FAA and Mitigation of the Impact of Weather

How the FAA mitigates the impact of weather. FAA air traffic controllers can’t control Mother Nature, but they have a wide range of tools to mitigate Mother Nature’s impact on the flying public. These tools are used at the agency’s Command Center in Warrenton, VA, which balances air traffic demand with system capacity on a nationwide scale, at Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCC), which handle high altitude traffic, at Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) facilities, which handle traffic around busy airports, and at airport towers.

New Helicopter Pilot Training Facts:

When the engine quits during a hover, the pilot needs to make three control inputs. The right pedal is pressed forward to reduce tail rotor thrust. Now that the engine isn't running, you don't need all of that anti-torque. The cyclic is pressed slightly right to return it to a neutral position. An American helicopter has a tendency to drift right in a hover, which means that a pilot has to hold a slight left cyclic input to keep the helicopter stationary. (The cause of the drift is tail rotor thrust.) When the engine power is removed, leaving this input in will result in a left drift. Thus the need to pull the cyclic slightly right. The final required input is an upward pull of the collective, starting at about 1' from the ground. This cushions the impact.