> He is CEO of Denver Airport

Most CEOs don’t have any knowledge on what is and isn’t legal. The only credibility being CEO of KDEN adds is that he has experience leading a large transportation organization (his previous experience in California is better to lean on).

> has a list of former FAA Heads that vouch for him

Have those 3 Administrators been any good though? The FAA has been in a rough spot the past 15-20 years, I’d hesitate taking any of their opinions alone as a sign of a worthy candidate.

The reasons the FAA are so “buddy buddy” with the industry are due to those same people.

> Also, 3 of the last 5 to hold this position were not pilots.

I’d actually say normal airline pilots aren’t who you want running an organization like the FAA, rather someone familiar with the overall FARs and their implementation. Sometimes that’s a pilot, other times it’s someone in some other facet.

It’s a massive misnomer the flying public normally makes. Pilots don’t normally know the regs all that well.

> I can’t find a good reason for him as a bad pick, which I partly blame on media bias.

My personal problem with him is that a Republican Congressman was able to ask about FARs that are relevant to major controversies with the industry and he couldn’t respond to any of them.

The next Admin will be in charge of rebuilding the agency’s credibility in wake of the MAX8 crashes, the terrible state of the ATC system (staffing), the backwards medical program, and a modernization program that should have been completed a decade ago. As the nominated Administrator for just under a year, you should be able to answer questions about at least one of those.

Personally I think he could be a great C Suite level manager if you ignore the current litigation involved in his past position, but getting blind sided like he did was almost as bad as Kavanaugh crying over beer. You’re going to get questions on regulations, you really need to at least have a means to talk your way out of it. He has to inspire confidence and his confirmation hearing did the opposite.

> I also refuse to take Ted Cruz at his word.

I will forever vote against him, but a broken clock can be right twice a day.

> I know for a fact all commercial airline pilots must have a college education.

That isn’t the case anymore and many Majors are starting to move away from that requirement.

> I hope that FAA control personnel have to have the same education.

The FAA requires a Bachelor’s degree, three years of work history, or a combination of post high school education and work that total 3 years. Once hired, you go to the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City for a few months. If you graduate (failure rate fluctuates between 30-70%) you then go to a Center or Tower facility where you receive specialized training for that facility. This process can take 2-5 years depending on the complexity of the area. If you washout of a Center, you may be offered a chance to try Tower. If you wash out of Tower, you’re done.

It’s perfectly viable that a controller not have a Bachelor’s degree.

> Forced retirement at 56 is a waste of talent and experience.

It’s done for safety reasons. Mental acuity starts to drop which drives risk up. If they wish to stay in the field they can move up in management or work for a support contractor.

> An 18 year old hire is NOT college educated.

While 18 years old is the youngest you can get a CTO, it would be hard to meet the requirements of the FAA to get hired as a controller. There are contract towers which you can earn a CTO at and work contract, but that’s a very limited and costly option. Bringing up the 18 year old requirement for a CTO was to show that no one hired in the immediate aftermath of the PATCO dissolution is still pushing tin.

My main point is that your statement about Reagan causing all of ATC’s current issues is based on faulty logic. Congress has continually undermined and underfunded the FAA for 40 years since and the FAA has refused any reform for their Academy facility instead pretending everything’s going to be okay.

> Sounds like the FFA has cut some training and review training mandatory classes.

This article and one posted by FR24, don’t really point to a controller error. United crossed 4L when they were supposed to hold short of it.

> Those new hires then are retiring today.

Mandatory retirement for a controller is at 56 and the absolute youngest you can be to exercise a CTO is 18 (this doesn’t really happen). The youngest replacements possible would have to have been hired in 1985 at 18 years old and would retire this year. PATCO was broken in 1981.

Those newhires retired a decade ago.

> Poorly trained replacements.

The FAA Academy has some genuine issues that the FAA willfully ignores, but this was pilot deviation not a controller error.

This event was a runway incursion, not the descent after takeoff. In this case the United flight landed on RWY 4R into HNL and was given taxi instructions to exit RWY 4R and hold short of RWY4L. Instead the United plane continued and taxied onto RWY 4L as a Cessna 208 was landing on that runway.

All that doesn’t matter if the plane can’t get within weapons range of their target. Currently the Russians are using long range weapons to suppress the Ukrainian Air Force, mainly from within Russia. In order to hit tanks, they’d first have to knock out Migs and S-300/400 in Russia. The weapons the F-16 uses to engage in BVR fights like this aren’t something most of NATO want to send.

Not yet they don’t. Feds still have to approve the buy out, which actually doesn’t look like a done deal just yet.

There have been some reports that the Russians have been using S300s to hit ground based targets. If that is true, they’ve got plenty in reserve to just keep slinging at the Ukrainians.

It’s gonna be an interesting Winter and Spring.

> It may be fluid, but it’s very floaty, and unstylized.

I agree with you on the float and wonky physics, but it’s not “unstylized.” This is very stylized compared to other 3DCG especially when compared to the garbage shoveled out by Netflix backed studios. Just because we don’t like the way it looks, doesn’t make it unstylized.

It seems like they’re trying to shy away from the default “3DCG with hard lines that is a bad imitation of 2D animation” that a lot of studios use. I don’t like it, but it looks way better than a lot of other seasonal shows. Maybe I just watch a lot more garbage than you do, but this just isn’t that bad.

> I just don’t see any positives compared to 2d animation quality-wise.

Good 2D animation costs way more than this type of 3DCG. That’s one of the reasons 3DCG has had such a bad wrap for so long is that it was used as a cost saving measure and it was so glaringly obvious. Now some studios use it as it can fit the style they’re going for.

Trigun is a good sized IP, but it doesn’t have the unlimted budget that larger franchises have. Full Metal Panic had a good sized following and we all saw how the S4 CG turned out.

> Why do people say studio Orange does cg animation well?

Back when they first started doing 3DCG, they were absolutely the best at it. Their animation was stiff, but it wasn’t choppy or stuttery like other 3DCG series of the time. The mech fights in Majestic Prince were fluid and made a lot of lesser 3D mech series look terrible in comparison.

I am not a fan of their style, but it’s always been substantially better than anything else in the 12-24 episode bracket. The only really bad thing about the trailer was the art style with the soft lines/shading, the animation of characters was way more fluid than their past work.