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WASHINGTON — People who fire guns at drones are endangering the public and property and could be prosecuted or fined, the Federal Aviation Administration warned Friday.

After I retired from UAL as a Standards Captain on the -400, I got a job as a simulator instructor working for Alteon (a Boeing subsidiary) at Asiana. When I first got there, I was shocked and surprised by the lack of basic piloting skills shown by most of the pilots. It is not a normal situation with normal progression from new hire, right seat, left seat taking a decade or two. One big difference is that ex-Military pilots are given super-seniority and progress to the left seat much faster. Compared to the US, they also upgrade fairly rapidly because...

U.S. authorities couldn’t perform drug or alcohol tests on the four pilots who were aboard Asiana Flight 214 when it crashed at San Francisco International Airport — a lapse that will complicate efforts to figure out why they were seemingly unaware that the plane was coming in too slowly and too low. Those were the latest revelations Tuesday from National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Debbie Hersman, who said her agency and the Federal Aviation Administration couldn’t legally requirethe crew of the South Korea-based airline to submit to testing after the crash. That decision is left to the airline’s home country....

The Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday said it was making final a rule that says all commercial airline pilots hired by U.S. carriers will be required to have at least 1,500 hours of flight time. The Air Line Pilots Association, which praised the new rule, said it goes into effect Aug. 1. The FAA, in announcing that the rule will be published soon, said the new requirements were adopted in reaction to the crash of a Colgan Air airplane near Buffalo, N.Y., in 2009, in which both the captain and first officer were relatively inexperienced.

Asiana Airlines said Monday that the pilot in control of the Boeing 777 that crashed in San Francisco Saturday had little experience flying that type of plane and was landing one for the first time at that airport. Asiana spokeswoman Lee Hyomin told the Associated Press Monday that Lee Gang-guk was trying to get used to the 777 during Saturday's crash landing. She says the pilot had nearly 10,000 hours flying other planes, including the Boeing 747, but had only 43 hours on the 777. Hyomin told Reuters that co-pilot Lee Jeong-min has 3,220 hours of flying experience with the...

A navigation system that helps pilots make safe descents was turned off at San Francisco airport on Saturday when a South Korean airliner crashed and burned after undershooting the runway ... The system, called Glide Path, is meant to help planes land in bad weather. It was clear and sunny, with light winds, when Asiana ... San Francisco International has turned off the system for nearly the entire summer on the runway where the Asiana flight crashed, according to a notice from the airport on the Federal Aviation Administration's Web site

LiveATC.net has captured the final approach of Asiana Airlines Flight 214. Flight 214 from Seoul, South Korea was on a direct flight and was landing on to runway 28L when it crashed at 11.36am. [photo] San Francisco Fire Department officials are reported to have confirmed fatalities in the Asiana Airlines Boeing 777-200ER crash. Local news media KTVU has reported that two passengers were killed and 61 injured. [photo] Flightglobal.com reports that the 2006-registered aircraft HL7742 had accumulated 35,700h on 5,185 cycles at 31 March. The 777-200ER, one of 12 in the Asiana fleet, was powered by the Pratt & Whitney...

In the last few weeks there have been widely circulated reports about law-abiding pilots being confronted by heavily armed local cops and federal Customs and Border Protection agents who appear to act as if they have absolute authority to search and interrogate pilots and passengers. "At least 12 of our members have been stopped and had their plane searched by CBP for absolutely no reason at all," said AOPA spokesman Steve Hedges. "We've asked CBP for documents related to the searches, filing a Freedom of Information Act to get it, but so far they have been unresponsive." As always, it's...

One clue that it might be, the TSA refuses to publish his name. But if you’ve been through any airport lately, you’ll notice an unusually high number of Muslim TSA agents, no doubt an Obama-sponsored affirmative action program for third world Muslims.

AirVenture is not just a big deal to the aviation community, or even the city of Oshkosh, WI. Estimates are that the week-long "Worlds Greatest Aviation Celebration" has a $110 million economic impact on the state. So when the FAA demanded that EAA pony up about a half million dollars to pay for air traffic controllers to work the show, it got the attention of the state's two U.S. Senators.

