After the FAA determined that most pilots were dragging their feet on becoming ADS-B compliant, they made the move to push the deadline to 2021. (This is satire.)
The number of pilots scrambling to get their new transponders upgraded by the cutoff date is lower than anticipated (we’re in the middle of the satire part here), so the committee on such things stated, “If they are going to stall, so will we” (“Stall”, meaning to wait idly, but also an aviation reference. One should always attempt to recover as quickly as possible from a stall before it turns dangerous.).
As of the writing of this article, only about 400 pilots have upgraded to ADS-B, however on social media, many more claimed to have done so. The majority, however, are “holding out for that tail beacon thing on kick starter.” (That is not legit. We know it is a fantastic solution from uAvionix and we are very excited about the technology they are bringing to us. Thank you uAvionix.).
(Nothing above this sentence is true. Nothing below it either.)
The FAA is putting together a draft whereby pilots will be called in randomly based on their pilot certification number and told when they have to upgrade. If they can’t upgrade at that time, they will have to forfeit ownership of their plane and the aircraft goes to the show room at Van Bortal, where it can be purchased by a more responsible pilot who cares enough to do things properly. (This is a complete work of fiction. I even misspelled Van Bortal so you wouldn’t call them asking if it is true. Some of you would totally do that.)
Folks that have already updated to ADS-B will be eligible for a prorated refund of their expenses under the “Early Adopter Act of 2019” (which isn’t really a thing). Under this fake legislation (which isn’t real) pilots that upgraded early will receive a gift card to TCBY for an amount equivalent to the price of the ADS-B hardware and installation cost prorated over the number of hours flown between installation and the time their draft number is called.
One thing the FAA wanted to make very clear is that they have no idea about this. Don’t call them. (The article is a joke. Not even a good one.)
We interviewed a lot of pilots to discuss this issue, and that’s not really true either.
