This Day in FAA History: November 15th

Full FAA Chronology at this link.
19261115: The Post Office invited bids from private operators to take over the transcontinental air mail route in two sections: San Francisco-Chicago and Chicago-New York. Although no satisfactory bids were received for the Chicago-New York route, the contract for the San Francisco-Chicago route went to the organizers of Boeing Air Transport on January 29, 1927. After new biding, the Post Office on April 3, 1927, announced the award of the Chicago-New York route to the newly formed National Air Transport. (See August 31, 1927.)
19551115: The Civil Aeronautics Board gave the new name of supplemental air carriers to those charter operators previously designated large irregular carriers (see September 15, 1946). At the same time, the Board granted an interim exemption allowing the supplementals to offer, in addition to charter flights, a limited number of flights for which tickets or freight services were sold individually. The Board granted this interim exemption pending determination as to which operators would ultimately receive this operating authority. (See January 29, 1959.)
19651115: The United States served a formal notice of denunciation of the Warsaw Convention, effective six months later, because of the inability to substantially raise the liability limit above the approximately $16,600 per international passenger set by the 11-year-old Hague Protocol to the Convention. The United States stated that it would withdraw the notice if there were reasonable prospects for ICAO to amend the convention to raise the liability limit to at least $100,000, and if the international carriers worked out an interim agreement for a liability limit of $75,000, with strict liability Although a 1966 ICAO meeting failed to reach an agreement on an acceptable limit, the International Air Transport Association, in consultation with U.S. officials, reached an interim agreement with international carriers providing for a liability limit of $75,000 per passenger. The U.S. Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) approved the interim agreement on May 13, 1966, and the United States withdrew its notice of termination. Participation in the agreement was mandated by the U.S. CAB in permit and certificate conditions, and later generalized by regulation (14 CFR 203). Subsequent attempts to raise the Warsaw liability limit by a new Protocol were unsuccessful. In 1996, the U.S. Department of Transportation approved three agreements, proposed by the International Air Transport Association and Air Transport Association, under which carriers agreed to waive the Warsaw passenger liability limits in their entirety. Widespread implementation of these agreements was anticipated in early 1997.
19691115: Air taxi operators of large aircraft became subject to stricter operational requirements applying to supplemental air carriers. (See September 7, 1964, and December 1, 1978.)
19871115: A Continental Airlines DC-9 crashed on takeoff at Denver Stapleton airport, killing 28 of the 82 persons on board. The National Transportation Safety Board cited the probable cause of the crash as the captain’s failure to have the airplane deiced a second time after a delay before takeoff. Contributing factors listed by the Board included the absence of regulatory or management controls governing operations by newly qualified flightcrew members and the confusion that existed between the flightcrew and air traffic controllers that led to the delay in departure. (See December 12, 1985 and March 22, 1992.)
19901115: FAA announced that it had completed installation of the Enhanced Traffic Management System (ETMS), which would become operational nationwide on December 3. ETMS was a computer system able to predict nationwide air traffic demands, permitting traffic managers to take corrective action. (See May 17, 1987, and April 15, 1994.)
19951115: President Clinton received from Congress and signed the fiscal 1996 DOT appropriations bill, allowing all furloughed DOT employees to return to work on the morning of November 16. (The furlough ended government-wide on November 20.) The DOT appropriations legislation provided $8.216 billion for FAA, and included important provisions for FAA personnel and procurement reform (see April 1, 1996). It also cleared the way for the transfer of the Office of Commercial Space Transportation from the Office of the Secretary of Transportation to FAA (see August 7, 1995). The transfer became effective on November 16, and the director of this new FAA line-of-business organization became an Associate Administrator reporting to the Administrator.
20011115: FAA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration made a new tool available to convey advanced storm information to pilots. The National Convective Weather Forecast (NCWF) product, designed and developed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, and MIT Lincoln Laboratory, in Lexington, Massachusetts, provided pilots with a plotted map depicting the current location of convective hazards and where they would be an hour later. Pilots, federal aviation weather briefers, air traffic control specialists, and airline dispatchers who routinely made operational decisions associated with thunderstorm hazards routinely were turning to the NCWF for essential information.
20071115: President George W. Bush announced an agreement between the FAA and DoD that temporarily released military airspace for Thanksgiving holiday travel. Under the airspace agreement, the Department of the Navy released airspace, above 24,000 feet, off the east coast from Maine to Florida. FAA was allowed to use that airspace from 4 p.m. eastern standard time on Wednesday, November 21, to 6 a.m. eastern standard time on Monday, November 26. The Navy continued to control airspace off the east coast below 23,000 feet for training operations.
20101115: SkyWest Inc. announced completion of its $133 million purchase of ExpressJet Holdings Inc. Both SkyWest and ExpressJet provide regional service for bigger carriers.
20101115: In a notice of proposed policy, FAA announced its intention to clarify the definition of “actively engaged” for the purposes of evaluating applications for Inspector Authorizations (IA). In the current list of requirements, FAA stated that an applicant must have been “actively involved” in maintaining aircraft certificated and maintained in accordance with FAA regulations. However, it lacked the necessary clarification on what qualified as “actively engaged,” leading to a substantial amount of confusion. In the newly proposed policy amendment, FAA addressed the issue by adding language intended to help clarify the requirement. The new policy language, when adopted, would assist aviation safety inspectors in making the appropriate determination when assessing IA applications, as well as prevent applicant confusion. Under the new language, those holding supervisory positions and, as such, were not actively engaged in maintenance activities, would not be permitted to retain their IA. FAA planned for the new policy to go in effect for the next IA renewal cycle in March 2011.
20101115: FAA issued a final rule requiring aircraft manufacturers and certification applicants to establish a number of flight cycles or hours a plane could operate and be free from widespread fatigue damage (WFD) without additional inspections for fatigue. Once manufacturers established the flight cycle limits, operators of affected aircraft had to incorporate them into their maintenance programs within 30 to 72 months, depending on the model of aircraft. The new regulation applied to airliners with a takeoff weight of 75,000 lbs. and heavier, as well as all transport designs certificated in the future.
20181115: Department of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao announced she had reconstituted the Aviation Consumer Protection Advisory Committee (ACPAC) and established the National In-Flight Sexual Misconduct Task Force as an ACPAC Subcommittee. The task force would review practices, protocols, and requirements of U.S. airlines in responding to and reporting allegations of sexual misconduct by passengers on board commercial aircraft. It would also provide recommendations on best practices relating to training, reporting, and data collection. (See October 18, 2016.)
20201115: A SpaceX capsule carried four astronauts to the International Space Station in SpaceX’s “first regular NASA mission to the” station. The Crew-1 mission was also the first human orbital flight licensed by FAA, which had responsibility for public safety because the flight was conducted by a commercial company. (See May 30, 2020; December 9, 2020.)
20221115: FAA dedicated the Senator Kay Hagan Air Traffic Control Tower at Piedmont Triad International Airport, designed by women engineers.
20231115: The group of outside experts appointed by FAA in April issued a 52-page report, calling for “urgent action” to address safety risks in the nation’s aviation system, highlighting issues like staffing shortages among air traffic controllers and outdated technology. The panel recommended changes in how the agency is funded and warned about the risks posed by aging technology. (See April 26, 2023; November 17, 2023.)
20231115: FAA reinstated SpaceX’s Starship launch license, noting “SpaceX met all safety, environmental, policy and financial responsibility requirements.” SpaceX applied for and received authorization for one flight. The license indicated FAA was satisfied with SpaceX’s modifications to its rocket and launchpad. (See September 8, 2023; November 18, 2023.)