INTERNATIONAL
FROM THE COCKPIT
Bill Lavender bill@agairupdate.com
Big News!
Savannah is a great little port city close by to some of the best golf courses, restaurants, history and sightseeing to be found anywhere in the U.S.
A 6 | agairupdate.com
I suppose the “big” news of the month is NAAA moving the 2021 Ag Aviation Expo from Palm Springs, California to Savannah, Georgia. As I understand it, California is still experiencing Covid restrictions that would not be beneficial to the success of the NAAA convention. The Covid environment is much less restrictive in Georgia, as those who attended last years’ convention in Savannah realized. I’m all for it! Savannah is a great little port city close by to some of the best golf courses, restaurants, history and sightseeing to be found anywhere in the U.S. The people there are always accommodating. The hotels are great and you can’t beat the location. Watching out the seventh floor of your hotel room, a container ship motor up the Savannah River at eye level is quite a sight to see. And, of course, the aircraft can land on an adjacent road so the convention has hands on aircraft display in an enormous convention center. It can’t be beat! Plus, by the time the Expo rolls around, major construction at the Perry-Houston County Airport (KPXE, where AgAir Update offices are located) should be completed. This means we can once again have the AgAir Update Open House and Hangar Party to kick off the convention. Watch for more details on that! On another note, in this edition of AgAir Update you will read about NTSB’s annual report on agaviation accidents for 2020. There are a couple of noteworthy items in it. First, the compilation of deaths in the U.S. from flying ag for the last 10 years was an astonishing 81 pilots. I don’t have the data handy for the 10 years before that, but it would be something of interest for comparative reasons. I do recall in the early 1990s, 15 deaths
seemed to be a common denominator. If that is true, the industry has made progress with an approximate 50% average overall reduction per annum in the last 10 years. However, years like 2020, 2016 and 2014 do nothing to improve those statistics with 13 and 12 deaths respectfully. If you are carefully reviewing 2020’s numbers, you may notice there were 12 fatal accidents, but 13 fatalities. The key words are fatal accidents and fatalities. There were 12 accidents with a fatality and in one case, a mid-air, where there were two fatalities. This accounts for what would seem to be a discrepancy. The mid-air was two SEAT aircraft in the Pacific Northwest working a fire in tandem that resulted in one accident, but two deaths.
A reader sent me a link where a fixed wing drone was powered by an electric motor spraying a crop. A reader sent me a link where a fixed wing drone was powered by an electric motor spraying a crop. That was somewhat interesting. I can think of a bucket of reasons the project will meet many challenges. The link claimed 135 acres an hour with a payload of just over 600 pounds. That makes me wonder if batteries are considered part of the payload, as fuel is for a manned, FAAcertified ag-aircraft. I watched a video of the drone treating a field. With all its autonomy, it still overflew the
