In early October, I shut down a website I published for 20 years.
Called The Suburban Times, it served my community and nearby communities.
It was a digital community bulletin board. I didn’t create the content, I aggregated it.
I knew it was popular. The analytics told me so.
But it grew to become a burden I no longer wanted to shoulder.
Plus, it drained my energy for General Aviation News.
As Rod Machado says, “Bad thing.”
As my wife and I discussed what to do about the website, I didn’t like the idea of selling it or deleting it.
“None of us can see around any corners,” I recall telling my wife, Deb. “Who knows, maybe general aviation will be grounded. And if that grounding sticks, that would be the end of General Aviation News.”
So I gathered everything related to The Suburban Times and put it on the shelf — well, in computer folder really — for safe keeping.
Barely a month later, the FAA and Department of Transportation announced they’d start throttling traffic at 40 of the busiest airports in the country. That was quickly followed by new restrictions at 12 of those airports on general aviation operations.
That’s not exactly grounding GA, but it’s not encouraging either.
And now that GA specific restrictions to airspace have happened, could this be, as former Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association President Phil Boyer used to say, the “camel’s nose under the tent” moment?
For now, and hopefully forever, The Suburban Times will remain on the shelf.
In America, ‘THEY’ is us. They only have the power we give them.
As the cartoon character POGO always said: “
We have met the enemy. And they is us.”
I appreciate the work Ben Sclair has done, and we are kindred spirits; I also publish a newsletter similar to what he was publishing, and partially share his opinion, but in my humble opinion, the glass is indeed at least half full. Yes, there was news of revisiting the old argument about ATC privatization, an issue that was ostensibly settled years ago when it was ruled that Air Traffic Control is an inherently governmental function. And indeed, Transportation Secretary Duffy has publicly stated he is against ATC privatization. May the issue never come up again. Moreover, there is some very good news that no one else in the thread has mentioned yet, the introduction of HR 5451, the Aviation Funding Stability Act (see https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/5451). Perhaps it will pass into law, but that’s a political issue, and if it does, ATC shutdowns, and indeed, FAA shutdowns in general may be averted.
As a 76 year old starting out in military then working my way through a variety of general aviation equipment, I now find myself flying at 85 mph in a Taylorcraft L2-A and enjoying it more than ever. The future of non business aviation is sport flying for the pure fun of it.
A lot of folks thought GA operations IVO Class B airspace were ‘doomed’ forever when the initial post-911 “Mode C Veil” restrictions were implemented.
This too shall pass…
On a related note:
In his response to these developments, AOPA’s Darren Pleasance said the following:
“It was certainly appropriate for the FAA to equitably reduce aircraft operations on all users of our nation’s public-use aviation system due to the government shutdown. However, the decision over the weekend to completely lock out all general and business aviation at a number of airports across the country is a disproportionate response.”
I hope someone reminded Mr. Pleasance that “business aviation” is a subset of “general aviation”…not its own separate category.
I think a preferable response to aircraft accidents and incidents is to determine what happened and figure out a way or ways to keep it from happening again. “Punishment” isn’t the answer (unless it is an egregious “hold my beer and watch this” event).
In many countries, aircraft accidents are considered criminal events, aviators know this, and as a result, after anything happens, everybody immediately lawyers up. The very first thing the lawyer says is “Don’t say ANYTHING.”
Here, if you run off the end of the runway because the brakes didn’t work, the information is used to inspect the brakes, and if there was a mechanical failure, the FAA generates a Service Advisory or an AD note to prevent it happening again.
In other places, since the pilot (who is automatically presumed guilty) has been advised by counsel to shut up, nobody is going to be looking at the mechanical failure, and all efforts go to proving the pilot guilty or innocent. Next time it happens, somebody else runs off the end of the runway because the brakes didn’t work, and the legal cycle starts again. The brakes are the problem, not the pilot, blaming the pilot won’t fix the problem.
This has actually happened at an airport in South America (I think it was Quito, Ecuador). Turns out the runway was in fact too short for a 737 on hot days, and after the third or fourth incident of runway excursions, somebody eventually figured out the pilots were not the problem, it was the facility. If the authorities had listened to the first pilot, they could have fixed the problem then, and there would have been no further incidents. Pilot #1 was advised by counsel not to say anything, so nobody realized it was a facility problem, not a pilot error, until several more identical incidents occurred.
I’m an AGI, and sometimes give FAAST talks at fly-ins. In my experience (almost half a century), nobody deliberately plans to fly VFR into IFR, nobody deliberately runs out of fuel, no CFI can recover EVERY student pilot’s effort to make a mess of things, nobody expects or can train for a bird strike, unexpected engine failures do happen, and sometimes there is simply no good place to land.
Yes, people make mistakes, part of training is to try to get them to recognize the risks before they discover them first-hand. I’ve seen very, very few total maniacs flying around in airplanes, most of the time I encounter them on the drive to the airport.
Best Regards,
The old “privatize the Air Traffic Control system” argument reared its ugly head again about 2 weeks ago. Same tired tropes about “efficiency” etc. That would be the death of GA right there. Pay-to play fees imposed on every GA flight. Registration fees for each airframe, payable annually to “support the system”. We can never rest because that “bullet: is always loaded and locked. Stay aware and in contact with your congress critters.
All is not lost. Who really wants to fly into those Class B airspaces anyway? There is a huge number of private fields in the US and Canada, with and without paved runways. The trend continues away from government-owned airports obsessed with gold-plated facilities and business jets. See the explosion in interest in STOL aircraft that need only an acre or two of cleared land. Ultralights too are seeing a resurgence in interest. I believe that sport aviation is actually experiencing a renaissance.
GA shutdown? Only temporary, I’m sure. Congress would be inundated with angry owners, pilots and mechanics to ease the restriction.
However, the hiatus would be beneficial for this GA news service to sponsor a movement to clean up the serious problems leading to accidents in GA: fuel exhaustion; VMC flights into IMC wx; CFI failures to grab the controls and save the flight; pilot ignorance about fuel tank selection settings, et.al. These incompetent human errors not only endanger the pilots and passengers and people on the ground, but force-up the insurance rates which in themselves threaten to price GA hobby flying beyond affordability.
In cases where there are no fatalities, I advocate for pilot license suspension for 3-5 years and permanent CFI decertification. In fatality cases, those penalties should be permanent. These authoritative legal actions would go a long way to clearing the underbrush of potentially lethal incompetents from the skies and bean fields and perhaps stabilize insurance rates. What works for terrestrial drivers would work for airborne drivers.
Your thoughts? I can hear the howls of such persons who advocate for the Wild Wild West of the Wild Blue Yonder. The lyrics from the Air Force Hynm: “We live in flame or go down in flame…” are oh-so-true for the amateur amateurs in hobby GA.
Regards/J
Ditto Wills comment of November 14, 2025…
I’ve been flying everything from a twin engine Ultralight to an RV-6A over the past 43 years. I have also built 6 of my own flying machines and have enjoyed the luxury of being a test pilot on those six occasions. However; with the invasion of Drone Deliveries into the our national airspace & now the shocking announcement of GA airspace restrictions, it is truly a sad sad day for pilots… yep, grass roots aviation is quickly becoming a thing of the past
Our community of pilots, mechanics and supporters of GA is tightly focused and fragile, Ben. Your local community is much more robust, a much broader base of occupations and interests. Don’t let The Suburban Times collect dust.
Practical observation. A glitch in any one element, be it fuel supply or government support or economy and GA gets awfully wobbly.
Thanks for what you do, Ben. Here’s to many more years of GA flying and GA News.
I have been flying for 45 years and cannot agree with you more!