FAA Shakeup; DC-3s Run Amok and Flight Crew Thrown in Jail

So, it should have come as no surprise that the FAA's Executive Director of Aircraft Certification (and longtime friend to light GA) Earl Lawrence found himself out at Certification, replaced by Lirio Liu, who has 30 years of experience at the FAA. Lawrence finds himself in new digs as the deputy assistant administrator at the FAA's NexGen office. 

Tecnam introduced its P-Mentor trainer earlier this week. The Rotax 912-powered, Garmin G3X equipped side-by-side two-seater is specifically designed to help flight schools offer primary training with low operating costs. The plane got its EASA stamp of approval earlier this month. No word yet on the P-Mentor's price tag.

In an opinion piece in Plane & Pilot online, Editor-in-Chief Isabel Goyer highlighted the big concerns for the recently completed Sun 'n Fun Fly-In, which include a busy and apparently unimpeded Amazon cargo flight schedule, the airport runway expansion project, which will eat up a big chunk of the Sun 'n Fun grounds and the odd transfer of power that didn't get talked about as longtime SnF president John "Lites" Leenhouts retires from the post.

Inexplicably, Dominican Republic law enforcement officials took the entire crew of a Canadian-registered busines jet into custody after they reported a suspicious package secreted on the plane they flew in on. The package turned out to be a large stash of cocaine, worth, one story reported, an estimated $25 million. The DR's apprehension of the flight crew has raised the ire of professional flight organizations and the pilots they represent. By the time reports surfaced, the crew had been in custody for two weeks.

Garmin International was awarded the Aircraft Electronics Association Associate Member of the Year award. The Olathe, Kansas,-based avionics giant has introduced a number of remarkable new retrofit products over the past few years, including low-cost primary flight displays, autopilots and engine monitoring systems.

A different incident in a different discipline has sparked outrage among working professionals after a nurse in Tennessee administered the incorrect medication to a patient and was subsequently charged with reckless homicide and was later convicted of negligent homicide. Criminal prosecutions of medical errors are rare, according to medical experts. The nurse's conviction---she faces up to eight years in prison---has, according to health care profession experts, already had a chilling effect on the profession. The implications to professional pilots who make mistakes that lead to injuries of their passengers or fellow crew members are inescapable, and aviation experts are watching the case closely.

EAA has announced that it will celebrate anniversaries of several homebuilt designs, the most noteworthy being the 50th anniversary of the Van's RV series airplanes, which are the best-selling kit planes ever, according to EAA, with more than 10,000 sold. Other tips of the EAA cap will go to other noteworthy designs, including the Dyke Delta and Bowers Fly Baby (60 years), and Acro Sport and KR-1 (50 years).

We've been following the musical-chairs game that is the latest airliner merger talks (we've got the popcorn and a comfy chair), and if you have, too, you know that Jet Blue, Spirit, Frontier and Blue have all been in the news for the possibility that one or the other might buy or be bought by one or more of the rest of them. One unknown wisecracker has come up with the resulting name for the carrier: Jet Spirit of the Blue Frontier. Yes!

In unrelated incidents, a pair of DC-3s had off-runway adventures in Colombia over the past week, the first in San Felipe and the second, just a few days ago, in Villavicencio. In both cases, the aircraft seemed to go out of control in the landing/takeoff/go-around phase of flight, departed the runway and were substantially damaged. Miraculously, none of the more than a dozen people aboard were injured in the dramatic episodes.