Free Republic

For the crime of “buzzing” a crowd of European adventurers so close that he clipped one of their cars with the wing of his single-engine plane, on Friday a Yukon RCMP constable was stripped of his pilot’s license for two years.

"My dad fought a war so this can never happen in America. I will not dishonor my father's memory by giving up what he fought for. No, sir. With all due respect, I will not consent to a search without a proper warrant." James Fallows May 21 2013, 11:34 AM ET Over the weekend I related the story of Gabriel Silverstein, a businessman and pilot who for no apparent reason was subjected to a two-hour detention and invasive search by Homeland Security officials as he traveled across the country in his small plane. The picture above is not from that...

KNOXVILLE — The FBI has Pilot Flying J headquarters on lockdown Monday afternoon. Neither the FBI nor a Pilot spokesman was immediately available for comment. Media were barred from the Pilot campus, and the entrance was blocked. Pilot employees were being escorted off the corporate campus on Lonas Road. Knoxville-based Pilot is the operator of the largest travel center network in North America.

KNOXVILLE — The FBI has Pilot Flying headquarters on lockdown Monday afternoon.

SNIPPET: "Washington: A US court has sentenced an Iranian and an American national for their roles in a plot to ship aircraft and its parts to Islamic Republic Iran. While the Iranian citizen Hamid Asefi, 67, was sentenced to 23 months, a US citizen Behzad Karimian, (52), also known as "Tony" Karimian who holds a valid Iranian passport and is employed as a Mesaba Airlines Pilot, was sentenced to 52 months in prison yesterday."

Phillip (alternately, "Philip") Marshall, 54, a career airline pilot who claimed to have once served as a contract pilot for the CIA and DEA during the Iran-Contra affair, shot and killed his two teenage children, and the family dog, then killed himself. The apparent murder-suicide was discovered at the family home in an upscale gated golfing community in Murphys, California. According to local news reports, teen friends of Alex Marshall, 17 (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), and Macaila Marshall (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), 14, noticed the siblings had not been active via text or social media updates since Thursday and went by the...

Past seven days of work 8x faster. 9 min. Music- Tycho - "Past is Prologue"

The Miami Herald Posted on Sat, Sep. 01, 2012 Al Jaffe, WWII hero who inspired movie role, dies in South Florida BY ELINOR J. BRECHER ebrecher@MiamiHerald.com Al Jaffe was a scrappy, streetwise Jewish kid from the Bronx who climbed into a P-51 Mustang fighter plane in the last year of World War II and flew it into history. Second Lt. Abraham “Al’’ Jaffe completed 77 reconnaissance missions in Europe, including one that helped turn the tide of the war during the pivotal Battle of the Bulge. He was also involved in holding the bridge at Remagen, Germany, enabling U.S. troops...

RAF Bomber Command RAF veteran defies health and safety to take to the skies A 91-year-old former RAF pilot, who was told it was too dangerous to sit in the cockpit of a Spitfire, has taken off once more, flying in the face of health and safety rules. Telegraph News By Telegraph reporters 8:18AM BST 20 Aug 2012 Eric Carter, the last surviving member of Force Benedict, a secret mission to protect the northern Russian port of Murmansk, flew Spitfires during the Second World War. But he was shot down earlier this year when he wanted to sit in the...

Earlier this month, an attempt by the Obama Administration to slash funds for the Federal Flight Deck Officer Program (FFDO) was rejected by the House of Representatives, which passed legislation to ensure that the program, which permits qualified and trained airline pilots to carry firearms in the cockpit of commercial flights, remains alive and well. “Pilots are the first line of defense against terrorist attacks in the sky, and the most cost-effective layer of security that we have in a system that’s prone to security breaches,” said Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John L. Mica (R-FL), in a press release....

