags as well as drivers license identification from each person. We were greeted by at least 4 people who were to be our tour guides for the afternoon. After we were split up into two groups we headed our seperate ways.
Our first stop was the FAA Academy where they train air traffic controllers. The potential controllers have the choice of going into different areas such as Center, Tower, etc. They had two interesting rooms. I thought the first one was funny but apparently highly effective. On the right side of the room is a mock up of an ATC tower (glass and all) and on the left was a table with a realistic 3D airport. They even had desks filled with different types of model airplanes. The second room had three big screens with a simulated view from the tower. The U-shaped desk had all the typical equipment and basically provided a training environment for the student and instructor. They were capable of changing weather and situations. In order to give the student a pilot's perspective, there is even an option for a cockpit view on one of the screens.
Our second stop was the Civil Aerospace Medical Institute. They are very proud of their research both in evacuation studies as well as seat and seat belt studies. We were taken outside into a mock up of a large airliner where they do some of the evacuation studies. They provided a short video on how quickly a fire can spread within the cabin. Then he went on to explain that each airplane that comes out of the factory is required to have a full evacuation of 90 seconds. A test was conducted on the Airbus A-380 and it was fully evacuated (about 800 people) in 77.4 seconds. Pretty amazing! Then we were to conduct our own emergency out of the mock up airplane. He turned on the smoke and the whole cabin whited out in about 30 seconds. The exit signs were gone! The only thing you could do was follow the lights on the ground. It was also amazing to notice I lost sight of the person in front of me and the smoke made the lights look like they were going up so disorientation was also a factor. Its still hard to imagine how much chaos there would have been with real fire, heat, and panic. The exit rows are given a different color on the ground. I asked if during the panic if people don't understand the relation of color = exit. He said yes its possible but it does help give some reference and is required. Most people tend to count seats back from an exit row, apparently thats a good idea too. Either way, I think I'm glad those lights on the ground are there because that is ALL you can see. One uncomfortable feeling is that all these FAA tests were conducted using fully abled people. I asked if there had been any studies for people with disabilities such as quadriplegics and others who needed assistance. They have not done much with this and he said with a discomforting tone that they are usually last out the door because they take up time as well as can block the exit. I'm not quite sure how I feel about that.
From there we drove over to the Transportation Safety Institute which consists of many examples behind the building of what happen to some unfortunate pilots. It was really unnerving. There was a twin with the wings ripped off and looked like it had rolled ripping the top off. You could not have survived. There was also two wings laying on the ground. Our tour guide for the TSI asked us, "what do you see missing?" "The fuselage" "Exactly, these were found quite a ways from the fuselage." "The pilot thought he could handle extremely rough turbulence with his wife and daughter on board, the guys at the FBO begged him not to go. Enroute, the wings separated." He picked up a spar that held the wings on. It was bent in three places, which means that wing bent up and down in the turbulence 3 times before separating from the aircraft. We were also shown two other airplanes including a crashed Extra that burned on impact and an experimental resembling a cub that had a failed elevator during its first flight. None that we saw were survivable. We also asked about the Citation that crashed off of the airport in Oklahoma city. He was at that site. According to him, there were traces of some kind of animal in the engine. But the reason why it crashed with one engine still good is still a mystery. Then, for some reason, he brings up internships. Uhhh, no thanks!
John (FastNFurious) was nice enough to drop by and eat lunch with us. I thought that was a neat treat to introduce someone I knew from the "inside" and who is also a pilot for the FAA.
We went over to hanger 9 after lunch and were introduced to some of the mechanics as well as encouraged to look inside some of the airplanes they were working on. They're changing paint jobs to a darker blue and starting to install new Avidyne flight deck systems. The majority of their fleet included King Airs, Learjets, Hawkers, and Challengers.
The next destination was the Flight Procedures Development offices. I was amazed to find that although the small cubicals looked depressing, many employees seemed pretty outgoing but still took thier jobs very seriously. These guys (and gals) are in charge of setting up instrument procedures depending on the many somewhat obvious different things such as obstacles. They also help with installing new instrument approaches with high hopes to make most of them "space based." Currently, it takes about 180 days to set an approach up for an airport. I asked if it was true that they were taking out NDB approaches since that rumor has been going around for years. He said yes, in the previous year 400 were taken out of service but most places such as flight schools are wanting to keep them for practice. Ground-based navigation will never completely go away though.
Other than that, we visited one more building which helps set up routes for navigation facilities that need to be inspected.
I have to say I was pretty impressed with the tour. It wasn't just visiting one place. We actually got to talk to different people in charge of different aspects of the FAA and also take part in demonstrations such as the evacuation demonstration (that was my favorite), see actual crashed airplanes (that one hit home harder than expected), and also encouraged to ask as many questions as we liked. I think we all had fun and maybe learned something too.
