Free Republic

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating a radio failure at the Denver Air Traffic Control Center, which covers approximately 285,000 square miles of airspace covering parts of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana. The outage temporarily affected communications Monday. According to the FAA, both transmitters that cover a segment of airspace went down around 1:50 p.m., causing a loss of communications to part of the Denver Air Route Traffic Control Center for about 90 seconds. The FAA said the outage affected some flights approaching Denver International Airport. They said the controllers used another frequency...

Denver airport’s air traffic control was reportedly struck by a staggering six-minute outage earlier this week after several radio transmitters suddenly went dark. The frequency outage meant that as many as 20 pilots were unable to reach air traffic controllers as they descended into Denver International Airport on Monday afternoon, ABC7 reported, citing sources. A controller eventually made contact with one aircraft on a “guard line,” which is typically only used when a pilot is in distress. That pilot was then able to contact other nearby planes and tell them to switch radio frequencies, the sources said. At the time...

Air Traffic Control lost radar for 90 seconds at Newark Airport on Friday. According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), there was a telecommunications outage at Newark Liberty International Airport. “There was a telecommunications outage that impacted communications and radar display at Philadelphia TRACON Area C, which guides aircraft in and out of Newark Liberty International Airport airspace. The outage occurred around 3:55 a.m. on Friday, May 9, and lasted approximately 90 seconds,” the FAA said on Friday morning. ... United Airlines pulled 35 round-trip flights a day following a radar outage at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey...

The Trump administration is finally tackling an issue that has plagued the nation's air traffic control system for decades. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy revealed on "Fox & Friends" Wednesday morning that a "brand new state-of-the-art system" is on the way to replace an infrastructure that has remained largely unchanged for 25 to 30 years. An official announcement is coming in the next few days, but Duffy explained what’s going to happen and why. "We use copper wires, floppy disks — I mean, it's atrocious, the system we use," Duffy stated. While he reassured the public that the current system...

A top 'DEI' activist is caught on voicemail allegedly offering minority air traffic controller candidates the chance to cheat in a make-or-break entry exam. Shelton Snow, a powerful figure in the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees (NBCFAE), can be heard promising advance access to test answers in a shocking audio clip obtained by DailyMail.com. 'There are some valuable pieces of information that I have taken a screenshot of and I am going to send that to you via email,' says Snow, an air traffic operations supervisor based out of New York. 'I am about 99.99 percent sure that...

Grady Block is an attorney with Mountain States Legal Foundation, which represents a group of air traffic controller candidates. He said the Obama-Biden administration looked at their clients and said, "You know, this looks a little bit too white for what we want.".. There is a sense of nervousness in the air after recent plane crashes across the country and many are questioning if hiring standards could be to blame. An attorney at the forefront of a historic lawsuit shared some discoveries from court on a recent episode of Liz Collin Reports. Grady Block is an attorney with Mountain States...

On Saturday, two people were killed after a small plane crashed shortly after takeoff from a Georgia airport. Authorities responded to the Covington Municipal Airport at around 11:21 p.m. after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) contacted them stating they lost contact with the aircraft. “Officers responded to the Covington Municipal Airport at approximately 11:21 p.m. after receiving a call from the FAA in reference to a single engine aircraft that had taken off at approximately 11:00 p.m.,” the Covington Police Department said. “There was no further communication from the aircraft after takeoff. Officers located the aircraft in the woods just...

Air traffic controllers say an FAA “immunity program” fails to hold people accountable for their mistakes, even with deadly consequences. Current and former air traffic controllers warn that the Federal Aviation Administration’s hiring practices and “immunity program” have led to problems, such as those that may have resulted in the recent midair collison near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. The FAA’s focus on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) hiring practices has resulted in the employment of less qualified air traffic controllers (ATCs) and a staffing shortage, former ATC's say. This, in addition to an “immunity program” that fails to hold...

President Donald Trump on Thursday directed the Federal Aviation Administration to assess safety standards, including evaluating hiring practices, in the wake of the midair collision over Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Wednesday night. The presidential memorandum comes after Trump suggested the military helicopter that crashed into an American Airlines regional jet may have been due in part to the FAA’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies. All 67 people aboard the two aircraft were killed. “President Trump swiftly signed a memorandum directing an immediate assessment of the Federal Aviation Administration to ensure the federal government is maintaining the highest personnel...

Tucker Carlson had already unearthed proof back in 2018 that the Obama administration had placed a new emphasis on diversity over traditional hiring practices at the Federal Aviation Administration. President Donald Trump suggested during a news briefing Thursday that the crash of American Airlines Flight 5342 with an Army Black Hawk helicopter in Washington, D.C., may have had something to do with the lowering of standards for air traffic controllers that occurred first during the Obama administration and later during President Joe Biden's time in office.

An air traffic controller was reportedly allowed to leave their post early just before American Airlines Flight 5342 collided in midair with a military helicopter over Washington DC. Insiders and a preliminary internal FAA report have started to reveal catastrophic failures leading up to the aviation disaster ... That night, an air traffic controller was left to handle both helicopter traffic and manage planes - which should have been a divided duty ... Those tasks are usually handled between two people from 10am until 9:30pm ... A supervisor reportedly decided to combine those duties before the scheduled cutoff time however,...

From today's opinion in U.S. v. King County, written by Judge Daniel Bress and joined by Judges Michael Hawkins and Richard Clifton: For some years, United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) chartered flights out of Washington's King County International Airport, also known as Boeing Field, to transport removable aliens from this country elsewhere. At Boeing Field, fixed base operators, or FBOs, lease space from the airport and provide flights with essential services, such as fueling and landing stairs. In 2019, based on its stated disagreement with federal immigration policies, King County promulgated Executive Order PFC-7-1-EO, which directed county officials...

The incident happened on Monday near Syracuse Hancock International Airport.. Two airplanes appeared to come too close to one another while flying near an airport in Syracuse, New York, on Monday. A Delta Connection flight was taking off when an American Eagle flight was preparing to land on the same runway, local outlet WABC reported. The incident happened at about 11:50 a.m. near Syracuse Hancock International Airport ... "An air traffic controller instructed PSA Airlines 5511 to go around at Syracuse Hancock International Airport to keep it separated from an aircraft that was departing on the same runway," ... A...

The FAA allegedly added a question rewarding applicants for doing poorly on test, to get more African air traffic controller applicants... The Federal Aviation Administration is being sued in a class action lawsuit alleging it turned away nearly 1,000 air traffic controller applicants, solely based on their race. Former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, who now serves as co-counsel for Mountain States Legal Foundation based in Colorado, is leading efforts for a lawsuit that could .. force companies to hire employees based on skills. Laxalt said the lawsuit represents nearly 1,000 people who went to school to become air traffic...

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)