Two of the tenets of good habit formation is that you give people a motivator to do the right thing, and you make it easy to do so. Up until the fall of 2010, the Aeronav Services branch of the FAA could have been a poster child for building good pilot habits on keeping current with airport, approach and charting data. Printed charts were available at virtually every FBO and digital charts were a free download for all.
As our investigation on page 5 reports, the party started winding down in 2010 with restrictions to paper chart sales, and now a whole micro-industry of flight planning apps and websites are hanging in limbo, knowing free downloads of data will disappear by April 12, 2012. In the meantime, downloads that were available weeks in advance are now available 24 hours in advance.