Chuck Yeager made his historic flight to break the sound barrier in 1947 flying the Bell X-1, an aircraft designed by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and the US military to conduct research on supersonic travel. From that moment forward, aviation has been focused on harnessing that energy for practical application. The United States government would go on to commission an aircraft that operated faster than the speed of sound and higher than radar detectability in order to perform various cold war missions at a critical phase of history- one of the most notorious aircraft to come out of this supersonic fever was the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. In the last century, most research on supersonic speed has been conducted in a military setting, with some notable successes in civil operations, such as the Concorde, the Tupolev Tu-144, and more recently with the development of the Boom Overture aircraft. The engineering that went into the creation of the Blackbird provided groundbreaking innovation throughout the designing and testing process that set it apart from other aircraft of its kind and continues to inspire aerospace engineers working on the high-speed travel of our future.

The statistical significance of airport environment incidents related to pilot confusion at night was explored. Some articles suggest there is a higher rate of incidents during the day than during the night, while others suggest any low visibility environment will a greater processing time for the brain to react to outside references. Other researchers suggest incidents are not tied to time of day but to time spent looking inside the cockpit compared to outside the cockpit. Using this research and an analyzation of incident reports collected by the Aviation Safety Reporting System, this paper suggests there is a statistically significant relationship between incidents involving pilot confusion on the surface and time of day.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, more commonly referred to as drones, have been a hot subject for the past few years. In the news, stories about drones cause the public alarm because of their seemingly increasing use. Problems have arisen with drones congesting airspace where manned aircraft fly, posing a huge threat to pilots and passengers of those aircraft. They have also caused concern of the public in matters of privacy. Drones are a go-anywhere and see-anything type of tool. They go where manned aircraft cannot, and where humans on the ground cannot. This video takes an in depth look at the issue of increasing civilian drone use, new regulations on users, categorizing types of drones, and possible solutions to the problems. Throughout the video, there will be three interviews. These interviews will be with experts in the field. The first person is Dr. Sarah Nilsson, Esq. She is a lawyer in drone law with her own practice. She has her PhD, CFI, and CFII as well as professional flying experience. The second person is Mr. Chris Andres. He is the Airport Administrator of Chandler Municipal Airport and offers a unique perspective on drones from an airport management standpoint. Lastly, the third person interviewed is a salesman at Viper Hobbies located in Mesa, AZ. He offers a perspective of drone use from the retail side, and also insight in FAA requirements of retailers and how retailers might offer education on regulation to the public.

The thesis is an investigation on current regulations of commercial aircraft landing and take-off procedures and an analysis of potential weaknesses within the regulatory system for commercial aerospace. To determine such flaws, an area of worse-case scenarios with regard to the aforementioned flight operations was researched. The events selected to best-depict these scenarios where incidents of aircraft overrunning the runway, referred to as runway excursions. A case-study conducted of 44 federal investigations of runway excursions produced data indicating four influential factors within these incidents: weather, pilot error, instrument malfunction, and runway condition. Upon examination, all but pilot error appeared to have federal enforcement to diminish the occurrence of future incidents. This is a direct result of the broad possibilities that make up this factor. The study then searched for a consistent fault within the incidents with the results indicating an indirect relationship of thrust reversers, a technique utilized by pilots to provide additional braking, to these excursions. In cases of thrust reverser failure, pilots' over-reliance on the system lead to time being lost from the confusion produced by the malfunction, ultimately resulting in several different runway excursions. The legal implication with the situation is that current regulations are ambiguous on the subject of thrust reversers and thus do not properly model the usage of the technique. Thus, to observe the scope of danger this ambiguity presents to the industry, the relationship of the technique to commercial aerospace needed to be determined. Interviews were set-up with former commercial pilots to gather data related to the flight crew perspective. This data indicated that thrust reversers were actively utilized by pilots within the industry for landing operations. The problem with the current regulations was revealed that the lack of details on thrust reverser reflected a failure of regulations to model current industry flight operations. To improve safety within the industry, new data related to thrust reverser deployment must be developed and enforced to determine appropriate windows to utilize the technique, thus decreasing time lost in confusion that results from thrust reversers malfunction. Future work would be based on producing simulations to determine said data as well as proposing the policy suggestions produced by this thesis.