Full FAA Chronology at this link.
19261001: Northwest Airways began service as a contract mail carrier. The company began passenger service the following year, and expanded its routes in the late twenties and early thirties, changing its name to Northwest Airlines on April 16, 1934. Further expansion included routes to Asia, beginning in the 1940s, and for a time the carrier used the name Northwest Orient Airlines.
19291001: William P. MacCracken, Jr., resigned as Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Aeronautics and was succeeded by Clarence M. Young (see July 1, 1927), who had been serving as Director of Aeronautics. (See May 23, 1933.)
19291001: Allocation of radio frequencies by the Federal Radio Commission cleared the way for air transport companies to develop a communications network supplementing Federal facilities. At the close of the year some major transport lines were maintaining two-way voice communication with their planes in flight. (See December 2, 1929.)
19291001: The Aeronautics Branch issued a set of “Uniform Field Rules” for air traffic control that were recommended for adoption by states, counties, cities, and other agencies operating airports.
19311001: The Department of Commerce promulgated a regulation prescribing a cockpit crew complement of two, a pilot and copilot, on all scheduled air transports capable of carrying fifteen or more passengers or having a gross takeoff weight of 15,000 pounds or more. (See February 12, 1931, and November 1, 1937.)
19341001: Revised safety requirements for airlines became effective. The revision resulted from an amendment to the Air Commerce Act of 1926, effective in June 1934, which strengthened and made more explicit the authority of the Secretary of Commerce to prescribe safety regulations.
The new provisions included the requirement for airline pilots to use multi-engine aircraft capable of operating with one engine not functioning when flying at night or over terrain not readily permitting emergency landings. Instrument or “blind” flying was permitted only for multi-engine airliners equipped with two-way radio.
The rules also required every airline to set up its system in operating divisions, with each division’s operating procedure subject to the approval of the Bureau of Air Commerce. The divisions were to have approved operations manuals dealing with such safety matters as minimum altitudes of flight over specific airways, minimum ceiling for landing at specific airports, procedures for takeoff in the event of forced landing, and weather minimums for specific routes.
New flight duty time limitations for airline pilots included a maximum of 100 hours per month. This was lower than the previous 110 hour monthly maximum and closer to the 85 hours required by law for pilots of air mail carriers (see June 12, 1934). Other provisions included a requirement that dispatching procedures and personnel receive Department of Commerce approval.
19401001: CAA commissioned the Seattle air route traffic control center on this date, followed by the Cincinnati center on November 11.
19421001: Robert Stanley piloted the initial flight of the first U.S. jet-propelled aircraft, the Bell XP-59A Airacomet, at Muroc, Calif. The aircraft was powered by two I-A engines developed by General Electric from the Whittle design. (See September 1941.)
19451001: CAA commissioned the New Orleans air route traffic control center.
19461001: CAA commissioned the El Paso air route traffic control center.
19471001: Los Angeles Airways began the world’s first regularly scheduled mail service by helicopter (as distinct from autogyro service: see July 6, 1939). The carrier operated Sikorsky S-51s within a radius of roughly 50 miles of Los Angeles International Airport. (See July 9, 1953.)
19531001: CAA made extensive changes in its field organization, reducing the continental regions, excluding Alaska, from seven to four . . . . During the following year, the agency revamped its Washington headquarters organization. (See August 17, 1954.)
19581001: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was established under the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958. Passage of the Space Act (signed into law by President Eisenhower on July 29, 1958) settled the question of whether space exploration should be under civilian or military control. The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which had been in existence since 1915, was absorbed by and formed the nucleus for the new civilian space agency.
19631001: FAA began Project FOCUS (field organization configuration study), a set of working tests of alternative modes of field organization which were conducted simultaneously through April 1, 1964. The tests were the core of a study to address the problem of administrative decentralization at FAA’s subregional level. Since each of the tested concepts offered different advantages and costs, the agency required an extensive period of evaluation following the tests to determine which provided the best cost-benefit ratio and greatest potential for meeting the future needs of the agency and the aviation public.
While Project FOCUS was conducted only within the 48 contiguous states, three FAA regions took action to establish area offices outside the contiguous states during fiscal 1964. The Southern Region established area offices at Balboa (for the Canal Zone) and San Juan (for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands); the Alaskan Region, at Anchorage, Juneau, Fairbanks, Nome, Sitka, and 16 other locations; the Pacific Region, at Wake Island, Canton Island, Guam, and American Samoa. Area offices were expected to provide prompter and more locally responsive actions, a reduced regional headquarters workload, and generally more effective supervision of field offices and facilities. Area managers, the heads of these offices, had line authority over four basic operating programs–air traffic, flight standards, airway facilities, and airports. These programs had previously been in the hands of the regional directors and the regional program division chiefs. (See April 7, 1961, and May 18, 1965.)
