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San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed suit today against the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), demanding data on certifications and authorizations the agency has issued for the operation of unmanned aircraft, also known as drones. Drones are designed to carry surveillance equipment – including video cameras, infrared cameras and heat sensors, and radar – that can allow for sophisticated and almost constant surveillance. They can also carry weapons. Traditionally, drones have been used almost exclusively by military and security organizations. However, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection uses drones inside the United States to patrol the U.S....

Reid’s floor maneuvers leave some Senate Democrats frustratedBy Alexander Bolton - 02/07/12 05:15 AM ET Some Democrats are grumbling over how Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has run the floor this year. The frustration is felt mostly among junior lawmakers, who want more of a role in decision-making and have yet to resign themselves to the traditional pace of the Senate, where seniority rules and lawmakers often have to wait years to have significant influence. They say Reid’s style leaves them feeling out of the loop. Colleagues have second-guessed Reid’s decision to greenlight a deal with Republicans on the...

Gov. Scott Walker's office put in a call to lend a hand. So did a couple of congressmen - as did former President Jimmy Carter. What grabbed their attention wasn't high taxes, a congressional squabble or the latest flap in the presidential race. It was the plight of a nine endangered whooping cranes stuck in northern Alabama. The young cranes, raised in Wisconsin, have been grounded since well before Christmas after their handlers ran afoul of Federal Aviation Administration regulations. The snafu was settled Monday when the FAA gave the group a one-time exemption that allows pilots to continue leading...

The 2011 ultralight-led Whooping crane migration is currently on hold in Alabama while the Federal Aviation Administration sorts out a regulatory issue involving OM’s pilots and aircraft. The FAA is working with OM to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. In the meantime, this year’s cohort is safely penned in Franklin County, Alabama, watched over daily by OM personnel. The issue in question is whether or not OM’s pilots are flying “for hire,” or, for the furtherance of a non-profit. OM aircraft are licensed as Light Sport Aircraft (LSAs) which came into effect in 2008. FAA regulations prohibit flying...

FAA Administrator Arrested For DUI December 5, 2011 By Glenn Pew, Contributing Editor, Video Editor Randy Babbitt, administrator of the FAA, was taken into custody Saturday by Fairfax County police and charged with driving while intoxicated, local news has reported. At about 10:30 p.m. Babbitt was seen driving on the wrong side of the road and was pulled over. He was alone in the car at the time and no accident related to the incident has been reported.

The head of the Federal Aviation Administration was charged with drunk driving Saturday night by Fairfax City police after being spotted driving on the wrong side of Old Lee Highway, according to the arresting officer. (Manuel Balce Ceneta - AP) FAA Administrator Jerome Randolph “Randy” Babbitt, 65, of Reston, was alone in his vehicle at about 10:30 p.m. in the 3900 block of Old Lee Highway and was not involved in any accident, police said. He cooperated with the officer and was released on his own recognizance after being taken before a magistrate. U.S. Department of Transportation spokeswoman Sasha J....

A recent spike in air traffic control errors is likely attributable to a change in the Federal Aviation Administration’s chosen contractor for training air traffic controllers, The Daily Caller has learned. That change was likely the result of an government contracting shuffle orchestrated by an FAA official and her lover -- a former FAA official who worked for Raytheon at the time the contract was awarded. Raytheon won the contract, worth nearly $1 billion. Potentially deadly aircraft incidents attributable to control tower mistakes have increased dramatically in recent years. Professor Jack Williams of Georgia State University told The Daily Caller...

For the second time in as many months, the Federal Aviation Administration may temporarily furlough some 80,000 employees if Congress can't reach a deal to extend the agency's funding by Friday night. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) has held up passage of the funding extension bill, which would appropriate additional money for the FAA and federal highway transit projects, citing an objection to one component of the transit side of the legislation. The House unanimously passed that bill Tuesday, and the Senate has until midnight on Friday to also pass it before funding for the FAA runs out. Complicating matters, Majority...

The NTSB has recovered 'components' which may be part of the P-51's horizontal stab and elevator... possibly even the elevator trim tab, which is a specified point of inquiry (as noted in previous ANN reports). The NTSB has received a significant amount of photographic and video evidence -- some of which show the process whereby the elevator trim tab separated from the horizontal stabilizer. There is no evidence of the much-reported 'Mayday' call. We are hearing a number of calls for additional regulation and FAA supervision... despite the fact that this is the first time in nearly 60 years that...

