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TDiFH

This Day in FAA History: September 18th

Full FAA Chronology at this link.
19280918: The Graf Zeppelin, the most successful rigid airship ever built, first flew. By the time it was retired in 1937, this craft had flown more than a million miles, spent 16,000 hours in the air, and carried 13,100 passengers.
19650918: FAA required distance-measuring equipment on turbine-engine aircraft and pressurized piston-engine aircraft when operated by foreign air carriers within the contiguous United States after December 31, 1966. The agency required other foreign air carrier aircraft having a maximum certificated takeoff weight of more than 12,500 pounds to have this equipment after December 31, 1967. All foreign civil aircraft not engaged in air carrier operations were required to have this equipment after December 31, 1966, when flying at or above 24,000 feet. (See July 1, 1963.)

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TDiFH

This Day in FAA History: September 17th

Full FAA Chronology at this link.
19640917: FAA implemented a simplified two-layer airway route structure, replacing the previous three-layer system (see April 6, 1961). The lower layer of the new structure extended generally from an altitude of 1,000 feet to 18,000 feet, and the jet route portion from 18,000 to 45,000 feet. Airspace above 45,000 feet was reserved for point-to-point operations on a random routing basis. Besides requiring fewer aeronautical navigation charts, the new system reduced pilot-controller workload by requiring fewer radio contacts and navigational checkpoints. As a necessary complement, FAA revised rules governing use of the standard altimeter setting by lowering the base altitude for such settings from 24,000 to 18,000 feet above mean sea level. (See March 4, 1965.)
19710917: The first grant related to vertical/short takeoff and landing facilities under the airport planning grant program went to the New Jersey Department of Transportation to study the development of a special facility to accommodate V/STOL aircraft. (See April 29 and October 17, 1971.)

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TDiFH

This Day in FAA History: September 16th

Full FAA Chronology at this link.
19670916: Typhoon Sarah struck Wake Island with winds exceeding 140 miles per hour, knocking out the island’s electric power plant, air traffic control tower, air route traffic control center, and navigation aids. Damage to the island’s housing, sanitation system, and freshwater supply necessitated the evacuation of one fourth of Wake’s population.
19710916: The National Transportation Safety Board ruled that pilots who had suffered a stroke could not be automatically denied a first-class medical certificate. The Board stated that each pilot’s case must be treated separately rather than on the basis of general stroke statistics and predictions. The ruling reversed FAA’s denial of a first-class medical certificate to a pilot who had suffered a “pure motor stroke” in 1964. The Board noted that the pilot had met the pertinent rules and standards since the stroke, and hence his general medical condition allowed him to safely exercise the privileges of the certificate.

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TDiFH

This Day in FAA History: September 15th

Full FAA Chronology at this link.
19280915: The Aeronautics Branch published civil aviation accident statistics for the first half of 1928. There was a total of 390 accidents, of which 34 occurred in scheduled flying, 69 in student instruction, 17 in experimental operations, and 270 in miscellaneous flying. Assigned causes blamed pilot error for 43.29 percent of the accidents, engine failure for 16.59 percent, weather for 10.23 percent, and airport or terrain for 8.72 percent. There was a total of 153 fatalities and 276 injuries. Only six of the fatalities occurred in scheduled flying.
19330915: The Aeronautics Branch announced in the Air Commerce Bulletin a streamlining plan for the Air Regulation Service aimed at saving $500,000 in the current fiscal year.

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TDiFH

This Day in FAA History: September 14th

Full FAA Chronology at this link.
19420914: To meet the increased tempo of military requirements, CAA established a Pacific Islands Office at Honolulu under the general supervision of the Sixth Region, headquartered at Los Angeles.
19630914: The Convention on Offenses and Certain Other Acts Committed on Board Aircraft (known as the Tokyo Convention) was opened for signature at a diplomatic conference held under the auspices of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). An FAA official representing President Kennedy signed the document on behalf of the United States. The Legal Committee of ICAO had spent many years drafting the convention, which clarified certain jurisdictional issues concerning hijacked aircraft, and recognized the authority of aircraft commanders to use reasonable force to preserve law and order aboard their aircraft.

