Free Republic

Congress refuses to gut the one program the Transportation Security Administration has offered to minimize: pilots who pack guns. The House just passed an amendment in its Homeland Security appropriations bill that would boost funding for armed-pilot training by $10 million. That throws a sharp rebuke at both the TSA and the Obama administration, which proposed chopping financing in half. The showdown exemplifies a larger tension over which programs created in the aftershock of Sept. 11 should endure — and what actually keeps Americans safe. “The last line of defense is the pilot’s ability to defend the cockpit,” Rep. Chip...

Johnson, known as "Mama Bird," was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio in 2007. She is said to have logged more flight hours, trained more pilots and given more Federal Aviation Administration exams than any other pilot on the planet. When inducted into the Hall of Fame, Johnson had been flying for 55 years and had spent the equivalent of seven years in flight.

An airport security worker was arrested after throwing a cup of hot coffee over a pilot who told her to stop swearing. Transportation Security Administrator (TSA) Lateisha El, 30, was in the middle of a conversation with work colleagues at a JFK Airport terminal when she was interrupted by the American Airlines pilot. Off-duty airman Steven Trivett, 54, was exiting terminal 8 when he overheard El swearing and asked her to tone down the profanity. Trivett, of Butler, Tennessey, told them they should 'conduct themselves more professionally in uniform and not use profanity or the n-word,' according to the New...

Pilots packing heat may soon be a relic of the 9/11 aftermath, as the White House seeks to cut the $25 million budget in half for the federal flight deck officers training program known as the FFDO. “The Obama administration has had an institutional hostility towards the concept of arming pilots, and especially the FFDO program, since the beginning,” Lt. Col. Al Aitken, a retired Marine and now with the Airline Security Consulting Group, claimed at a panel hosted by the conservative Heritage Foundation on Friday. The panel brought together advocates for the voluntary program that trains pilots, co-pilots and...

You’re looking at what may well be the helmet worn by the first F-35 Joint Strike Fighter pilots at the plane’s schoolhouse at Eglin Air Force Base, Fl. It’s the basis for BAE Systems’ alternate JSF helmet that is being developed due to issues with the plane’s futuristic — and kind of crazy – looking helmet made by Vision Systems International. BAE’s brain bucket is based on the one used by Eurofighter Typhoon pilots. However, for F-35, BAE will remove the Typhoon’s display system — housed in the giant forward part of the helmet — and will replace it with...

A Muslim pilot working for a well-known British carrier has said he was fired because his bosses feared he might copy the September 11 terror attack.The London-based pilot — who was not named for legal reasons — was judged a security risk after the discovery of his link to two alleged extremists suspected of "planning to use an aircraft as part of a hostile or terrorist act". According to the unnamed airline, the pilot was "in a position to divert or sabotage an aircraft", the Daily Mail reported. "I felt they believed I was going to fly planes into buildings....

...four people found dead in a New Year’s Day shooting at a tony Coronado condominium on San Diego Bay. It was not immediately clear how the siblings, along with two men ages 25 and 31, died ... Homicides are extremely rare in Coronado — just one was recorded in 2010.

90 year olds marry after 40 years of friendshipUpdated: Dec 29, 2011 12:13 PM EST Charleston, SC (AP) - A 91-year-old newlywed says she expects to spend a dozen more years with her 92-year-old spouse following their wedding at a retirement home on James Island. According to media reports, Margaret McSpadden and retired Air Force Col. William Thomas married Wednesday at Bishop Gadsden. Thomas is a World War II veteran and was President Dwight Eisenhower's personal pilot. He celebrates his 92nd birthday Thursday. McSpadden owned an antique store in Charleston.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, whom some pundits had written off as the GOP's nominee, may find a second coming in Iowa, if new poll data holds up. As Mitt Romney's campaign has suffered a startling decline in recent weeks, only to see Newt Gingrich eclipse the former Massachusetts governor's front-runner status, the battle for the Iowa caucuses set for Jan. 3 has become a wide-open race. New survey data prepared for the Perry campaign and shared by a source close within the campaign shows that the Texas governor may be poised to do much better in next month’s Iowa caucuses...

Rayne Shultz 1922-2011: Canadian war ace shot down three German bombers in one night in 1943 BY ANDREW DUFFY, THE OTTAWA CITIZEN NOVEMBER 20, 2011 2 STORYPHOTOS ( 6 ) More Images » Canadian war ace Rayne ‘Joe’ Schultz shot down three German bombers in one night in 1943 and went on to serve 37 years in the Royal Canadian Air Force, retiring as a Group Captain. He died on Remembrance Day, 2011, at age 88. Flying Officer Rayne “Joe” Schultz began the night that would define his war at a poker game — winning money for a change. It...