But under Thursday’s agreement, Coburn will be allowed to insert language into a longer-term highways bill that Democrats and Republicans will negotiate before the new round of funding expires in six months. Coburn’s provision would allow states to opt out of a program requiring them to set aside millions of dollars for beautification projects like bike paths, sound walls and decorative highway signs. The conservative Oklahoma senator - known for singlehandedly holding up Senate business — had come under increasing pressure from his GOP colleagues, and eventually relented-. Earlier Thursday, they said he was demanding too much on a bill...

EVERETT, Wash. (AP) -- After nearly two years of flight tests and analysis, the Federal Aviation Administration on Friday cleared the way for the new Boeing 787 to take its first commercial flight. Boeing plans to deliver the first 787 to Japan's All Nippon Airways next month -- more than three years later than initially planned. The airline plans to fly it for the first time as a charter on Oct. 26 and begin regular service Nov. 1. Both the FAA and European regulators certified the plane for flight. Boeing completed flight tests on the 787 this month. The Chicago...

<p>After years of setbacks and delays, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner was certified Friday by the U.S. government as safe and ready to fly passengers.</p> <p>The official FAA certification was announced at a ceremony at the Boeing site in Everett, just a few weeks before the first scheduled delivery of the airliner to Japan's All Nippon Airways on Sept. 28. The aircraft was also certified by the European Aviation Safety Agency.</p>

The Federal Aviation Administration has cleared the way for the new Boeing 787 to take its first commercial flight. Both the FAA and European regulators certified the plane for flight on Friday. Boeing plans to deliver the first 787 to Japan's All Nippon Airways in September. The airline plans to fly it for the first time as a charter on Oct. 26 and begin regular service Nov. 1. Delivery is about three years late.

Drunk plane passenger 'urinates on girl, 11' Angry scenes broke out on a flight in the US after a drunk man allegedly urinated on a sleeping 11-year-old girl. Robert Vietze, 18, was arrested after stumbling from his seat and allegedly emptying his bladder on the child, who was travelling with her sister and father, the New York Post reports. The young man later told police he was too drunk to realise what he was doing. "I was drunk, and I did not realise I was p***ing on her leg," Vietze said, according to law-enforcement sources. The girl's father returned from...

On some days, the pilots with Great Lakes Airlines fire up a twin-engine Beechcraft 1900 at the Ely, Nev., airport and depart for Las Vegas without a single passenger on board. And the federal government pays them to do it. Federal statistics reviewed by The Associated Press show that in 2010, just 227 passengers flew out of Ely while the airline got $1.8 million in subsidies. The travelers paid $70 to $90 for a one-way ticket. The cost to taxpayers for each ticket: $4,107. Ely is one of 153 rural communities where airlines get subsidies through the $200 million Essential...

In a deal reached on Thursday, the Senate passed a temporary Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization, ending a Congressional stand-off that has allowed the FAA’s official authority to lapse. The Senate agreed to pass the House version of the Bill which included $16.5 million in cuts to Extended Air Service (EAS) subsidies- a program which provides subsidized air travel to several secondary airports, particularly those frequently used by prominent congressional leaders. The Senate had refused to pass the House measure because of the EAS cuts before adjourning for the August recess, prepared to furlough tens of thousands of FAA workers to...

The Democratic Senate terrorists, lead by Mullah Harry Reid, had pledged to release the 74,000 hostages they have been holding for weeks and passed the FAA extension passed by the House in mid-July. The terrorist had claimed that they took the 74,000 hostages to protest $16 million in cuts for 13 little-used airports, but that has been proven false. The FAA extension passed by the House July 20th include a waiver provision allowing the Secretary of Transportation to waive the cut. The Sec. of Transportation has said he will grant waivers. Since the 13 little-used airports were not in danger...

After all the pleading and partisan accusations over funding the Federal Aviation Administration, Democratic lawmakers and Obama officials found the answer to ending a two-week shutdown of the agency literally right under their noses. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is sending a letter Thursday, saying a bill that the GOP-led House passed extending the FAA's operating authority through mid-September gives him the power to waive a provision Democrats opposed that cuts $16.5 million in air service subsides to rural communities.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, announced Thursday that Democratic and Republican leaders have "been able to broker a bipartisan compromise between the House and the Senate" to fully fund the Federal Aviation Administration.

