If paranoia and hysteria aren’t brother and sister, they’re at least first cousins. A whiff of the former isn’t a bad thing in aviation, but during the past two weeks or so, we seem to have overdosed on both. And now, in attempting the unlikely feat of tying runway incursions to Chinese spy balloons, I’m trying to appeal for calm. But stay with me, I really think there’s a connection.
Billy Nolen was appointed acting FAA Administrator in April 2022. Previously, Nolen served as FAA’s Associate Administrator for Aviation Safety (AVS). The Aviation Safety Organization’s programs are carried out by 7,400 employees located in Washington Headquarters, regional and directorate offices, and 125 field offices throughout the world. The AVS safety purview covers over one million registered aircraft, over one thousand approved manufacturers, over one million active pilots, and over 50,000 flights every day.
Billy has over 33 years of experience in operations and corporate safety, regulatory affairs, and flight operations. He started his career as a 767, 757 and MD-80 pilot with American Airlines. His passion for operations and safety led to the role of Manager of the Pilot Aviation Safety Action Program (ASAP). He then became Manager of Flight Safety with responsibility for Accident/Incident Investigations, Flight Operational Quality Assurance, Line Operations Safety Audits, and oversight of the Pilot and Maintenance ASAPs.
After American Airlines, Billy served as Senior Vice President of Safety, Security and Operations with Airlines for America, where he collaborated with leaders across the airline industry, government and other key stakeholders to enhance safety and operational performance.
He subsequently served as Executive Manager of Group Safety & Health for the Qantas Group. In that capacity, Billy played a key role in the Qantas Group Safety Governance Framework and was responsible for providing assurance and advice to the Qantas Board, principally the Corporate Health, Environmental, Safety & Security Committee, the Group CEO, the Qantas Group Management Committee, and Qantas’ executive management.
Billy came to FAA from his position as Vice President of Safety, Security and Quality at WestJet in Calgary, Alberta. Reporting to the CEO, Billy had responsibility for overseeing safety, security and quality across WestJet, Encore and Swoop, 14,700 WestJet employees, and the millions of passengers flying on WestJet aircraft each year.
Paul’s glorious prose always has many juicy phrases I’d use for pull-quotes, but I particularly liked this one today: “…if any of them turn out to be gender reveal balloons, I’d rather it be kept classified.”
My last experience with military radar is over half a century old so I do not think I am gibing away valuable intelligence. Big high fast radar targets are the easiest. Small slow low targets are tough. We never saw bugs, cockroach to VW, but just about everything else. The question is what do you want to see, or more properly, locate. My unit wanted to locate low fast aircraft. If it was on the top side of the grass and moving over 200 kts we had’em. Just looking at the antennas of the USAF one can tell that they can see almost anything. In hindsight it turns out that they had that balloon from launch. OK, so now China knows that we can see into China well enough to locate a large but very slow mover, a very difficult object to locate. I wish that the Chinese were still guessing about that. Any attack coming will be better camouflaged.
Risk has 2 elements, likelihood and consequence, while quoted statistics imply likelihood hasn’t changed, all the tolerances are lining up on the consequences side. Do the statistics on incursions/incidents break out technical violations vs “OMG” moments?
Having watched a minor system performance statistical variance consequence explode in front of me, with aircraft/crew loss, and then riding thru the same issue two weeks later (with no consequence), I am less tolerant to “lightning doesn’t strike twice”…don’t blame lightning if the root cause is complacency/stupidity.
Hopefully reminding people that stupid has a consequence will be sufficient…and the worst we endure is another movie like “1941”.
Paranoia amongst airline pilots is not new to me.(I am an ex-). When the upcoming mobile phone wave was suspected to influence the onboard electronic systems, suddenly many “strange things” happened in electronic cockpits. Which we previously would dub as “spurious signals” and forget about them. Or other designation which I cannot write here. Boy, were those things DANGEROUS!
Then came the drones, suddenly pilots saw them everywhere, like I saw a report of a spotted drone several thousand feel below. He probably missed a career as a sharp shooter. During my airline career and hobby flying is saw millions of birds, yep, and I hit a few, alas. Never saw one drone from the air (still flying GA).
