Free Republic

WEST PALM BEACH — At least nine planes violated temporary flight restrictions through Monday morning for President Donald Trump’s Palm Beach Mar-a-Lago stay, with at least two of those having the unique experience of being buzzed by military jets, federal officials confirmed this morning to The Palm Beach Post. Eight of those crossed the line on Friday alone, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.

State Dining Room 9:47 A.M. EST THE PRESIDENT: Thank you for being here. Nothing like having meetings in the White House. Good place. Good place for meetings. Good place for a lot of things. People don’t realize I inherited a mess. A big mess. I think they know. I think they understand. Well, thank you all. I know so many of you through reading and through business magazines, and you’ve done an amazing job. And I want to congratulate you. I know you’re under pressure from a lot of foreign elements and foreign carriers. I’ve been hearing that a little...

ALTADENA, CA -- An air traffic controller error sent a jet from LAX into the flight path of another plane and flying low over the mountains above the San Gabriel Valley... an EVA Air Boeing 777 that left LAX around 1:20 a.m. heading to Taipei was given an incorrect instruction by a controller based in San Diego to turn left instead of right. That sent the airliner toward the mountains above Altadena, as well as toward the flight path of an Air Canada plane that had just taken off. Audio traffic indicates the same controller realizing the problem and telling...

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating why pilots trying to land at the Boise Airport were met with silence from air traffic controllers during the early hours of Nov. 19. Boise Police officers and paramedics were called out to the air traffic control tower at 2:41 a.m. for a welfare check after learning that pilots and airport officials had been unable to reach the tower operators, despite trying multiple radio frequencies, telephone and the emergency "red phone." The first officers on scene wrote in a report that after reaching a locked gate, they used a spotlight to flash the tower...

http://www.faa.gov/uas/media/Part_107_Summary.pdf

consider all the times whites are passed over for jobs because of this country’s diversity fetish. The Federal Aviation Administration and the Obama Transportation Department today were smacked with a class action race discrimination lawsuit for systematically purging highly qualified air traffic controller candidates from consideration in order to increase diversity. Mountain States Legal Foundation president William Perry Pendley, whose group filed the lawsuit, said in a statement that, “In abandoning years of hiring the most qualified and adopting a ‘test’ that is the epitome of psychobabble, the FAA told our clients their skills are less important than their race...

For the first time ever, a private company has permission to land on the moon. The U.S. government has officially approved the planned 2017 robotic lunar landing of California-based Moon Express, which aims to fly commercial missions to Earth's nearest neighbor and help exploit its resources, company representatives announced today (Aug. 3). ... Previously, companies had been able to operate only on or around Earth. The new approval, while exclusive to Moon Express, could therefore serve as an important regulatory guide for deep-space commercial activity in general, Richards said. "Nobody's had a deep-sea voyage yet. We're still charting those waters,"...

Last year, a company called Flytenow was poised to revolutionize air travel by allowing private pilots already going to a destination to share their costs with would-be travelers—kind of like a college rideshare bulletin board, but on the Internet. The service would pair pilots with potential passengers, for a small fee no greater than the cost of fuel. It’s been called “Uber in the sky.” But in December, Flytenow shut down after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld the Federal Aviation Administration’s determination that the service must obtain the highest levels of licensing, akin to what...

If you fly, you will have heard by now that The Pilots' Bill of Rights 2 has been signed into law. This is the result of the DOT refusing to rule on the proposal for close to five years. In short, it will allow anyone who has held a third class medical since 2007 be able to fly any airplane up to 6,000 pounds, single or twin, VFR or IFR, under 10,000 feet without another current medical certificate. The law becomes effective July 17, 2017. My prediction is that the FAA will never allow it to take effect, esp. with...

U.S. airline regulators are banning all flights between the U.S. and airports in Turkey as the country fought to overcome a military coup attempt that left at least 161 people dead and scores more wounded Saturday. The Federal Aviation Administration ban includes commercial and private planes operating into or out of Turkey, as well as flights to the U.S. by non-U.S. carriers via third countries. (SNIP) Meanwhile, the U.S. embassy in Ankara issued a statement Saturday warning that U.S. government officials have been told not to use the airport in Istanbul and that U.S. citizens in the country should seek...