Because Congress hasn’t been able to agree on a long-term funding regime for the FAA, the agency has spent the last several years operating under a series of temporary funding measures. On July 20, the House passed with bipartisan support a temporary measure that would have extended FAA financing through September 16. As you might expect, this was not simply a “clean” funding extension, as most Democrats have been calling for. It included about $14 million in cuts to commercial airline service to rural airports. Republicans also put forward a long-term funding bill containing language that would undo a recently...

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) accused House Republicans of “hostage taking” for not passing a “clean” short-term extension to fund the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) with no cuts, comparing the situation to “a gun held” by the GOP to the heads of Democrats. “The issue is not essential air service. It’s not even a labor issue. It’s the issue of hostage taking. It’s as if someone puts a gun to your head and says ‘give me your money’ and then you say, ‘why won’t you give them their money?’

Washington (CNN) -- President Barack Obama and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood on Wednesday urged Congress to immediately pass a temporary funding measure for the Federal Aviation Administration to put nearly 4,000 federal employees back to work and restart more than 200 airport construction projects. The Democratic-led Senate went on its summer recess Tuesday without approving what would have been the 21st short-term funding extension for the FAA. The Republican-led House previously passed a short-term extension, but included some changes opposed by Democrats.

As FAA Shutdown Continues, Obama Pleads With Congress to End Stalemate Published August 03, 2011 | FoxNews.com President Obama ratcheted up the pressure on Congress Wednesday to return from a monthlong vacation and end an impasse over funding the Federal Aviation Administration, which is in the 12th day of a partial shutdown that has left more than 70,000 airport construction workers and 4,000 FAA employees out of work. "This is a lose-lose-lose situation that can be easily solved if Congress gets back into town and does its job," the president said at the start of a Cabinet meeting.

The Transportation Security Administration cannot determine the real identities of thousands of the people to whom the Federal Aviation Administration has issued licenses as pilots and aircraft mechanics, but has located an additional 27 who should not have held them because of terrorist connections, according to an internal report by the Department of Homeland Security....The report was requested two years ago by four senators after a private data analysis company in New York determined that the man convicted of bombing Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 still held an F.A.A. license, as did a man caught trying...

WASHINGTON – The government is likely to lose more than $1 billion in airline ticket taxes because lawmakers have left town for a month without resolving a partisan standoff over a bill to end the partial shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration. The government already has lost more than $200 million since airlines are unable to collect taxes on ticket sales because the FAA's operating authority has expired. The Senate recessed on Tuesday until September, erasing any possibility for quickly resolving the issue. The House left Monday night. Caught up in the partisan acrimony are nearly 4,000 FAA employees who...

Senators: The cost of FAA shutdown could exceed $1 billion if unless action taken this weekBy Associated Press, Updated: Tuesday, August 2, 3:33 AM WASHINGTON — The congressional standoff that has partially shut down the Federal Aviation Administration has some curious math. Lawmakers risk losing more than $1 billion in revenue from uncollected airline ticket taxes in a quarrel between Senate Democrats and House Republicans who are demanding a $16.5 million cut in rural air service subsidies. The shutdown is less than two weeks old and already the government has lost more than $250 million in revenue because airlines’ authority...

Partial shutdown stalls aviation construction projects across the country Work stoppages are spreading among aviation construction projects across the country and construction workers are being sent home, due to a continuing fight in Washington over funding the Federal Aviation Administration. The stoppages come after nearly 4,000 FAA employees were furloughed on Saturday because the U.S. House failed to reauthorize the FAA the day before. The halting of work will increase the cost of the projects and could delay their completion, but it won’t affect air service, the FAA said. “People are out of work and the FAA cannot conduct necessary...

Impasse over subsidies results in FAA shutdownBy Star-Advertiser Staff and News Services POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Jul 23, 2011 WASHINGTON » Efforts to avert a shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration failed Friday amid a disagreement over a $16.5 million cut in subsidies to 13 rural communities, ensuring that nearly 4,000 people, including five in Hawaii, will be temporarily out of work and federal airline ticket taxes will be suspended. Lawmakers were unable to resolve a partisan dispute over an extension of the agency's operating authority, which expired at midnight Friday EDT. The agency has been without long-term funding legislation...

A House version of the bill includes labor provisions that remove union powers, and removes funding for some rural airports in states led by Democratic senators like Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.). Rockefeller said last week the Senate will not pass the House bill.

