Free Republic

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said on Wednesday it will relocate control of the Newark, New Jersey, airspace area to Philadelphia to address staffing issues ... The FAA, which has struggled with air traffic staffing issues, said it and the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) signed a memorandum to relocate control of Newark at New York Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) (N90) to Philadelphia Tower/TRACON by the end of June. The FAA said the change will help "meet continued traffic demand in the busy Northeast Corridor." Several controllers are expected to voluntarily transfer to Philadelphia. New York TRACON is...

What happened to the 1995 ruling my client won in Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña? .. The corporate media are just now discovering what I learned in 2015, that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), under the direction of President Barack Obama, hires air traffic controllers (ATC) on the basis of race. Of course, President Biden, as part of his commitment to “equity,” took it further. His FAA “identified” certain disabilities as deserving of “special emphasis in recruitment and hiring,” including “epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, [and] psychiatric disability.” How in the world did it come to this? Twenty-nine years ago this...

A JetBlue Airbus A320 struck its tail on the runaway as it accelerated to avoid a collision with a Beechcraft King Air 350.. The JetBlue plane was taking off from the same runway at Yampa Valley Regional Airport that the King Air plane was about to land on.. Aircraft near-misses are on the rise in the US, amid a severe air traffic controller staffing shortage ... Investigators said a JetBlue plane's tail struck the runway at a Colorado airport when a captain took-off quickly to avoid a head-on crash, as airport near-misses surge due to air traffic controller shortages. ......

Joe Biden’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is striving to enlist a diverse workforce through targeting certain demographics even as its air traffic control system is facing shortages and safety challenges. The FAA has several diversity hiring initiatives, including for black people, Hispanic people, disabled people and women, according to its website. At the same time, air traffic control is experiencing numerous issues including staffing shortages, mistakes, technological challenges and close call incidents. “We’re certainly critical of the FAA’s efforts—in the past and in the present—to rely on race as a factor in hiring air traffic controllers,” Mountain States Legal Foundation...

Denver, Colorado — Mountain States Legal Foundation today announced a major step forward on an effort to hold the Federal Aviation Administration accountable for Obama-era hiring practices that were designed to exclude better-qualified air traffic control candidates, in favor of less-qualified candidates, all due to the color of their skin. Federal judge Dabney Friedrich of the Federal District Court in the District of Columbia today approved class action certification for MSLF clients Andrew Brigida and Matthew Douglas-Cook and other aspiring air traffic controllers who scored highly on qualification tests but lost out on their dream jobs due to the FAA’s...

BREAKING: Air Traffic Controllers In Jacksonville, FL Staged A Walkout Yesterday In Response To The Vaccine Mandate It’s Being Reported That All Flights In & Out Of FL Were Cancelled As A Result Mainstream Media Chose Not To Report On This As Of Yet pic.twitter.com/DCSqh8M1eq (more at the link)

Heathrow passenger numbers remain almost 90 percent down on pre-pandemic levels and significantly lower than EU rival airports, new figures show. Airport bosses revealed just 957,000 passengers passed through its terminals in June compared with 7,246,157 who used the west London airport in June 2019. The number of passengers travelling through the airport covers the month where Portugal was moved from the green list of countries to amber and led to widespread fury in the travel sector over the speed of rule changes for travellers.Bosses added that the continued closure of the transatlantic links between the UK and United States...

Singapore Airlines (SIA) is currently rerouting some of its flights to avoid Belarus airspace after the eastern European country forced a Ryanair plane to land to arrest a journalist on board. “The safety of our customers and crew is our top priority,” said an SIA spokesperson in response to a CNA query on Tuesday (May 25). “We are currently rerouting our flights that are bound for Europe to avoid the Belarusian airspace, and we will continue to closely monitor the situation.” A Scoot spokesperson said the airline currently does not operate any flights over Belarusian airspace, but added that it...

Multiple air traffic controllers in New York heard a chilling threat Monday in audio obtained exclusively by CBS News: "We are flying a plane into the Capitol on Wednesday. Soleimani will be avenged." The threat refers to Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian general killed last year in a U.S. drone strike ordered by President Trump. It was made on the one-year anniversary of Soleimani's death, for which Iranian officials have long vowed revenge. It's unclear who sent the threat. While the government does not believe the warning of an attack is credible, it is being investigated as a breach of aviation...

"Holy crap!" my husband exclaimed. "What!? What's going on?" I responded, peering over his shoulder at the flight tracking map on his screen. "Usually there are no more than three military refueling tankers flying over the United States on any given night. I got to ride on one when I was a teen in Civil Air Patrol," he said. "But look! Tonight there are eleven refueling tankers in the air simultaneously. What the hell is going on!?!" What indeed. If military air traffic gets your motor going, your go-to guy is "MonkeyWerx" aka "MilSpecOpsMonkey." His profile describes him as a...

Wow just look at the traffic. Lots of folks just going to Hawaii for some sun and fun.... https://www.flightradar24.com/28.46,-95.12/4

As the partial government shutdown drags on, the nation's air traffic controllers warn that it's putting the safety of air travel at risk. Here's a solution: Privatize the air traffic control system. On Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration announced flight delays at several major airports due to staffing shortages among air traffic controllers. That followed a statement released earlier in the week, in which the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, along with pilots' and flight attendants' unions, said that "air safety environment … is deteriorating by the day." The statement goes on to say that "we cannot even calculate the...

ATCs must necessarily be among the most skilled and competent federal government employees. In accordance with an Obama administration plan to “transform” the Federal Aviation Administration into a “more diverse workplace” however, the FAA has abandoned its merit-based hiring program for ATCs, as it implements a plan to hire 1,000 ATCs a year to replace a generation of retiring controllers. Congress can and should intervene in this unfortunate plan to restore sanity and safety to the skies, because it endangers people’s lives. ... It is expensive and time-consuming to train ATCs, and many candidates who believe they have what it...

The Federal Aviation Administration has become consumed by diversity and inclusion. Prior to becoming so, the FAA worked with about 36 colleges to create the Air Traffic Collegiate Training Initiative. The colleges offered nonengineering aviation degrees requiring basic courses in air traffic control and aviation administration. Graduates became qualified candidates for training as air traffic control specialists. The FAA gave hiring preferences to veterans, those with AT-CTI program degrees, references from administrators and high test scores. In 2013, resident Obama-appointed FAA Administrator Michael Huerta deemed that these hiring standards had not produced a pleasing mix of air traffic controllers when...

When does diversity become “dieversity”? Perhaps when those whose worst high-school subject was science and who are unemployed are favored over licensed pilots for all-important air-traffic controller positions. This is precisely what’s happening, too, under Obama-era FAA “diversity” rules — created because the air-traffic-control corps was “too white.” As the Blaze reports: For decades, the selection process for the Federal Aviation Administration’s air traffic controllers was rigorous. After all, one minor mistake could cost hundreds of people their lives. But a new report from Fox News host Tucker Carlson revealed the Obama administration modified the FAA’s candidate selection process to...

Andrew Brigida is the son of a former New York City police officer. When he was 12, his family moved to a suburb of Phoenix, and at the urging of a neighbor he decided to become an air-traffic controller. In 2013 he graduated with two aviation-related bachelor’s degrees from Arizona State University, one of the dozens of schools with which the Federal Aviation Administration has partnerships to vet candidates for its air-traffic-control training program. Graduates of these Collegiate Training Initiative schools then must pass the Air Traffic Selection and Training exam, or AT-SAT. This eight-hour test is designed to assess...

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...

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...

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...