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TDiFH

This Day in FAA History: September 13th

Full FAA Chronology at this link.
19340913: Following a conclusive demonstration of an Army Air Corps blind-landing system, the Bureau of Air Commerce adopted that system as its standard. The demonstration marked the conclusion of eleven months work by the Bureau in which it tested various systems and modifications for blind landing using a Ford tri-motor transport. (See March 1, 1933, and May 2, 1940.)
19480913: To speed certification of aircraft and aircraft parts, CAA announced that type certificates would be issued in its nine regions rather than at headquarters in Washington, D.C.
19570913: CAA held demonstrations of scan conversion equipment under evaluation at its Technical Development Center, Indianapolis. The equipment was designed to improve radar display techniques. (See April 27, 1960.)

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TDiFH

This Day in FAA History: September 12th

Full FAA Chronology at this link.
19840912: Airline representatives reached agreement on rescheduling flights to avoid congestion during peak hours at six major airports: New York’s La Guardia and Kennedy; Newark International; Chicago O’Hare; Atlanta Hartsfield; and Denver Stapleton. The representatives forged the agreement in eight days of intense negotiations with FAA participation and with the understanding that FAA might impose new regulations if no voluntary solution was found. The Civil Aeronautics Board granted immunity from anti-trust laws to those engaged in the talks, and later approved the agreement. Writing to the Air Transport Association on March 12, 1985, FAA Administrator Engen cited steps taken to reduce delays and indications that the airlines would not return to excess peak-time operations. Engen therefore stated that the scheduling agreement need not continue beyond April 1.
19940912: A pilot flying a stolen Cessna 150 crashed a few yards from the White House, dying on impact.

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TDiFH

This Day in FAA History: September 11th

Full FAA Chronology at this link.
19510911: The National Security Resources Board completed its air transport mobilization survey. Developed by a large group of aviation leaders from government and industry, the program outlined requirements for rapid mobilization of the U.S. air transport industry in the event of expanded war. (See December 15, 1951.)
19610911: The Project Beacon task force on Air Traffic Control (see March 8, 1961) submitted its report to the FAA Administrator. While finding that the air traffic control system was “being expertly operated by a highly skilled organization,” the report concluded that substantial improvements were needed to meet the future challenge of aviation’s projected growth.

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Aviation

Paper: Aviation Exceptionalism, Fossil Fuels and the State

An academic paper providing insight into aviation’s addiction to fossil fuels. The links within the Reference listing (PDF pages 20-26) may be especially useful for further research.

SOURCE: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09692290.2024.2384925

ABSTRACT
While states have accelerated the energy transition in some sectors, they have also obstructed fossil phase-out in other sectors. Aviation has an outsized and rapidly growing climate impact, and associated policy decisions have perpetuated fossil fuel use. Since aviation is dependent on high energy density that only fossil fuels can (currently) provide, the industry faces fundamental constraints to green its capital. Yet, the industry does not operate in isolation.

In this paper, we show how the state performs a variety of roles that benefit from and support aviation, creating conflicts with the state’s climate targets. We analyze state-industry relations as they relate to the emergence of air transport and its ongoing carbon-dependent formulations. Combining a relational account of the state and the method of critical problem-solving, we characterize the roles of the state vis-à-vis the industry as owner, sponsor and customer and point to strategies of how the associated capacities can be leveraged to drive fossil phase-out in aviation. Since a rapid and comprehensive phase-out of fossil fuels is required for climate stabilization, we argue that political economists can make important contributions by focusing on the socio-material relations that constrain state agency to phase-out fossil fuels in specific sectors.

Click here to view/download the pdf (26p, 2.1 Mb).

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TDiFH

This Day in FAA History: September 10th

Full FAA Chronology at this link.
19300910: The Taylor E-2 Cub made its first flight. This design evolved into the famous Piper Cub, which was introduced in 1938 and became one of the world’s most popular general aviation airplanes.
19360910: Deutsche Luft Hansa’s twin-engine Dornier Do.18 flying boat Zephyr alighted offshore of Port Washington, N.Y., after a flight of 22 hours 18 minutes from Horta in the Azores, where it had been catapulted from the deck of a depot ship. This was the first of a series of German survey flights for possible transatlantic air mail service. The Germans continued such experimental flights into 1938.
19440910: The first airplane designed in World War II exclusively to carry cargo, the C-82, was successfully test-flown at the Fairchild aircraft plant in Hagerstown, Md. Fairchild manufactured 220 planes for the Air Force before discontinuing production in 1948.