19651001: FAA created the position of Associate Administrator for Personnel and Training. The new associate administrator reported directly to the FAA Administrator; previously, the head of the agency’s personnel and training functions reported to the Associate Administrator for Administration. (See January 19, 1968.)
19651001: As part of the agency’s continuing decentralization program, FAA placed the Aeronautical Center in Oklahoma City under a director reporting directly to the FAA Administrator. A similar change on October 22 placed the National Aviation Facilities Experimental Center in Atlantic City, N.J., under a director reporting the Administrator. Both centers had previously been headed by a manager, and had been under the jurisdiction of various offices or services in Washington.
19681001: The first partial instrument landing system (ILS) to be paid for and installed without Federal financial assistance was commissioned at the Westmoreland-Latrobe County Airport, Latrobe, Pa. Later, on May 1, 1969, the Outagamie Airport, Appleton, Wis., installed the first full ILS to be purchased without benefit of Federal funds. A partial ILS includes outer and middle markers and a localizer, while a full ILS also includes a glide slope.
19691001: Sixteen area navigation routes opened between 11 U.S. cities on an interim basis pending formal rulemaking. The new routes were the first in a projected nationwide area navigation route system designed to increase airway capacity. They ran between the following cities: Chicago and New York (two routes); Los Angeles and Chicago (two); Kansas City and Minneapolis (two); San Francisco and Chicago (two); Atlanta and Pinehurst, N.C. (two); Knoxville and Atlanta (two); Houston and Dallas (four). In succeeding months, additional cities were linked as more routes were developed (see April 29, 1971).
The primary air navigation system in use in the United States in 1969 required pilots to fly directly toward or away from the ground-based radio navigation aid (a VOR or VORTAC) transmitting a line of position, or radial. With area navigation, aircraft did not have to fly a track to or from a navaid, though they did depend on signals from VORs or VORTACs. Pilots flying appropriately equipped aircraft could, within the limitations of the system, follow any preselected arbitrary track. An airborne computer calculated the aircraft’s position and displayed track and distance to a point selected by the pilot or prescribed by the controller. The system’s advantages included: routes could be established along the shortest and most convenient paths; parallel and one-way routes could be established to reduce congestion; aircraft could be segregated according to speed and destination; navaids could be placed at accessible points on more favorable terrain; departure routes could be designed to lead directly from the runway to the appropriate parallel airway; and arrival routes could be designed to accept traffic directly from en route airways. (See March 6, 1972.)
19711001: FAA established the Airway Facilities Service, combining the Systems Maintenance and Facility Installation Services. This action brought the Washington headquarters in line with the regional organization. (See May 16, 1962 and January 19, 1970.)
19741001: Effective this date, FAA reduced the minimum separation distance for simultaneous Instrument Landing System (ILS) approaches to parallel runways. The change from 5,000 feet to 4,300 feet allowed certain airports to add parallel runways when needed to handle increasing traffic.
19761001: Fiscal year 1977 began for the Federal government.This was the first Federal fiscal year to begin on October 1 instead of July 1. Fiscal 1976 had ended on June 30, 1976, and the following three months had been designated a transition quarter.
19761001: FAA began to receive the first prototypes of the ARTS II automated radar terminal system for testing and evaluation. Developed under contracts concluded in August and December 1974, FAA programmed the system for installation at 71 terminals whose traffic volume did not warrant the more highly automated and much more costly ARTS IIIs in use at the major hubs. Designed around a relatively low-cost minicomputer, the ARTS II lacked certain capabilities of the ARTS III but could provide controllers using it at airports with direct alphanumeric readouts of the identity, heading, and altitude of the transponder-equipped aircraft they were tracking. (See December 12, 1978)
19861001: DOT gave final approval for Frank Lorenzo’s Texas Air holding company to acquire Eastern Air Lines (see February 24, 1986), with Lorenzo becoming Eastern’s chairman on October 15. The Department had earlier rejected the merger on August 26, but reversed itself following an agreement safeguarding Pan American’s role as a competitor on the Boston/New York/Washington shuttle routes. On October 24, DOT gave final sanction to Texas Air’s acquisition of People Express and most of the assets of People’s bankrupt subsidiary, Frontier Airlines. A no-frills airline, People Express had grown rapidly after staring operations on April 30, 1981, but had begun to experience heavy losses in 1985. (See February 1, 1987.)
