This Day in FAA History: September 24th

Full FAA Chronology at this link.
19290924: At Mitchel Field, N.Y., Army Lt. James H. Doolittle became the first pilot to use only instrument guidance to take off, fly a set course, and land. Doolittle received directional guidance from a radio range course aligned with the airport runway, while radio marker beacons indicated his distance from the runway. He relied on a sensitive altimeter to determine his altitude, and controlled the attitude of his aircraft with guidance from a directional gyro and an artificial horizon. Doolittle made the flight as part of research he conducted for the Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics, with cooperation from the Bureau of Standards, the Aeronautics Branch of the Department of Commerce, and other organizations. He flew in a hooded cockpit, but was accompanied by a check pilot who could have intervened in an emergency. On May 9, 1932, Capt. A. F. Hegenberger flew without a check pilot to make the first blind solo flight on instruments only, at Dayton, Ohio.
19830924: Continental Airlines filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 and suspended flights. Frank Lorenzo (chairman of the airline and its parent company, Texas Air) announced on September 26 that a “new Continental” was resuming operations, on a discount-fare basis, to about a third of the cities formerly served. He offered to rehire 4,200 of the firm’s 12,000 employees at salaries below those paid under their union contracts. Continental’s pilots and flight attendants began a strike on October 1, but failed to shut down the airline. By the end of 1983, the company employed approximately 700 pilots and 800 flight attendants. (See February 6, 1984.)
19980924: FAA issued a space launch site operator’s license to the Alaska Aerospace Development Corp. The license allowed commercial rocket launches on the southern tip of Kodiak Island. Alaska joined California, Florida, and Virginia as states with FAA-licensed state or commercially operated space launch facilities. It was, however, the first spaceport not co-located with a federally operated launch range. FAA earlier issued commercial space launch site licenses for the operation of spaceports on leased property at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California; Cape Canaveral Air Station, Florida; and at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Virginia. (See September 8, 1998; March 15, 1999.)
19980924: FAA awarded a $14.2 million dollar contract to Northrop Grumman Corporation to develop equipment that would provide warnings to air traffic controllers and pilots of hazardous wind shear and microburst events. Called the Weather Systems Processor (WSP), it would forecast the arrival of wind gust fronts and tracks storm motion, providing a complete picture of current and projected hazardous weather conditions which might impact runway and airport usage. Intended be used in conjunction with Airport Surveillance Radar Model-9, WSP would be a low cost detection system suitable for installation at medium and high air traffic density airports. Its functional capability would be similar to that provided by Terminal Doppler Weather Radar, a legacy system which FAA was then deploying at 45 major airports subject to heavy thunderstorm activity. (See April 25, 2001.)
20040924: FAA and EUROCONTROL signed a memorandum of cooperation to increase joint air traffic management and research efforts to improve safety, capacity, and standards of air traffic operations between North America and Europe.
20070924: Ruth Leverenz, FAA assistant administrator for centers and regions, became acting deputy administrator. (See September 13, 2007.)
20170924: FAA hurricane recovery efforts began supporting more than a dozen commercial passenger flights per day at Luís Muñoz Marin International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico. As the agency continued to restore radars, navigational aids, and other equipment damaged during Hurricane Maria, the agency also implemented a slot reservation system to manage the demand for ramp space at the airport and to separate safely aircraft in the air.
20200924: FAA announced had added 133 additional air traffic facilities to its Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability (LAANC) system. LAANC provided near-real-time approval for qualified drone pilots making requests to fly below 400 feet in controlled airspace. Nationwide beta testing for the program began in April 2018 and included nearly 300 air traffic facilities covering almost 500 airports. (See November 21, 2019.)
20210924: DOT fined United Airlines $1.9 million for violating federal statutes and the department’s rule prohibiting long tarmac delays. DOT also ordered the airline to cease and desist from future similar violations. This is the largest fine issued by the Department for tarmac delay violations. An extensive investigation by the Department’s Office of Aviation Consumer Protection found that between December 2015 and February 2021, United allowed twenty domestic flights and five international flights at various airports throughout the United States to remain on the tarmac for a lengthy period of time without providing passengers an opportunity to deplane, in violation of the Department’s tarmac delay rule. The tarmac delays affected a total of 3,218 passengers. Under the DOT tarmac delay rule, airlines operating aircraft with 30 or more passenger seats are prohibited from allowing their domestic flights to remain on the tarmac for more than three hours at U.S. airports and their international flights to remain on the tarmac for more than four hours at U.S. airports without giving passengers an opportunity to leave the plane. The rule prohibiting long tarmac delays for domestic flights took effect 2010 and was expanded to include international flights in 2011.