Description
Through the brief but brilliant span of aviation history, the United States has been at the leading edge of advancing technology, from airframe and engines to navigation aids and avionics. One key component of American aviation progress has always been the airway and navigation system that today makes all-weather transcontinental flight unremarkable and routine. From the initial, tentative efforts aimed at supporting the infant air mail service of the early 1920s and the establishment of the airline industry in the 1930s and 1940s, air navigation later guided aviation into the jet age and now looks to satellite technology for direction.
Today, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) provides, as one of many services, the management and maintenance of the American airway system. A little-seen but still important element of that maintenance process is airborne flight inspection. Flight inspection has long been a vital part of providing a safe air transportation system. The concept is almost as old as the airways themselves. The first flight inspectors flew war surplus open-cockpit biplanes, bouncing around with airmail pilots and watching over a steadily growing airway system predicated on airway light beacons to provide navigational guidance. The advent of radio navigation brought an increased importance to the flight inspector, as his was the only platform that could evaluate the radio transmitters from where they were used: in the air.
With the development of the Instrument Landing System (ILS) and the Very High Frequency Omni-directional Range (VOR), flight inspection became an essential element to verify the accuracy of the system. In the modern airspace system, GPS satellites now provide the basis for air navigation and signals further changes to aviation. Flight inspection has been there all along, quiet and meticulous, changing and developing through various government agencies charged with air safety: the Aeronautics Branch, Bureau of Air Commerce, the Civil Aeronautics Agency, through to the modern FAA. With continued growth of air transportation, and new technologies to support that growth, the essential means of flight inspection also changed, but its foundation, that of ensuring aviation safety, still remains the same.
This eBook traces the history of flight inspection and the parallel development of the airways and approaches that helps make modern air transportation safe and reliable. The book was first published by the Government Printing Office in 1993. The book offered for sale is the updated 2002 revised edition. It is not available in printed form; this is a scanned eBook version. 168 pages with a large assortment of photos.
ISBN: 0-16-067587-1
GPO Serial Number: 050 007 01342-6
eBook only; after purchase, a pdf download will be offered with a password to open the encrypted file. Read on tablets, pads, computers, pdf readers.
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