FAA Officials On Hand For The Announcement Of The Group

NBAA President and CEO Ed Bolen on Monday announced the formation of a new NBAA group focused on improvements in aviation weather information and flight safety.

Among those on hand for the launch were Ed Bolton, assistant administrator for NextGen with the FAA, Cyndie Abelman, manager of the Aviation Branch for the National Weather Service, Kevin Johnston, senior meteorologist, FAA Air Traffic Organization and Bruce Carmichael, chairman of the NBAA Access Committee’s Weather Subcommittee.

“NBAA is pleased to launch this new Weather Subcommittee of NBAA’s long-standing Access Committee,” said Bolen (pictured in file photo), speaking at the Friends & Partners of Aviation Weather forum in Washington, DC. “NBAA wants to fully support the general aviation weather initiatives managed by the FAA and other government agencies, and to explore ways to improve current and predictive weather information.”

Bolen said that a goal for the new subcommittee is to provide a mechanism for everyone in the aviation weather user community to discuss and find consensus with the FAA and National Weather Service on identifying and meeting the most critical weather information needs of general aviation operators.

“We will be reaching out to the broader aviation community – including government program managers, pilots, dispatchers, controllers, weather information providers, the research and academic communities, and others – to gain broad community perspective, collaboration, consensus and buy-in,” said Bolen.

Bruce Carmichael, who serves not only as vice chairman of the NBAA Access Committee, but also on the National Center for Atmospheric Research, will chair the new Weather Subcommittee. John Kosak, of NBAA’s Air Traffic Services, will be the Association’s staff liaison to the subcommittee.

According to Carmichael, issues that the subcommittee will be working on include: how dispatchers, schedulers, crews, etc. work with probabilistic forecasts and deal with uncertainty; general aviation weather safety; flight-deck weather integration; quantification of benefits, or how accurate and/or timely forecasts benefit business aviation; and adverse winds and their impact on general aviation safety.

“I'm sure that as we begin to engage more of our Members, we'll find new ideas and topics that are important to the NBAA community and general aviation operators as a whole,” added Carmichael.

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