Richard Grenell, a political consultant and media commentator reported today via Twitter that NBC’s Mark Murray, senior political editor for NBC News wife, Sasha is an Obama appointee but never publicly disclosed it. Grenell asked Murray yesterday if he was married to an Obama appointee and why it was not disclosed. Murray told him that he hasn’t publicly disclosed that his wife is an Obama appointee because he told NBC officials and they didn’t care. Murray also told Grenell that his first wife worked for Ray Lahood so disclosing her as an Obama appointee wasn’t necessary. Murray’s wife, Sasha Johnson...

"My dad fought a war so this can never happen in America. I will not dishonor my father's memory by giving up what he fought for. No, sir. With all due respect, I will not consent to a search without a proper warrant." James Fallows May 21 2013, 11:34 AM ET Over the weekend I related the story of Gabriel Silverstein, a businessman and pilot who for no apparent reason was subjected to a two-hour detention and invasive search by Homeland Security officials as he traveled across the country in his small plane. The picture above is not from that...

The Pecksniffs of America had nothing but scorn for Congress' vote last week to stop furloughs of air traffic controllers, which were ostensibly mandated under the 2011 Budget Control Act. Congress failed to act to stop cuts to Head Start and Meals On Wheels, critics sneered, but did stop the Federal Aviation Administration cuts largely because they hit lawmakers where they live -- on the planes that fly them to and from their home districts. Nonsense. Congress did what it was supposed to do. Capitol Hill responded to the flying public's righteous anger. There was a fear factor: If a...

A typo is keeping President Obama from signing legislation designed to end budget-related FAA air traffic controller furloughs blamed for widespread flight delays, a congressional source told CNN Saturday. But the fix is going into effect anyway, and the system will be back to normal by Sunday, the FAA said. Apparently the holdup boils down to an "s" needing to be added somewhere in the Senate version of the bill -- it's not clear which word is the culprit. The House fixed the typo in the version it passed Friday, and the Senate plans to fix it on Tuesday, a...

... k Obama chided Republicans on Saturday for approving a plan to ease air-traffic delays caused by federal spending cuts while leaving budget cuts that affect children and the elderly untouched. The Senate and the House of Representatives backed a plan this week to give the Department of Transportation flexibility to cover immediate salaries of air traffic controllers at the Federal Aviation Administration who had been furloughed as part of budget cuts known as "sequester.

WASHINGTON – Legislation to end furloughs of air traffic controllers and delays for millions of travelers is headed to a House vote after a dark-of-night vote in the Senate that took place after most lawmakers had left the Capitol for a weeklong vacation. The bill passed late Thursday without even a roll call vote, and House officials indicated it likely would be brought up for quick approval there. Under the legislation, the Federal Aviation Administration would gain authority to transfer up to $253 million from accounts that are flush into other programs, to "prevent reduced operations and staffing" through the...

The Senate took the first step toward circumventing sequestration Thursday night with a bipartisan vote that would put furloughed air traffic controllers back on the job. The House is expected to take up the measure Friday, and the White House has promised to consider any bill which it receives. The Senate vote came in response to passengers angered this week by long delays at several major airports. If the Senate bill wins House approval and is signed into law by President Obama, the furloughed controllers are not expected to return to work before Saturday

That’s the simple reality of Friday’s vote to ease the pain for the Federal Aviation Administration. By assenting to it, Democrats have agreed to sequestration for the foreseeable future. In effect, what Democrats said Friday was that in any case where the political pain caused by sequestration becomes unbearable, they will agree to cancel that particular piece of the bill while leaving the rest of the law untouched. The result is that sequestration is no longer particularly politically threatening, but it’s even more unbalanced: Cuts to programs used by the politically powerful will be addressed, but cuts to programs that...

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.), chairman of the Financial Services Committee, has told Richard Cordray not to bother. This is part of the recent evidence that government is getting some adult supervision. Barack Obama used a recess appointment to make Cordray director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But a federal circuit court has declared unconstitutional three other recess appointments made the same day because the Senate was not in recess. So Hensarling has told Cordray not to testify before his committee: “Absent contrary guidance from the United States Supreme Court, you do not meet the statutory requirements of a validly...

WASHINGTON -- President Obama is clearly playing a nasty political game with the air traffic controller furloughs that have forced severe airline delays across the country. It's not the first time he's exploited the budget-cutting sequestration law for political purposes. Earlier this year, he tried to stir up fears that our economy would be hit by fiscal Armageddon if the Republican House didn't submit to his tax-hiking, big-spending demands. But his hysterical claims that our food would be unsafe, America's defenses would crumble and the elderly would lose their benefits have proven to be groundless. A headline in Thursday's Washington...