19871001: Elizabeth Hanford Dole resigned as Secretary of Transportation and Deputy Secretary James H. Burnley became Acting Secretary. Before becoming Deputy Secretary, Burnley had been the Department’s General Counsel and had previously been an Associate Deputy Attorney General at the Justice Department. President Reagan nominated him for the top post at Transportation shortly after Dole’s resignation. On December 3, Burnley became Secretary of Transportation. He served the remainder of the Reagan Administration, resigning effective January 20, 1989.
19891001: A State Block Grant Pilot Program began on this date, as legislated by Congress (see December 30, 1987). Under the program, scheduled to run through September 30, 1991, FAA selected Illinois, Missiouri, and North Carolina to administer Federal grants for the development of nonprimary airports within their borders. Congress subsequently extended the program for one additional year under the Aviation Safety and Capacity Expansion Act of 1990. (See June 29, 1992.)
19901001: FAA began a “Manage to Budget” pilot project, to last at least one year, under which the managers of about 2,000 employees received new types of authority in an effort to speed personnel actions and achieve a requirements-driven budget process. The project was subsequently extended for a second year.
19911001: The first Peripheral Adapter Module Replacement Item (PAMRI) became operational at the Seattle ARTCC. PAMRI was the initial element of the Advanced Automation System. (See July 26, 1988, and November 30, 1992.)
19911001: FAA inaugurated the Federal Security Manager (FSM) Program as mandated by the Aviation Security Improvement Act (see May 15, 1990, and November 16, 1990). The Federal Security Managers had responsibility for approving airport security programs, acting as focal points for FAA security operations at airports, coordinating government and law enforcement activities in domestic security areas, and providing security information to the aviation community at each of the 18 airports where FSMs were stationed.
19911001: FAA received 6 British Aerospace BAe-800 aircraft from the Air Force. The transfer was part of an agreement under which FAA would take over the last of the Air Force’s capability to conduct flight inspection of air navigation aids (see January 1962).
19911001: FAA’s flight inspection fleet continued to evolve under a multi-year modernization plan. As of November 1, 1995, the flight inspection inventory included the 6 Bae-800s, 19 BE-300 Beechcraft, 1 BE-F90 Beechcraft, 3 NA 265-80 Sabreliners, as well as 5 other aircraft with disposal action pending. (Planning called for further disposals and for acquisition of Learjet 60 and Canadair 601 aircraft.) In addition, FAA’s inventory included 15 aircraft for training, research and development, and support functions. The total fleet consisted of 47 owned and two leased aircraft.
19961001: FAA established a new Air Traffic Systems Requirements Service within the organization of the Associate Administrator for Air Traffic Services. The move combined requirements organizations from Air Traffic and Airway Facilities into a single unit, bringing together controllers and engineers to conceptualize new technology.
19971001: Testifying before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Aviation, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Department of Transportation Inspector General Kenneth Mead criticized FAA management of the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) program. He stated, “We found that FAA did not use a consistent method for cost estimating. An April 1994 cost benefit analysis for WAAS reflected an estimated total life-cycle cost through the year 2014 at $1.4 billion. Program documentation in July 1997, reflects an estimate of total life-cycle costs for WAAS, through the year 2016, at over $2.4 billion. Our analysis of this showed that FAA has been slow to fully recognize all life-cycle costs of systems . . . In our opinion, FAA’s efforts to include life-cycle cost estimates for all satellite related systems and supporting activities will establish an understanding of the financial requirements and greatly facilitate decision making. Once established, these projected life-cycle costs should be integrated into FAA’s plan to ensure effective transition to the new technologies.” (See September 23, 1997; October 20-22, 1997.)
19971001: FAA implemented a new cost accounting system, with research and acquisitions personnel at Washington, DC, headquarters serving as a pilot for the system. The labor distribution module of the system was a key component of the effort.
19981001: FAA, which had launched its original aging aircraft program after an Aloha jetliner lost a chunk of its roof in 1988, announced a companion program, the aging transport non-structural systems plan, to help ensure that aircraft systems, such as those for wiring and fuel, did not fail as they grew older. The program, which grew out of the investigation of the in-flight explosion of Trans World Airlines Flight 800 that killed 230 people in 1996, included stepped-up inspections of wiring, a long-term research program, and a model-by-model assessment of each aircraft type together with other items. (See October 28, 1991; September 28, 1998; December 3, 1998; August 16, 2001.)