A new bill in the House of Representatives, the Aviation Innovation, Reform and Reauthorization (AIRR) Act, sponsored by Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pennsylvania), seeks to “privatize” the air traffic control system, which would strip oversight away from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and create a new, private, non-profit corporation to oversee air traffic control (ATC) operations.On the surface, this bill might sound like a good idea. But the word “privatize” is a misnomer. Instead of fixing legitimate problems with the FAA, the AIRR Act would overhaul the entire ATC system and replace a bureaucracy that is currently accountable to Congress with...

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has mandated that the skies over the presidential nominating conventions will be a no-fly zone. The FAA has warned pilots to give the Republican National Convention in Cleveland and the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia a 34.5-mile radius.

Drone journalism is coming to a newspaper and TV station near you within 60 days. New Federal Aviation Administration rules on the flying devices opens the door to newsrooms using drones to cover events, peer into buildings and capture images like never before, according to the founder of the Drone Journalism Lab at the University of Nebraska. "In 60 days, drone journalism will be legally possible in any newsroom in the United States. That's not to say it will be easy, but it will be legally possible in ways that it has never been before," wrote Matt Waite.

Last December, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) rushed an arbitrary and ineffectual recreational drone-owners’ registry into effect, mere days before Christmas and just in time to criminalize the flying of toys by thousands of children and hobbyists. The agency has potentially roped those toys under its definition of “aircraft” for purposes of all aircraft regulation as well. Following this bureaucratic overreach, a hobby drone operator who happens to be a lawyer, John Taylor, filed suit in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, challenging the registry.

Starting today, and continuing for the next month, the FAA has warned airplane pilots that GPS signals on on the West Coast, and especially over California and Nevada, may be impacted. The reason why is not exactly clear, but as Gizmodo notes, the US military will be testing a device or devices that will potentially jam GPS signals for six hours each day. Officially the tests were announced by the FAA but are centered near the US Navy’s largest installation in the Mojave Desert, China Lake, located "just down the road" from Area 51. The Navy has kept silent about...

FAA Warns of GPS Outages This Month During Mysterious Tests on the West Coast http://gizmodo.com/faa-warns-of-gps-outages-this-month-during-mysterious-t-1780866590

Before the FAA changed the hiring protocol in 2014, the majority of new air traffic control hires had served as controllers in the military or graduated from an FAA-approved Collegiate Training Initiative program — resulting in associate’s or bachelor’s degrees — and were given preference in hiring because of that experience. ... Since 2014, any applicants with aviation degrees or military service are now on equal footing with people without any experience, because the first step to being hired means passing the questionnaire. In some cases, applicants with no experience are passing the questionnaire while those with academic training degrees...

<p>The Federal Aviation Administration is ordering fixes on General Electric engines used on some Boeing 787 Dreamliners after it found that an icing problem can cause the engines to shut down mid-flight.</p>

Colorado Springs, Colo.—The Federal Aviation Authority (sic) would like to develop an implementation plan "as soon as possible" to begin transitioning responsibility for collecting and disseminating safety-related space situational awareness data from the Air Force to the FAA, the associate administrator for commercial space transportation at the FAA said Wednesday. "We would want to accomplish that transition in a crawl, walk, run manner, so that all of the key stakeholders were comfortable with the approach that was being used, and with the resulting products and services," George Nield said at the 32nd Space Symposium, adding that the transition could be...

In this election cycle, we hear a lot about the “establishment.” Most people are not really sure who they are, but they are sure that they do not like them. The anger toward the establishment is not party specific and has propelled two unlikely candidates: Donald Trump on the Republican side and Senator Bernie Sanders for the Democrats. The faithful following these outsiders may be more about “the grassroots trying to teach the establishment a lesson,” as Gary Bauer posited last month, than about affection for either man. In an InfoWars video, reporter Richard Reeves, at the University of Texas...