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A voice inside you is saying, ‘This is stupid. This is dangerous. But that voice inside you is useless if you stay silent,' former military pilot Greg Hill said. A former military pilot is urging Canadian police and military to courageously disobey unlawful orders and speak up against tyranny. Greg Hill, co-director of Free to Fly, an aviation group advocating “freedom of medical choice,” called upon all Canadians of influence, but particularly the police and military, to “speak the truth at all costs,” lest Canadians “pay a dear price for silence and blind obedience,” in an address published Monday, touching...

quite disturbing to learn that, contrary to what the press had .. assured us about a supposedly disgruntled aircraft mechanic who got caught trying to disable a Boeing 737, the guy had ISIS video on his cell phone. ... Doesn't everyone with labor beefs against his boss have ISIS video murders on his cell phone? ... Abdul-Majeed Marouf Ahmed Alani might just have been motivated by ISIS's brand of Islamism, not a woikin' man's desire for more overtime. The gullible media reported it otherwise, always eager to look the other way on Islamist terror. ... Alani's phone also had a...

The Senate has confirmed Heather Wilson as secretary of the Air Force. Senators approved Wilson’s nomination 76-22, making her President Donald Trump’s first service secretary nominee to be approved by the GOP-led chamber. ... Wilson is a former Republican congresswoman from New Mexico. She had faced scrutiny from several Democrats for defense industry consulting work she did after leaving Congress in 2009. She is the first graduate of the Air Force Academy to hold the service’s top civilian post.

Air traffic controllers are well paid, averaging $136,000 per year. However you have to be under 31-year-old to start, training takes years. ... A major part of the problem is the FAA changed the way it hires controllers about two years ago. They have recently been hiring more of them off the street, instead of candidates with military or college aviation training. Now many of them don't make it through training.

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association, NATCA, has called for an investigation of the FAA’s hiring practices following the FOX Business investigation “Trouble in the Skies” first telecast on May 20th. A just released statement from the union which represents the nation’s air traffic controllers says, “NATCA believes these allegations must be thoroughly investigated. The FAA should carefully examine its hiring practices to ensure the highest quality candidates are selected for the training process. The flying public deserves nothing less.” FOX Business uncovered cheating on a key exam to become an air traffic controller as well as serious questions about...

How far will our ideologically demented ruling class push Affirmative Action before people start pushing back? Already it has played a role in destroying our schools, with a liberal judge actually abolishing aptitude tests on the grounds that blacks don’t score as well. But apparently people don’t think it matters whether teachers have any qualifications other than skin color. If being black can get you into the White House, why not a classroom? Maybe airliners crashing into each other will wake people up:

Bidder offers just €10,000 for showpiece in Spanish bankruptcy auction. A Chinese company that was the only bidder for one of Spain's "ghost airports" wants to revive the site as a cargo hub for the Asian market. Ciudad Real airport, one of the most notorious emblems of Spain's economic crash, cost €1 billion (HK$8.4 billion) to build and was on sale at a knockdown price of €40 million. Tzaneen International was the sole bidder in the bankruptcy auction, however, and it offered just €10,000. The facilities of the deserted site, 160km south of Madrid, include a runway long enough to...

A young computer whiz from New York City has launched a site to help people buy cheap plane tickets. But an airline company and its travel partner want to shut him down. United Airlines and Orbitz filed a civil lawsuit last month against 22-year-old Aktarer Zaman, who founded the website Skiplagged.com last year. The site helps travelers find cheap flights by using a strategy called “hidden city” ticketing. The idea is that you buy an airline ticket that has a layover at your actual destination. Say you want to fly from New York to San Francisco — you actually book...

RALEIGH-DURHAM INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, N.C. -- The pilot of a Southwest Airlines flight headed to RDU went on the loudspeaker and told passengers their plane was going down, according to a woman on board the flight. "He said, we're going down. And everyone is looking around like, is this a joke? Is he serious? And then you felt the nosedive," passenger Shelley Wills said. Wills told ABC11 the Tuesday night flight from Tampa took a nosedive thousands of feet in the air while they were about 100 miles away from RDU. Wills is a nurse and tried helping the first-time flier...

Fighter jets intercepted two small planes that violated flight restrictions set up in Florida for President Barack Obama's visit. The first, a Cessna 152 ... The military's North American Aerospace Defense Command sent a F-16 fighter jet and a Coast Guard helicopter to intercept the plane, he said.The F-16 flew with the plane until it landed at Witham Field in nearby Stuart... Five hours later, F-16s intercepted a Lancair 320, a smaller craft that seats two passengers

U.S. airlines are facing what threatens to be their most serious pilot shortage since the 1960s, with higher experience requirements for new hires about to take hold just as the industry braces for a wave of retirements. Federal mandates taking effect next summer will require all newly hired pilots to have at least 1,500 hours of prior flight experience—six times the current minimum—raising the cost and time to train new fliers in an era when pay cuts and more-demanding schedules already have made the profession less attractive. Meanwhile, thousands of senior pilots at major airlines soon will start hitting the...