19981001: FAA implemented the Air Transport Oversight System, an air carrier oversight process that advocated a systems approach to FAA certification and surveillance oversight. The new process would combine system safety techniques with risk management principles to ensure that air carriers had built safety considerations into their operating systems. (See May 13, 1998; April 8, 2002.)
20071001: Henry P. Krakowski became the FAA ATO COO, replacing Russ Chew who left the agency in February. Krakowski came to the FAA from a 29-year career at United Airlines. (See February 23, 2007.)
20101001: The engineered material arresting systems (EMAS) at Teterboro Airport in Teterboro, NJ, successfully stopped a G-4 Gulfstream that overran the runway. This was the seventh EMAS save. An EMAS consisted of a layer of crushed concrete positioned at the end of runways that could slow and stop aircraft in runway overruns. EMAS was developed in a research partnership with the FAA and Engineered Arresting Systems Corp. (ESCO), a division of Zodiac Aerospace. (See January 19, 2010.)
20101001: United Continental Holdings, Inc., formerly UAL Corporation, announced that a wholly owned subsidiary had merged with Continental Airlines, Inc., and that Continental Airlines and United Air Lines, Inc., were now wholly owned subsidiaries of United Continental Holdings, Inc.
20111001: Effective this date, FAA updated its fee structure. The fee levels that would eventually be achieved reflected increases above then levels of 69 percent in the en route environment and 36 percent in the oceanic environment. This would be accomplished by increasing the fees on October 1 in each of the years 2011 through 2014 at annual compounded rates of 14 percent for en route and 8 percent for oceanic. (See September 28, 2010.) The actual dollar amounts of each fee on the four revision dates would be
* October 1, 2011 $38.44 $17.22
* October 1, 2012 $43.82 $18.60
* October 1, 2013 $49.95 $20.09
* October 1, 2014 $56.86 $21.63
20121001: A new FAA rule required all pilots to use FAA MedXPress to apply for an airman medical certificate. The electronic system allowed pilots and aviation medical examiners to query the system electronically and determine the status of applications. FAA planned future enhancements to the system to all air traffic control specialists to use MedXPress.
20131001: FAA discontinued direct-to-the-public individual sales of paper aeronautical charts and related paper products. FAA’s aeronautical paper products were now available through authorized sales chart agents. (See November 22, 2013.)
20131001: The lack of fiscal year 2014 appropriations resulted in a partial government shutdown. The shutdown led to about 15,500 of the approximately 46,000 FAA employees being furloughed. Late on October 16, Congress passed and the President signed early on October 17 a continuing resolution funding the government through January 15. Employees began returning to work on October 17. Prior to the furlough ending, FAA had recalled approximately 3,000 safety inspectors. (See May 9, 2013; See December 22, 2018.)
20161001: FAA transitioned from its traditional domestic instrument flight rules (IFR) flight plan (Form 7233-1) to the ICAO IFR flight plan (Form 7233-4) for domestic flight plan filing. The agency said the change was intended to simplify the flight planning process and align U.S. flight plans with ICAO standards.
20181001: FAA announced nine new partners to its Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability (LAANC) initiative, a collaboration between the FAA and the drone industry that provided near real-time processing of airspace authorizations for Part 107 drone operators nationwide who fly in controlled airspace. The new partners included: Aeronyde, Airbus, AiRXOS, Altitude Angel, Converge, DJI, KittyHawk, UASidekick and Unifly. The nine joined five companies – AirMap, Harris Corp., Project Wing, Skyward and Thales Group. The companies already met the technical and legal requirements to provide LAANC Services. (See July 23, 2019.)
20191001: FAA awarded air carrier and operator certification to UPS Flight Forward. Flight Forward received the first Part 135 Standard certification for drones. The certification allowed the drone and cargo to total 55 pounds and fly at night; previous restrictions that governed earlier UPS flights. It also allowed UPS to expand its drone delivery service to hospital campuses around the country and provide customers outside of the healthcare industry with delivery options.
20221001: ICAO voted to remove Russia from its governing council. Historically, G7 countries, Australia, Brazil, China, and Russia, have held permanent spots as “states of chief importance in air transport.” Russia secured only 80 votes to remain on the governing council during the vote, while 86 votes were needed.
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This Day in FAA History: October 1st
