This Day in FAA History: September 4th

Full FAA Chronology at this link.
19560904: CAA announced a reorganization designed to streamline the Administrator’s office and place greater reliance on a direct line of command as the basic core of CAA organization. The reorganization abolished the Assistant Administrator positions for Operations and for Planning, Research, and Development, and grouped most CAA functions under six major program offices. The Office of Air Navigation Facilities and the Office of Air Traffic Control were created from the former Office of Federal Airways, a change that had been previously announced. (One reason for creating a separate ATC Office, according to Administrator Lowen, was “to reverse completely the approach of having the operations of the air traffic control system governed by the kind of tools the engineers give the operators.” Lowen believed that the men who operate the system should develop broad performance specifications for the equipment they need and then the engineers should devise and perfect such equipment.) The Office of International Cooperation was established to replace the International Region, and the Office of Aviation Safety was redesignated the Office of Flight Operations and Airworthiness. The two other two major program offices were the Office of Airports and the Technical Development Center.
19620904: Executive Order 11048 vested authority for the civil administration of Wake Island in the Secretary of the Interior and make effective an earlier agreement between the FAA Administrator and the Secretary of the Interior. Under the agreement, FAA assumed responsibility for the civil administration of this Pacific island, exercising executive, legislative, and judicial authorities. The FAA Administrator also promulgated a new Wake Island Code, which greatly strengthened the legal system and reduced previous administrative uncertainty. (See June 24, 1972.)
19710904: An Alaska Airlines 727 struck a mountain slope while attempting a nonprecision instrument landing approach to Juneau airport, killing all 111 persons aboard. The National Transportation Safety Board determined the probable cause to be a display of misleading navigational information concerning the flight’s progress along the localizer course, which resulted in premature descent.
19740904: The U.S. and Mexico announced an agreement on air traffic services adjacent to their common border. The culmination of over 15 years of negotiation, the pact authorized air traffic facilities in 6 pairs of cities to enter into agreements on coordinating air traffic control.
19810904: FAA announced a revised regional consolidation plan under which the number of regions would be reduced from eleven to nine. The original plan would have resulted in only six regions (see June 12, 1981), but FAA stated that this had been modified due to the more pressing need to rebuild the air traffic control system in the wake of the PATCO controllers strike (see August 3, 1981). The consolidation was detailed in a notice issued on September 29. Under the new plan, FAA combined the existing Pacific-Asia and Western Regions into a new Western-Pacific Region with headquarters in Los Angeles, and closed the Honolulu regional office. The agency also combined the existing Rocky Mountain and Northwest Regions into a new Northwest Mountain Region with headquarters in Seattle, and closed the Denver regional office. It also reassigned the states of North and South Dakota from the Rocky Mountain to the Great Lakes Region. Operations under the new concept began on October 1, and all physical relocation was scheduled for completion by the end of August 1982.
19810904: FAA announced it would hire approximately 1,500 temporary employees, including furloughed airline pilots, to assist in replacing air traffic controllers fired for striking. The temporary employees would not control traffic, but would perform duties related to flight strip distribution and other controller support functions. (See August 3, 1981, and October 2, 1981.)
19920904: DOT announced that the U.S. and the Netherlands had agreed to open their international aviation markets to each other’s airlines, the first such agreement under the Department’s open skies initiative (see March 31, 1992). Taking advantage of the pact, Northwest Airlines and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines agreed on September 9 to create what they called “a unified global airlines system.” Although KLM already had a 20 percent stake in Northwest, the new agreement enabled the two carriers to integrate their operations worldwide. On January 11, 1993, DOT gave Northwest and KLM immunity from antitrust laws so they could operate as one airline. The trend toward greater collaboration with foreign carriers was further illustrated by cooperative plans announced in 1993 by the following U.S. airlines: Delta (with Swissair); Continental (with Air France); United (with Lufthansa); and USAir (which announced a scaled-back version of a plan for partnership with British Airways first proposed in July 1992).
20030904: Runway 16R/34L opened at Denver International Airport and runway 8/26 opened at Miami International Airport.
20070904: FAA approved collection of almost $1.3 billion of Passenger Facility Charge (PFC) revenue at Chicago O’Hare International Airport to finance various projects, including new runways and a runway extension associated with the O’Hare Modernization Program at Chicago, Illinois.
20170904: Hurricane Irma made landfall at Barbuda as a Category 5 storm. Irma made successive landfalls at approximately on Sint Maarten, and on Ginger Island and Tortola, in the British Virgin Islands. The storm caused catastrophic damage in Barbuda, Saint Barthélemy, Saint Martin, Anguilla, and the Virgin Islands. On September 10, Irma made landfall in Cudjoi Key, Florida, and then again on Marco Island, and at Naples, Florida.
20180904: FAA granted Boeing’s KC-46 mid-air refueling tank a supplemental type certificate.
20200904: The Gulf Shores (Alabama) Airport Authority broke ground for a new federal contract air traffic control tower at Jack Edwards National Airport. The authority received $6.13 million in funding from the FAA and the Cares Act to help pay for the construction. The Authority expected the new tower to open in mid-2021.