The Air Transport Association (ATA), the trade association for the leading U.S. airlines, issued a statement following release of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure FAA Reauthorization Bill:

“We view the House bill with a real sense of disappointment. It does nothing to resolve record delays, growing congestion and the crisis that faces the nation’s travelers. It does little to promote a next-generation air traffic control system, raises barriers to efficiencies, imposes a multi-billion dollar new tax on airline passengers, and does not stop requiring passengers from subsidizing elite corporate-jet fliers,” said ATA President and CEO James C. May.

“Nevertheless, we will continue to work with all parties on crafting a final result that rejects the current unfair passenger subsidy of corporate jets and takes the bold steps necessary to modernize our antiquated air traffic control system.”

The funding debate for the air traffic control system has been heating up lately. The issue is fees. Airline interests have been promoting the notion that wealthy individuals on golf weekends by private jet are being subsidized by airline passengers. General aviation interests counter that this image is overstated and they provide a valuable service to society.




Join ATA and its member airlines in this campaign to stop unfair corporate aviation subsidization by visiting www.smartskies.org. ATA airline members and affiliate carriers transport more than 90 percent of all U.S. airline passenger and cargo traffic.

Tossing virtual paper airplanes

Time for a little diversionary fun. OK, maybe a big diversion and a bunch of fun. Paper Pilot: Battle of the air is just about the coolest "paper" airplane page you'll find.

Online, you select one of three paper airplane types, then select a paper weight, elevator angle, and winglets. Next, you practice "throwing" by directing a little animated man - vary the angle of the toss and the force of the throw to get the greatest distance.

When you think you're unbeatable by virtue of your design and throwing technique, you toss your plane for the throw that counts and record your distance.

Finally, you "compete" your throw against others, each of whom you select by entering their email addresses. They receive an invitation to participate, and they go through the same design/practice routine before executing their throw that counts.

It's all great fun!

Middle East Logistics

Middleastlogistics.com is a regional transportation news portal that covers aviation, as well as rail, road, and other modes. If you want to follow the aircargo industry and associated activity in The Middle East, this is a good site to visit.

Recently, they bagged the award for Best Web Portal in the field of Transportation given by the Pan Arab Web Awards (PAWA). (This event brought together web design companies, freelancers, and web owners in a competition for the Best Website in each of 16 categories from the Arab countries.)

PAWA cited middleastlogistics.com’s strive to bring important news and events from the logistics community in The Middle East and the rest of the world... the website acts as a comprehensive news portal catering to all businesses in the logistics industry.

Now, I don't mean to disrespect the PAWA or the achievement by Middle East Logistics, but I did discover that their page doesn't render 100% under Firefox 2.0.0.4. There is some overlapping text and a few missing news items with my Firefox, although Opera 9.21 and I.E. 7.0 don't seem to exhibit any problems.

Since I'm a nut for website coding to HTML standards, I ran the site markup through a validator. That highlighted hundreds of coding errors. It was not a pretty sight!

So while the coding ability of the website team for Middle East Logistics doesn't have anything to do with aviation, it's kind of ironic when viewed in the context of their new award.

The other point is that I'm more than happy to receive press releases from aviation-related companies, but there's no guarantee you'll 100% like what I do with them!

Anyway, the site works well enough. Go see Middleastlogistics.com if you are interested in news or other transportation resources.