Full FAA Chronology at this link.
19290114: The Commerce Department’s Aeronautics Branch received the Aero Club of America Trophy for 1928 for its outstanding development of airways and air navigation facilities. Robert J. Collier had established the award, first presented in 1912, to honor the previous year’s most outstanding contribution to U.S. aeronautics or astronautics. In 1922, the Aero Club of America was incorporated as the National Aeronautic Association (NAA), which assumed administration of the award and renamed it the Robert J. Collier Trophy in 1944.
19550114: The VORTAC Committee of the Air Navigation Development Board (ANDB) reported its inability to reach a unanimous decision to resolve the TACAN/VOR-DME controversy (see January 1954). Despite the split report of its committee, the ANDB favored development of TACAN. On February 8, however, the ANDB issued a press release stating that TACAN was under consideration to replace VOR-DME, the civil system in operation. This was the first public announcement of the TACAN/VOR-DME controversy, and it sparked a series of hearings in public and executive session by the Transportation and Communications Subcommittee of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce. (See August 30, 1956.)
19580114: Australia’s Qantas Empire Airways began the first completely round-the-world scheduled passenger service, using Super Constellations. (See June 17, 1947.)
19790114: Braniff Airlines began flying leased Concorde supersonic airliners between Washington Dulles and Dallas-Fort Worth airports, under the terms of a unique interchange agreement with British Airways and Air France. Since the Concordes carried passengers between two American cities, they had to be registered in the United States. This involved FAA certification of the Concorde and a special FAA rule allowing the speedy re-registration of the planes between the two European carriers and Braniff. The Braniff flights were over land and therefore had to be flown at subsonic speeds under U.S. environmental rules, but nevertheless cut the flight time between Dallas-Fort Worth and Europe. The service did not prove to be profitable, however, and Braniff terminated it on June 1, 1980.
19970114: In a conference sponsored by the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security and held in Washington, DC, at George Washington University, airline executives called upon the Clinton Administration to privatize key functions of FAA and to install a nonprofit, airline-organized cooperative that would manage security issues. Participants recommended funding these changes with user fees instead of the, then-current, ticket tax. (See July 17, 1996; February 12, 1997.)
20000114: The White House unveiled a new FAA program to give airline pilots and mechanics a no-penalty way to report safety-related incidents and problems. The Aviation Safety Action Program (ASAP), patterned after a successful American Airlines program begun in 1996, encouraged pilots and mechanics to volunteer information that could help prevent accidents. In return, FAA and the airlines promised not to take action against pilots and mechanics in most cases. (See June 15, 2009.)
20080114: Department of Transportation Secretary Mary Peters proposed a new national policy that would make it easier for overcrowded airports to add capacity and reduce delays by encouraging airlines to spread their flights more evenly throughout the day. Under the proposal, the Department of Transportation encouraged congested airports in New York and across the country to move away from the decades-old practice of charging aircraft landing fees based on the weight of the plane and begin charging fees based on the time of the day. As a result, airports would be able to spread traffic more evenly throughout the day – allowing them to serve more passengers and reduce delays. The proposed policy changes would be open to public comment for 45 days before being finalized. Changes to FAA’s Policy on Airport Rates and Charges would also allow airport operators to include the cost of projects designed to expand capacity in the new landing fees. Currently, airports could only include those costs after the projects had been completed. (See December 19, 2007; March 10, 2008.)
20160114: FAA issued a notice of proposed rulemaking to establish a new noise standard for certain subsonic jet airplanes and subsonic transport category large airplanes. The noise standard, known as Stage 5, would apply to any person submitting an application for a new airplane type design with a maximum certificated takeoff weight of 121,254 pounds or more on or after December 31, 2017; or with maximum certificated takeoff weight of less than 121,254 pounds on or after December 31, 2020. This change would reduce the noise produced by new airplanes and harmonize the noise certification standards for those airplanes certificated in the United States with the ICAO noise standard in Annex 16, Chapter 14. (See August 4, 2005; November 17, 2017.)
20200114: FAA announced it had opened a new indoor fire research facility in December 2019 at its Technical Center to conduct performance tests of potential replacement fire extinguishing agents. The work conducted in this new $5 million, 2,500 square-foot facility supported research on fluorine-free firefighting foams.