A pilot who accidentally locked himself in the bathroom of his LaGuardia-bound plane caused a terror scare last night when a helpful passenger with an accent tried to come to his rescue by banging on the cockpit door. The embarrassing comedy of errors began when the captain of a Chatauqua Airlines flight from Asheville, N.Car., decided to take a bathroom break before landing. But when he tried to get out of the men’s room, the door jammed, trapping him in the tight quarters.

10-19-2011 19:03 Korean Air pilot under investigation for pro-N. Korean activities By Lee Hyo-sik A Korean Air pilot has been under police investigation for allegedly posting dozens of pro-North Korean messages and other material on his website in breach of the country’s National Security Law. The National Police Agency said Wednesday that a 45-year-old captain surnamed Kim started a website (www.scintoy.com) in August 2006 and had posted more than 60 articles and video clips that criticized the South Korean government and instead promoted the North’s propaganda. Some of pro-North Korean material was found to have been produced in the communist...

A source on the Rick Perry campaign tells Hot Air that the Texas governor conducted some Texas-size fundraising in the third quarter. Coming in just a little over halfway through, Perry raised $17.1 million. That number would put Perry somewhere between $4-6 million ahead of Mitt Romney’s rumored total for Q3, according to this report last week from the Boston Globe. It’s also likely to far outpace Herman Cain’s fundraising or that of the other Republicans currently in the race. The pace is even more impressive. Perry had 49 days in which to raise funds, rather than the full 92...

Here is an interview on local Reno Talk Radio with Matt Jackson who is an Unlimited pilot and vice-president of the Unlimited Division. Click on the "listen" button for 9/19 and go to about 10 minutes in to hear the discussion.

CHICAGO (AP) — Myrtle Rose was taking a short flight over suburban Chicago when the 75-year-old aviation enthusiast looked out her cockpit window to see two F-16 fighter jets. She assumed the military pilots were just slowing down to get a closer look at her antique plane. It wasn't until she landed her 1941 Piper J-3 Cub that friends and the police told her the attention was much more serious — for straying into restricted airspace during a visit by President Barack Obama. Rose, who tries to fly every day when weather permits, said she had been itching to get...

MIAMI -- Two brothers were arrested after police said they attacked a pilot at Miami International Airport on Wednesday night. American Airlines Flight 1755 was about to take off from MIA to San Francisco International Airport when a flight attendant noticed that passenger Jonathan Baez, 27, was not wearing his seat belt. She tried to wake him up, but he was unresponsive so she called the pilot. The pilot then decided to turn the plane around and head back to the gate. Once at the gate, the pilot and flight attendant both tried to wake Baez. He finally woke up...

RAF Spitfire pulled from Irish peat bog A Second World War RAF Spitfire has been excavated from an Irish peat bog almost 70 years after it crash-landed. A piece of the Wreckage of the World War Two spitire that crashed into the Bog in County Donegal A piece of the Wreckage of the World War Two spitire that crashed into the Bog in County Donegal 6:00AM BST 29 Jun 2011 Six machine guns and about 1,000 rounds of ammunition were also discovered by archaeologists searching the Inishowen Peninsula in Co Donegal. The British fighter plane was piloted by an American,...

(CNN) -- Southwest Airlines disciplined a pilot whose profanity-laced rant about flight attendants was heard by other airplane crews and controllers, officials said Wednesday. The unidentified pilot bashed flight attendants as a "continuous stream of gays and grannies and grandes," according to a transcript of the March 25 flight over central Texas. The pilot on the Austin to San Diego flight was referring to the sexual orientation, age and attractiveness of flight attendants.

A woman took over the controls of a small airplane when her pilot-husband started having trouble breathing and speaking on a flight from California to Colorado, authorities said. The Federal Aviation Administration released details and audio of the incident Thursday, which happened on a trip from San Bernardino, Calif. to Colorado Springs May 17. Ground controllers in Colorado and a Great Lakes Airlines pilot in another plane helped her guide the smaller craft. The specifics of the man's medical problem weren't available. An air traffic controller in Longmont, Colo., noticed the 70-year-old pilot appeared to have difficulty breathing during a...

pilot gets shot in head..fly's helicopter back to base