Party Balloons are a real thing. I have passed several on approach into LAX. Regardless if they are a thing to be concerned about, I reported them to approach. I think hitting one would be a non event but I would rather no find out.
Regulate a balloon that slipped out of the hand of an inattentive 4 year old is a bridge too far.
A Balloon club launching a hobby balloon into the jet route structure would likely have only slightly higher chance of disrupting things but still the potential is there and should be mitigated.
Sparky
In my 30+ years of flying jets from coast to coast, I have seen what I thought were weather balloons myself or heard ATC issuing a BOLO for them. No one seemed to know or care where they came from. They were always above us (>41,000) and we NEVER heard anything about them in the news. Now we are at the “Danger Will Robinson, DANGER” stage?
Makes me wonder if any of the responsible agencies have researched who manufactures these gas bags and who their customers are?
Unmanned balloons were (still are?, not flying in those regions anymore) normal in Rio, even huge ones with a gas container for longer pyrotechnics and endurance. I heard there were versions of 100+ kgs. Flew low over the city. National pastime. Most landed in the sea…most. Anyway, one could SEE them VERY well
Big kites in Jakarta, Indonesia, on FINAL. Same. Several times the mechanics had to remove the kite wires from between the LE flaps… No airline stopped flying for those reasons…
Skimming active volcanoes during the approach in MEX and Guatemala.
Welcome in the airline worldwide club where nothing is like home…
I’m waiting for some actual data to be released on the “spy balloon” payload and purported maneuvering system that it is claimed would allow it to navigate to secret sites and even park over them, but that part of the story seems to have faded away after some confusing reports as to whether they actually did locate, or recover, anything useful. I’m not paranoid enough to embrace huge conspiracies, but I have no problem accepting - even expecting - minor machinations such as quietly putting aside information that doesn’t support a narrative.
In the resume posted below, what exactly is lacking? Any, specific referenced criticism of his past performance and qualifications? You know, something based on verifiable fact….
First, I’m a balloon pilot, hot air, not gas (as in helium or hydrogen).
Second- expensive ordnance was a waste of our tax dollars to bring down the high altitude balloon with instrument arrays underneath. In talking to many other LTA pilots we agreed It would have been a lot more efficient to throw a hammer (or some other inert object) at the envelope and rip a hole in it allowing the gas to escape gradually and have it descend slowly thereby saving the time and $$ to look for the debris in the ocean. (More tax $$ wasted). One other issue recreational gas balloon pilots have raised is that looking forward, if any yahoo with a high powered rifle sees a lower altitude manned gas balloon flying below 10000ft they might be prone to think its another spy balloon and take a shot at it to bring it down. There are people like that that walk among us.
Your “battle of LA” after Pearl Harbor makes a valid point. On the other hand 22-23 years ago, government bureaucrats from both party’s ignored the warnings from Sim providers and their own Minneapolis and Florida based law enforcement agents about what was considered then an impossibility, the 9/11 attacks. Considering all the TSA rules GA is now stuck with and Congress dropping the model airplane exemption for FAA regulations, I’m surprised that private organizations are allowed to release any balloon into the air without some sort of FAA notification. How to balance the two extremes?
I didn’t get real excited about the balloons. Biggest concern was what harm the debris in the ocean might do to wildlife. After #2, #3, and #4, I figured there was some “chinaman” with some cheap balloons and some helium, or hydorgen, snickering after each launch, knowing the USA would spend a million dollar missile to shoot down his $10 balloon. Well, Ok, $400K missile. Makes one wonder who can keep it up longer?
Until yesterday, I couldn’t tell a pico balloon from pico de gallo. It turns out, these things circumnavigate the globe on 40 ma and solar power and weigh about a half ounce. They’re out up there by a bunch of STEM kids.
A half ounce? Really? I’m gonna guess that’s not enough to snuff an engine and I wonder if it would even nick a windshield. A starling–which won’t snuff an engine or nick a windshield–weighs for time more.