The strongest winds over the Atlantic Ocean in more than 10 years have forced dozens of Continental Airlines flights from Europe to the eastern U.S. to make unscheduled refuelling stops in Canada and elsewhere, a report says. The fuel stops at airports such as Gander, N.L., and Halifax are partly the result of a decision by parent United Airlines to use smaller jets on the overseas flights. The strategy works in light winds and saves money on fuel and crew costs, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. Using Boeing 757s on flights that approach their 7,400-kilometre range, the airline doesn't...

The aircraft carriers being built for the Royal Navy will be less useful, take longer to finish, and likely cost more than claimed, a parliamentary watchdog warns. The first, HMS Queen Elizabeth, will be mothballed immediately it is launched in 2016, according to the existing plan. However, the second, HMS Prince of Wales, is not now expected to be fully operational until 2031. Moreover, it will only be able to stay at sea for up to 200 days a year, significantly fewer than envisaged, says the Commons public accounts committee. The MPs' report, out on Tuesday, makes clear the quick...

Navy will not get fleet of US joint strike fighters until 2023, three years after carrier due to enter service. The Ministry of Defence has still not decided how many planes should be assigned to the navy's long-delayed and increasingly expensive aircraft carrier programme, but whatever the number they will not be available for more than a decade, it has emerged. Confusion over the carrier project was compounded on Friday when the MoD said in its "business plan" that the navy will not get its fleet of US joint strike fighters (JSFs) until 2023, three years after HMS Prince of...

Barack Obama won a showdown vote Wednesday in the GOP-controlled House to kill a costly alternative engine for the Pentagon's next-generation fighter jet. The win by Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates was a switch from where the House stood last year under Democratic control. It reflected a sustained administration push to win over the votes of scores of Republican freshmen elected last fall on campaign promises to cut the budget... The 233-198 tally was a loss for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, whose state reaps about 1,000 jobs from the engine program, built by the General Electric Co. and...

The claim: A White House fact sheet released Wednesday to coincide with the state visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao said: "In preparation for this visit, several large purchases have been approved including for 200 Boeing airplanes. ... The approval, the final step in a $19 billion package of aircraft, will help Boeing maintain and expand its market share in the world's fastest growing commercial aircraft market." What we found: The deal President Hu signed does not include any new jet orders. Delivering the formal approval during Hu's visit is designed to make the Chinese government appear responsive to U.S....

THERE'S been another engine failure on a Qantas aircraft, this time as it was preparing to take off at Sydney Airport. Flight QF11 to Los Angeles, carrying 344 passengers... Passengers on the 747 described hearing "a loud bang" and then watching as black smoke poured out of the crippled engine. The captain then reportedly announced over the intercom that the engine had "cooked itself". A spokeswoman for Qantas said the plane was on the runway and cleared for take-off when it had a "low-speed engine failure".

AN Indian co-pilot sent an international passenger jet into a terrifying nosedive when he adjusted his seat and accidentally pushed the control column forward... The captain only saved the Boeing 737 aircraft after using an emergency code to get through the cockpit door and ...When the captain, 39, got back into the cockpit, he shouted, "What are you doing?" The plane fell 610m before the captain got back into the cockpit - and another 1520mt as he struggled with the panicking co-pilot. "There was application of opposite force by pilot and co-pilot on control column,"... Four days earlier, another Air...

If you have gone through airport security at O'Hare, Midway or any other major airport recently, then you know that there is new screening equipment in place and procedures to search travelers. Thousands of pilots who fly jetliners are angry about those changes. There are two issues; two major pilots' unions say the full-body scanners are untested and potentially unsafe because of the radiation they expose travelers to. And the second issue is the new procedure for hand searches by Transportation Security Administration officers at airport checkpoints. Both have produced scathing memos about the TSA from the pilots' unions.

A Transportation Security Administration worker who pretended to find drugs in a passenger's bag at Philadelphia International Airport in January had played the prank more than once and told one of his victims that "she would have to admit it was funny," according to TSA documents. The documents, which detail the dopey antics of a bomb-appraisal officer whose name has been blacked out, were released on the Smoking Gun website this week. The Inquirer broke the story of Rebecca Solomon, 22, who on Jan. 5 became the unsuspecting butt of the officer's joke when he pretended to find a white,...