With the 20th stopgap funding extension for the nation’s aviation system about to expire, the congressional stalemate over a multibillion-dollar, long-term funding bill has turned into a strikingly nasty squabble, The Washington Post reports...

Five years ago, a Comair flight taxied onto the wrong runway at the airport in Lexington, Ky., and crashed on takeoff, killing 49 of the 50 people aboard. It turned out that the lone air controller on duty who should have caught the mistake was operating on two hours of sleep. Two years before that, a tired controller nearly let two commercial jets collide on an LAX runway. Now, in the wake of a raft of air traffic controllers caught sleeping on the job, the Federal Aviation Administration issued new rules to combat fatigue. But this problem has dogged the...

President Barack Obama's visit today to Southern California has prompted restrictions at local airports through Friday morning. Pilots violating the restrictions could face criminal charges and sanctions from the Federal Aviation Administration. Private pilots will not be able to fly into or out of Los Angeles International Airport, Hawthorne Municipal Airport and Santa Monica Airport between 2:30 p.m. today and 9 a.m. Friday, said FAA spokesman Ian Gregor. During that time, only airlines, law enforcement and air ambulance aircraft will be allowed to fly within a 10-mile radius of Santa Monica Airport. Torrance Municipal Airport is not affected by the...

FAA Announces New Rules Following Aborted Landing of First Lady's Plane Published April 20, 2011 | FoxNews.com The Federal Aviation Administration has announced new procedures following the aborted landing of a presidential plane carrying first lady Michelle Obama that flew too close to a military cargo jet on Monday. FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said that the agency will start requiring a supervisor to monitor movements of flights involving the vice president and first lady, just as the FAA already requires for flights carrying President Obama. "As of today, we are making the same supervisor oversight requirement for (vice president and...

At Washington Reagan National Airport in late March, a sleeping controller failed to respond to two airliners seeking to land shortly after midnight. The resulting publicity broke the silence on a long festering problem between the FAA and the air controllers’ union MATCA. And that is there has been a culture of sleeping on the job. It is banned by long existent regulations, but ignored by the controllers especially on the midnight shift. This is now the battle for control of the “shop floor.”... "It has been an open secret in the FAA dating to at least the early 1990s...

WASHINGTON – An air traffic controller has been suspended for watching a movie when he was supposed to be monitoring aircraft, deepening the Federal Aviation Administration's embarrassment following at least five cases of controllers sleeping on the job. In the latest incident, the controller was watching a movie on a DVD player early Sunday morning while on duty at a regional radar center in Oberlin, Ohio, near Cleveland that handles high-altitude air traffic, the FAA said in a statement Monday.

A White House plane carrying Michelle Obama came dangerously close to a 200-ton military cargo jet and had to abort its landing at Joint Base Andrews on Monday as the result of an air traffic controller’s mistake, according to federal officials familiar with the incident. Ultimately controllers at Andrews feared the cargo jet would not clear the runway in time, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak for their agencies. FAA officials confirmed that the first lady was aboard the plane but had no additional immediate comment. They expected to release...

WASHINGTON – The best solution to the problem of sleepy air traffic controllers is more sleeping on the job, scientists say. But that would be a radical change for the Federal Aviation Administration. Current regulations forbid sleeping at work, even during breaks. Controllers who are caught can be suspended or fired. Experts say that kind of thinking is outdated.

Newly released Federal Aviation Administration documents and audiotapes shed a scary new light on a bizarre incident late last year during which U.S. Senator James Inhofe landed his Cessna on a closed runway at a south Texas airport, scattering construction workers who ran for their lives as the politician’s plane hopscotched over them and six vehicles.

President Obama has threatened to veto the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reauthorization bill unless a provision on union organizing is removed. In a statement of administration policy Wednesday, the White House said the president's "senior advisers would recommend that he veto the bill" if the legislation "would not safeguard the ability of railroad and airline workers to decide whether or not they would be represented by a union based upon a majority of the ballots cast in an election."  The White House said the veto threat also applies to the funding levels in the FAA bill. The statement said the...

A scathing federal audit blasts Denver's Stapleton airport redevelopment deal, saying that the Federal Aviation Administration gave up $71 million in revenue by selling off land at the old Stapleton International Airport at less than half its value. The audit was performed by an inspector general of the Department of Transportation and released to the public on Thursday. The audit says the FAA failed to properly oversee Denver city officials as they sold off parcels after Denver International Airport replaced Stapleton in 1995.

