What if a technology designed to save lives quietly became a tool to collect money? Louisiana has just taken a stand—and the rest of the aviation world should be paying attention. For years, ADS-B has been promoted as one of the biggest advances in aviation safety. It allows aircraft to broadcast their precise position, altitude, speed, and direction, giving pilots and air traffic controllers far better situational awareness. It is a safety tool—not a luxury. Now, there is some encouraging news from the United States. Louisiana has officially become the third U.S. state to ban the use of ADS-B flight data for billing aircraft owners. The move follows similar legislation in North Dakota and Montana. The concern is simple: ADS-B was introduced to improve safety, but in some places the same data has started being used to generate landing or airport fees. Many pilots and aviation organizations, including the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA), have argued that this creates the w...
It is easy for me to say this as I do not have a personal car. Standing at a traffic light stoppage, I looked around and found five cars Infront of me in which only one person was sitting. Two of these five cars were big enough to seat 7 people. While observing them, it is the thought that came to my mind that can things become easy and smoother if we impose a complete ban on the usage of cars for personal use. Well, this is an impossible thing to even think, and it is a crime to talk about it or to implement it. Counting Cars with Single Occupancy A few days back, I came to the phase six bus stand in Mohali to drop off a friend of mine. He was to catch a bus for Anandpur Sahib. Standing right in front of the Verka plant at around 6 in the evening, nearly half an hour passed and no bus was coming. Actually this is the peak rush hour, as we call it, when so many people are coming out and rushing from their work/office to their home. There was a long traffic jam and the movement was almo...