NATA News

• Certified Cargo Screening Program Update – Gary Lupinacci, TSA
• Railway Labor Act / Employee Free Choice Act Update – Roger Briton, Jackson Lewis LLP
• Aviation Fuel Providers:  Issues Arising with the New Airline Fuel Consortiums – Margaret Giugliano, McBreen & Kopko
• Aviation Ground Services Association Update – Spencer Dickerson, Senior Executive Vice President, AAAE

Sponsor opportunities for the April 26th dinner are also still available.  Interested parties may contact Eric Byer for more information.

To review the agenda for this meeting please click here.

To complete the participation form for this meeting please click here.

As the Director for Operations at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), General Harding managed a $1 billion intelligence collection program and almost 5,000 employees, including more than 200 attachés stationed abroad.   After serving for 33 years in the U.S. Army before retiring, General Harding formed his own security consultancy, Harding Security Associates, and continued to work with the DIA on a contractual basis. 

Just last week, both the United States Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation and the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs held nomination hearings for General Harding.  Questions arose during the hearings about the contract General Harding’s company secured to interrogate prisoners in Iraq for a few months in 2004, and that his firm collected more federal money than it was entitled to for providing interrogators in Iraq. General Harding told the Committee that none of the interrogators he provided to the Army engaged in harsh interrogation techniques and none had been cited for wrongdoing or prisoner abuse. He said that he repaid the federal government $1.8 million after the contract was terminated because he had provided severance packages to his interrogators, who were suddenly out of a job, although his company had no written policy to do so. 

The Obama Administration has not announced its third choice.  Due to the back-to-back failed nominations, the post is likely to remain unfilled for months to come.

The timeline for conference committee negotiations between the House and Senate remains unknown.  In the meantime, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives passed a 30-day extension of federal aviation taxes and spending authority, as well as FAA funding authorization before the previous extension expires on March 31, 2010.  The 30-day extension was needed to give lawmakers more time to agree on a multiyear FAA reauthorization bill that has passed both chambers.  An initial three-month extension that was recently passed by the House was held up by the Senate due to concern over a highway spending provision. 

Click here to view this week's blog.

To view all of Byer's Inside Washington blogs, click here.

For more information, please contact Kristen Moore on the NATA staff. 

*Note—A comprehensive analysis of the health care reform bill recently signed into law will be made available shortly on the NATA home page at www.nata.aero.

Seminar Benefits:

• Discover your strengths and weaknesses through self-assessments
• Learn to promote safety and synergy through teamwork
• Instill a culture based on trust, partnership and respect
• Analyze the technical information crucial to performing your job
• Make your FBO more efficient by learning how to engage and motivate your staff

Among The Topics To Be Covered:

• Attendee Self Assessments
• Creating A Healthy Safety Culture
• Leadership and Supervisor Essentials
• Legal Compliance As A Leader
• Employee Engagement / Effective Communication
• Line Service Supervisor Technical Review
• Simple Steps To Ensure Top-Notch Customer Service

The LSST seminar provides the training line service supervisors need to become more proficient in supervising staff, motivating others, communicating and coaching a team.

The seminar will take place at the New England Air Museum. The museum contains an outstanding collection of aviation artifacts and over 125 aircraft and 200 aircraft engines, many of which are on display. Click here for more information on this seminar, including how to register.

“We hit one out of the park with this year’s event. Las Vegas was once again the most valuable destination for ground service safety information, training skills, products and business intelligence,” said NATA Director of Safety & Training Amy Koranda. “We saw an overall jump in attendance over the past two years’ figures and many participants said that they would like to return in the future.”

To help its members get into the Spring Training spirit, NATA added a few fun challenges this year. Shawn Mack of Banyan Air Service won the “NATA Training Times Customer Service Idea Sweepstakes” in January that gave him a free seminar registration at Spring Training as the prize. Early this week, the Line Service Supervisor Training Seminar attendees participated in a “Wii Batting Team Challenge” with the blue team emerging as the victors, click here to visit NATA’s Facebook page for a list of the winning team members. Finally, on Wednesday, Bill Odierno of Avitat Boca Raton was dubbed the MVP of the “Spring Training Week Wii Batting Challenge” and winner of the Wii system with 9 home runs totaling 5,009 feet. 

“I am particularly pleased with the enthusiastic participation of the Spring Training Week attendees. We have found a winning combination of event location, seminars and overall timing, but we plan to adjust next year’s schedule to give attendees even more flexibility to register for multiple seminars,” added Koranda.   

Sumping fuel tanks is a process that should occur, at minimum, on a daily basis and should always include a visual examination of the resulting fuel sample. The process for obtaining a sample is relatively simple but should be done consistently to ensure the comparability of results.

The first step in obtaining a sample (also known as sumping a tank) is to clear the line. Clearing the line ensures that the sample and any contaminates found are actually from the tank and not just the sampling piping. The amount of fuel that must be drawn to clear the line effectively will vary depending on the length and size of the sampling piping run.

Once the line has been cleared, a sample of fuel should be drawn into a clean, dry sampling container. When drawing the sample, the technician should be sure to open the sampling valve as far as possible, without risking spillage, to ensure a high enough flow rate to capture any contaminates near the bottom of the tank. This sample should then be evaluated and rated for contaminate content (a topic for a future column). If this sample does not meet an acceptable rating standard, the technician should continue drawing fuel from the tank until an acceptable rating is achieved.

Daily sampling of fuel tanks will allow your staff to quickly become experts on the quality of fuel in your tanks and the nature of your quality control system. These experts will then become your best weapon for identifying any discrepancies that could lead to a quality chain breakdown.

The 2010 NATA ASC brochure is now available for download by clicking here.

Those members interested in receiving professionally printed hard copies of this brochure may contact Eric Byer at NATA.