Spending Bill’s GA Goodies

The FAA has been ordered to provide more graphics of TFRs and other NOTAM information in a federal spending bill signed by the president last week. “… the committee believes that advisory graphics can be conveyed through direct user access terminal system (DUATS) and other sources including the Internet,” reads part of the bill, which included a host of other goodies for GA. For instance, flight service stations are getting full funding to install Operational and Supportability Implementation System (OASIS) computers to replace the 1970s-era machines that now provide weather and other flight briefing data. And anyone whose medical has been referred to the Oklahoma City FAA office for a “special issuance” knows that it can take months to get through the medical process. The FAA has been told to get rid of the bottleneck by implementing the Aeromedical Digital Imaging and Workflow System that is supposed to speed up the process. There was one trick in the batch of treats, however. This bill is the same one that banned aerial advertisers from the skies over major sporting events for a year.