In April of 2009, the White Sox opening game was canceled due to a snowstorm. At the time I wrote a blog, “Global Warming? It’s snowing in April!!,” that wondered how the world could be warming up if the temperature were falling. Two recent stories about movement of the earth and moon seem to tie in. Snowmen protesting global warming. Courtesy of John M. NORTH POLE MOVING According to the Tampa Tribune, “A National Geographic News report described a gradual shift of the Earth's magnetic pole at nearly 40 miles a year toward Russia because of magnetic changes in the...

Federal Aviation Administration officials are worried about a substantial increase in the number of people pointing lasers at aircraft cockpits, saying the intense light can distract and temporarily blind pilots and has caused some to relinquish control to their co-pilots or abort landings.This year, there have been more than 2,200 incidents reported to the Federal Aviation Administration, up from fewer than 300 in 2005. California, Texas and Florida have recorded the most, but the problem is widespread across the country.There hasn't been an air crash so far, but the incidents have aviation officials concerned.

NEW YORK — The Federal Aviation Administration's aircraft registry is missing key information on who owns one-third of the 357,000 private and commercial planes in the U.S. — a gap the agency fears could be exploited by terrorists and drug traffickers. The records are in such disarray that the FAA says it is worried that criminals could buy planes without the government's knowledge, or use the registration numbers of other aircraft to evade new computer systems designed to track suspicious flights. It has ordered all aircraft owners to re-register their planes in an effort to clean up its files. About...

In light of the TSA's new body scans and other outrageous violations of our freedom and liberty I thought everyone would enjoy this parody. For a full 8.5x11 image you can print out for flyers visit my website at: http://www.politicalpoet.com/tsa_faa.asp PLEASE SHARE FREELY and expose the kind of federal goverment we really have.

An advisory panel of the Federal Aviation Administration has strongly protested a new safety law passed recently by the Congress that requires airline co-pilots to have equal hours of flying experience as the captains over concerns that it could lead to higher salaries for airline pilots. To become a co-pilot, also called first officers, one needs a minimum of 250 hours of flying experience but the new law has raised the threshold to 1,500 hours or the equal number of flying experience needed to become a captain. However, the advisory panel fear the law will force airlines and companies that...

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration granted Nigeria its top air-safety rating Monday, a decision that allows Nigerian airlines to fly directly to the United States but does not address the nation's porous airport security.

The following is an excerpt from a commentary in Barron’s calling for legislators to keep their “hands off competition in package delivery.” Editorial Commentary: “Tilting the Playing Field”Barron’s, July 19, 2010By Thomas G. Donlan “…FedEx is defending a piece of ground called the Railway Labor Act; UPS is trying to run a tank called the National Labor Relations Act over the FedEx position.All sides in the dispute agree that FedEx has a competitive advantage over UPS because FedEx doesn’t have a union.FedEx operates under the Railway Labor Act because it was created as an airline (it would take a Ph.D....

Congress on Friday approved far-reaching aviation safety legislation developed in response to a deadly commuter airline crash in western New York last year. Among other things, the bill would:- Boost the minimum flight experience required to be a first officer from 250 hours to 1,500 hours... The bill also extends authority for Federal Aviation Administration programs through the end of the budget year on Sept. 30. Without the extension, FAA programs other than air traffic control would shutdown on Sunday.

RHINEBECK, N.Y. – Chelsea Clinton's wedding along the Hudson River will be under a no-fly zone. The Federal Aviation Administration says local airspace will be restricted from 3 p.m. Saturday to 3:30 a.m. Sunday. Clinton, the daughter of former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, will wed investment banker Marc Mezvinsky on Saturday evening in Rhinebeck. That's about 90 miles north of New York City. FAA spokesman Jim Peters says Thursday that decisions to restrict air space are made in consultation with other federal agencies. He could not confirm whether the Secret Service requested this one....

Vice President Joe Biden held up airplane traffic for hours on Friday night at Los Angeles International Airport after an appearance on Jay Leno ‘s ‘Tonight Show,’ leaving restless passengers fuming. A spokesman for the vice president said he was unaware of the FAA temporary flight restriction that stopped flights coming in, and delayed those going out. “I know we didn’t ask for anything,” Biden’s spokesman James Carney told TheWrap. “There was no sign of any stoppage. And there shouldn’t have been one.” Oh, but there was. Passengers were stuck for anywhere from 45 minutes to four hours as a...