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Even as commercial air travel rebounds to pre-Sept. 11, 2001, levels, the Federal Aviation Administration is faced with a looming crisis in its air traffic controller system. Over the next decade, 73% of the agency's nearly 15,000 controllers will become eligible to retire, according to an FAA report. Replacing them with new controllers takes time to provide the necessary training, as much as five years. The agency must hire 12,500 controllers over the next 10 years in order to have enough controllers in the pipeline to meet its needs. The mass retirement problem is a result of the air traffic...

ATC Announces Cyber-Attack ATC Press Release - 02/17/05On January 11, 2005, the Anti-Terrorism Coalition (ATC) was attacked by unknown hackers. Around 6 pm Eastern Standard time, January 11, 2005, the ATC-owned Facts About Islam website was attacked. All of the accounts on which it was hosted on were completely destroyed within an hour. Shortly after the attacks, a message was posted by one of the suspected attackers: "I WILL CONTINUE HACKING DOWN YOUR FILTHY ZIONIST SCUM WEBSITES UNTIL THEY DISAPEER! ALAHU AKBAR! f***ink k***s!" The ATC immediately went to a Red Alert and increased its security. Early on January 12,...

WASHINGTON - The Federal Aviation Administration announced a plan Tuesday to hire 12,500 new air traffic controllers and let some existing workers stay on the job longer than their mandatory retirement age to offset a tidal wave of looming retirements. The plan outlined by FAA Administrator Marion Blakey also calls for speeding up training to get controllers on the job faster and reducing the workforce at airports with less air traffic. The genesis for the moves can be traced to 1981, when President Reagan fired more than 10,000 controllers and hired replacements. Nearly three-quarters of those workers will be eligible...

Officers said they would be brought over.. south of MSG between 7th and 8th street

WASHINGTON - A military plane carrying Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) came within almost half a mile of a small private plane over Bridgeport, Conn., last month, forcing the pilot to take evasive action, the Federal Aviation Administration (news - web sites) said Friday. The plane, which is Air Force II when the vice president is aboard, was flying at about 7,500 feet while en route to Westchester County Airport in White Plains, N.Y., when an on-board alert system alarmed, telling the pilot to climb to avoid colliding with the other plane. The FAA (news - web...

...Our air traffic control system still operates in Lily Tomlin world, as if human operators were still required to physically connect and disconnect every phone call. Pilots can't taxi, take off, turn left, turn right, ascend, descend or land without exchanging words and getting permission from somebody on the ground. Not only does this fill the airwaves with low-efficiency chatter, but useful information is transferred at speeds that would embarrass your dialup modem. The cost in delays, inefficient routing and perpetual gridlock is huge. Planes are perfectly able to fly around thunderstorms, but the ATC system often won't let them....

Anti-Terror Coalition Urges Nuclear PreparednessSites "Internet Chatter" As Rationale for Recommendation by John S. PappasWashington - 07/13/04Sighting "chilling" Internet chatter within the past few days, cyber-terror watchdog group Anti-Terrorism Coalition (http://atci.showsit.info/) is recommending that Americans familiarize themselves with information on dealing with a nuclear attack.The ATC is sighting recent Internet chatter as cause for their recommendation that people study the procedures for dealing with a nuclear or radiological attack. One threat in particular, posted on a message group believed to be operated by al Qaeda sympathizers contained a specific threat of nuclear/radiological attack against America. The message announced July 14th...

Internet Haganah Ally Reaffirms SolidarityAnti-Terrorism Coalition States Support & Commitment to Fight Terrorismby John S. PappasWashington - 07/12/04In response to the beheading threat received by Internet Haganah (story), fellow Anti-Cyber Terrorism group Anti-Terrorism Coalition (ATC) has released a statement (statement) of support for Internet Haganah and has vowed to continue targeting terrorist websites.Benyamin B., Director of ATC Intelligence, released the following statement Sunday following a Johnny P News report on the beheading threat:"The terrorists have been losing more websites and eGroups lately, as the ATC, Internet Haganah, and other allied organizations are increasing their activities against cyber terrorism. I believe...

A report by Transportation Department Inspector General Kenneth Mead said the manager for the New York-area air traffic control center asked the controllers to make the recordings a few hours after the crashes in belief they would be important for law enforcement. Investigators never heard it. Sometime between December 2001 and February 2002, an unidentified Federal Aviation Administration (news - web sites) quality assurance manager crushed the cassette case in his hand, cut the tape into small pieces and threw them away in multiple trash cans, the report said. "We were told that nobody ever listened to, transcribed or...

WASHINGTON — Air traffic controllers who handled two of the hijacked flights on Sept. 11, 2001, recorded their experiences shortly after the planes crashed into the World Trade Center but a supervisor destroyed the tape, government investigators said Thursday. A report by Transportation Department Inspector General Kenneth Mead said the manager for the New York-area air traffic control center asked the controllers to make the recordings a few hours after the crashes in belief they would be important for law enforcement.

