US budgetary cuts, known as “sequestration”, starts today – 1st March 2013. The FAA needs to reduce its expenditures by about $600 Million for the remainder of Fiscal Year 2013. Among the changes which are likely to impact is a program whereby almost all their 47,000 employees will be forced to take unpaid leave for one day per pay period. Additionally they are looking at closing 100 air traffic control facilities, eliminating the night shift at a further sixty and reducing preventive maintenance and support for all air traffic control equipment.

The hundred ATC facilities at risk of closure are places where there are less than 150,000 flight operations (or 10,000 commercial operations) per year.

The ongoing impact to helicopter operations are obvious. Not just the air traffic angle, but also delays are expected in any and every FAA adminstrative task, whether that be licence issue or renewal, aircraft registration, etc etc

Any area of FAA work that does not affect current operations is likely to get hit harder – things like certification of new types and the development of the NextGen satellite-based navigation system.

HeliHub.com wishes safe flight and operation to all helicopter owners, operators and users in the US – all of whom will be impacted. The FAA is talking in terms of these measures coming in from 1st April to give themselves a bit of breathing space and assess the impact of the budget cuts in other allied trades.

Jeremy Parkin – HeliHub.com