We arrived at the visitors center at about 10:30 this morning. Getting in reminded me of the entrance procedures for an air force base. They had security guards and requested license plate tags as well as drivers license identification from each person. We were greeted by at least 4 people who were to be our tour guides for the afternoon. After we were split up into two groups we headed our seperate ways.
Our first stop was the FAA Academy where they train air traffic controllers. The potential controllers have the choice of going into different areas such as Center, Tower, etc. They had two interesting rooms. I thought the first one was funny but apparently highly effective. On the right side of the room is a mock up of an ATC tower (glass and all) and on the left was a table with a realistic 3D airport. They even had desks filled with different types of model airplanes. The second room had three big screens with a simulated view from the tower. The U-shaped desk had all the typical equipment and basically provided a training environment for the student and instructor. They were capable of changing weather and situations. In order to give the student a pilot's perspective, there is even an option for a cockpit view on one of the screens.
Our second stop was the Civil Aerospace Medical Institute. They are very proud of their research both in evacuation studies as well as seat and seat belt studies. We were taken outside into a mock up of a large airliner where they do some of the evacuation studies. They provided a short video on how quickly a fire can spread within the cabin. Then he went on to explain that each airplane that comes out of the factory is required to have a full evacuation of 90 seconds. A test was conducted on the Airbus A-380 and it was fully evacuated (about 800 people) in 77.4 seconds. Pretty amazing! Then we were to conduct our own emergency out of the mock up airplane. He turned on the smoke and the whole cabin whited out in about 30 seconds. The exit signs were gone! The only thing you could do was follow the lights on the ground. It was also amazing to notice I lost sight of the person in front of me and the smoke made the lights look like they were going up so disorientation was also a factor. Its still hard to imagine how much chaos there would have been with real fire, heat, and panic. The exit rows are given a different color on the ground. I asked if during the panic if people don't understand the relation of color = exit. He said yes its possible but it does help give some reference and is required. Most people tend to count seats back from an exit row, apparently thats a good idea too. Either way, I think I'm glad those lights on the ground are there because that is ALL you can see. One uncomfortable feeling is that all these FAA tests were conducted using fully abled people. I asked if there had been any studies for people with disabilities such as quadriplegics and others who needed assistance. They have not done much with this and he said with a discomforting tone that they are usually last out the door because they take up time as well as can block the exit. I'm not quite sure how I feel about that.
From there we drove over to the Transportation Safety Institute which consists of many examples behind the building of what happen to some unfortunate pilots. It was really unnerving. There was a twin with the wings ripped off and looked like it had rolled ripping the top off. You could not have survived. There was also two wings laying on the ground. Our tour guide for the TSI asked us, "what do you see missing?" "The fuselage" "Exactly, these were found quite a ways from the fuselage." "The pilot thought he could handle extremely rough turbulence with his wife and daughter on board, the guys at the FBO begged him not to go. Enroute, the wings separated." He picked up a spar that held the wings on. It was bent in three places, which means that wing bent up and down in the turbulence 3 times before separating from the aircraft. We were also shown two other airplanes including a crashed Extra that burned on impact and an experimental resembling a cub that had a failed elevator during its first flight. None that we saw were survivable. We also asked about the Citation that crashed off of the airport in Oklahoma city. He was at that site. According to him, there were traces of some kind of animal in the engine. But the reason why it crashed with one engine still good is still a mystery. Then, for some reason, he brings up internships. Uhhh, no thanks!
John (FastNFurious) was nice enough to drop by and eat lunch with us. I thought that was a neat treat to introduce someone I knew from the "inside" and who is also a pilot for the FAA.
We went over to hanger 9 after lunch and were introduced to some of the mechanics as well as encouraged to look inside some of the airplanes they were working on. They're changing paint jobs to a darker blue and starting to install new Avidyne flight deck systems. The majority of their fleet included King Airs, Learjets, Hawkers, and Challengers.
The next destination was the Flight Procedures Development offices. I was amazed to find that although the small cubicals looked depressing, many employees seemed pretty outgoing but still took thier jobs very seriously. These guys (and gals) are in charge of setting up instrument procedures depending on the many somewhat obvious different things such as obstacles. They also help with installing new instrument approaches with high hopes to make most of them "space based." Currently, it takes about 180 days to set an approach up for an airport. I asked if it was true that they were taking out NDB approaches since that rumor has been going around for years. He said yes, in the previous year 400 were taken out of service but most places such as flight schools are wanting to keep them for practice. Ground-based navigation will never completely go away though.
Other than that, we visited one more building which helps set up routes for navigation facilities that need to be inspected.
I have to say I was pretty impressed with the tour. It wasn't just visiting one place. We actually got to talk to different people in charge of different aspects of the FAA and also take part in demonstrations such as the evacuation demonstration (that was my favorite), see actual crashed airplanes (that one hit home harder than expected), and also encouraged to ask as many questions as we liked. I think we all had fun and maybe learned something too.