  Combat Controllers Play Key Role in Terror War By Donna MilesAmerican Forces Press ServiceWASHINGTON, April 23, 2004 -- The largest-ever class of future Air Force combat controllers is training at Pope Air Force Base, N.C., to provide critical skills required in the war on terror. Air Force Senior Airman Jared Peitras and Air Force Tech. Sgt. Mark Harris, assigned to the combat control team at Baghdad International Airport, inspect a building for a weapons cache, April 29, 2003. Photo by Staff Sgt. Cherie A. Thurlby, USAF(Click photo for screen-resolution image); high- resolution image available. The current class of...

<p>WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Traffic at the nation's airports is rebounding, but the Transportation Department's inspector general cautioned Thursday that the improvement hasn't come without problems.</p> <p>In testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Ken Mead warned of an increase in flight delays, serious runway incursions and air traffic controller errors.</p>

The truth is out there. And it may have zoomed over Winnipeg last month. Three air traffic controllers at Winnipeg International Airport were among the witnesses who reported seeing an unidentified flying object streak thorough the sky on March 28 about 9:45 p.m. "I don't think this was the 5:15 from Mars on an approach, but certainly we have to classify it as unexplained. We don't have any evidence to classify this as an extraterrestrial. It's puzzling," said Chris Rutkowski, a Winnipeg UFO researcher. Didn't appear on radar Rutkowski interviewed the three air traffic controllers who saw the object. "It...

Today, Ed Ballinger will speak to a roomful of strangers about the one subject he doesn't care to discuss: The first two hours of his shift as a flight dispatcher for United Airlines on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. The Arlington Heights resident and former United Airlines employee will meet with a sub-committee of the 9/11 commission in Washington, D.C., so panel members can decide whether his testimony warrants his appearance before the full commission. Ballinger is there because he was in charge of United flights 175 and 93 when they crashed into the World Trade Center and a...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Air traffic managers now have authority to hold flights at secondary airports in certain circumstances to clear up congestion at bigger ones in a novel bid to shorten air travel delays, officials said on Wednesday. The option worked out with airlines will give takeoff priority to flights delayed at least 90 minutes at major airports. They will then be routed through high-altitude "express lanes" to hasten their trip. The plan is meant to spread out waits and minimize the impact of delays nationally. There are 35,000 commercial passenger and cargo flights in the United States each day....

Controller Linked To Crash Murdered... Random Act Or Revenge... On Tuesday, an air traffic controller who worked for Skyguide, the Swiss airspace agency, was stabbed to death in his home in Kloten, near Zurich. The victim had been the sole controller on duty in July 2002 when two airplanes collided in Swiss airspace over Lake Constance, killing 71 people, many of them Russian schoolchildren. He was a 36-year-old Danish citizen, a father of three, and was never publicly identified in connection with the crash. Police said a dark-haired man in his 50s rang the doorbell at the controller's home....

Grieving man's revenge? Air traffic controller at centre of 2002 plane collision is killed, apparently by man who lost family in the crash ZURICH - The police are still piecing together details after making an arrest, but if their theory is right, the grief for both men was fathomless. One, identified as Mr Peter Nielsen, was the air traffic controller on duty on July 1, 2002 when 71 people, including 45 Russian schoolchildren on a vacation trip to Spain, were killed in a collision of two planes in Swiss airspace. He took several months off work. His colleagues said he...

ZURICH - Swiss authorities investigating the murder of an air traffic controller, stabbed to death near his home earlier this week, said on Thursday they had detained a man who lost his wife and two children when a holiday charter carrying them to Spain collided with a cargo jet in the sky over southern Germany. The dead controller was in charge of air traffic over the area when the collision occurred. Swiss police said on Thursday they had detained a man on suspicion of killing 36-year-old Peter Nielsen, who was stabbed at his house near Zurich two days earlier. The...

A set of tape transcripts released yesterday open a small window onto the flow of information among aviation authorities on Sept. 11, 2001, showing that air traffic officials in New York knew no more about the attacks than anyone watching television. Although fighter jets were racing toward the city after the commandeered planes, the transcripts showed that controllers at La Guardia Airport, apparently unaware of the hijackings, continued to send out flights until the second plane had struck the World Trade Center. That was nearly an hour after the first plane had been hijacked. The records are the latest to...

Circulation of the Nation's 20 Biggest Newspapers The Associated Press Published: Nov 3, 2003 Average weekday circulation of the nation's 20 biggest newspapers for the six months ended Sept. 30, as reported Monday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. The percentage changes are from the comparable year-ago period. 1. USA Today, 2,246,996, up 0.7 percent 2. The Wall Street Journal, 2,091,062, up 16.1 percent (a) 3. The New York Times, 1,118,565, up 0.5 percent 4. Los Angeles Times, 955,211, down 1.1 percent (b) 5. The Washington Post, 732,872, down 1.9 percent 6. New York Daily News, 729,124, up 2.1 percent...