Congress refuses to gut the one program the Transportation Security Administration has offered to minimize: pilots who pack guns. The House just passed an amendment in its Homeland Security appropriations bill that would boost funding for armed-pilot training by $10 million. That throws a sharp rebuke at both the TSA and the Obama administration, which proposed chopping financing in half. The showdown exemplifies a larger tension over which programs created in the aftershock of Sept. 11 should endure — and what actually keeps Americans safe. “The last line of defense is the pilot’s ability to defend the cockpit,” Rep. Chip...

Johnson, known as "Mama Bird," was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio in 2007. She is said to have logged more flight hours, trained more pilots and given more Federal Aviation Administration exams than any other pilot on the planet. When inducted into the Hall of Fame, Johnson had been flying for 55 years and had spent the equivalent of seven years in flight.

An airport security worker was arrested after throwing a cup of hot coffee over a pilot who told her to stop swearing. Transportation Security Administrator (TSA) Lateisha El, 30, was in the middle of a conversation with work colleagues at a JFK Airport terminal when she was interrupted by the American Airlines pilot. Off-duty airman Steven Trivett, 54, was exiting terminal 8 when he overheard El swearing and asked her to tone down the profanity. Trivett, of Butler, Tennessey, told them they should 'conduct themselves more professionally in uniform and not use profanity or the n-word,' according to the New...

Pilots packing heat may soon be a relic of the 9/11 aftermath, as the White House seeks to cut the $25 million budget in half for the federal flight deck officers training program known as the FFDO. “The Obama administration has had an institutional hostility towards the concept of arming pilots, and especially the FFDO program, since the beginning,” Lt. Col. Al Aitken, a retired Marine and now with the Airline Security Consulting Group, claimed at a panel hosted by the conservative Heritage Foundation on Friday. The panel brought together advocates for the voluntary program that trains pilots, co-pilots and...

You’re looking at what may well be the helmet worn by the first F-35 Joint Strike Fighter pilots at the plane’s schoolhouse at Eglin Air Force Base, Fl. It’s the basis for BAE Systems’ alternate JSF helmet that is being developed due to issues with the plane’s futuristic — and kind of crazy – looking helmet made by Vision Systems International. BAE’s brain bucket is based on the one used by Eurofighter Typhoon pilots. However, for F-35, BAE will remove the Typhoon’s display system — housed in the giant forward part of the helmet — and will replace it with...

A Muslim pilot working for a well-known British carrier has said he was fired because his bosses feared he might copy the September 11 terror attack.The London-based pilot — who was not named for legal reasons — was judged a security risk after the discovery of his link to two alleged extremists suspected of "planning to use an aircraft as part of a hostile or terrorist act". According to the unnamed airline, the pilot was "in a position to divert or sabotage an aircraft", the Daily Mail reported. "I felt they believed I was going to fly planes into buildings....

...four people found dead in a New Year’s Day shooting at a tony Coronado condominium on San Diego Bay. It was not immediately clear how the siblings, along with two men ages 25 and 31, died ... Homicides are extremely rare in Coronado — just one was recorded in 2010.

90 year olds marry after 40 years of friendshipUpdated: Dec 29, 2011 12:13 PM EST Charleston, SC (AP) - A 91-year-old newlywed says she expects to spend a dozen more years with her 92-year-old spouse following their wedding at a retirement home on James Island. According to media reports, Margaret McSpadden and retired Air Force Col. William Thomas married Wednesday at Bishop Gadsden. Thomas is a World War II veteran and was President Dwight Eisenhower's personal pilot. He celebrates his 92nd birthday Thursday. McSpadden owned an antique store in Charleston.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, whom some pundits had written off as the GOP's nominee, may find a second coming in Iowa, if new poll data holds up. As Mitt Romney's campaign has suffered a startling decline in recent weeks, only to see Newt Gingrich eclipse the former Massachusetts governor's front-runner status, the battle for the Iowa caucuses set for Jan. 3 has become a wide-open race. New survey data prepared for the Perry campaign and shared by a source close within the campaign shows that the Texas governor may be poised to do much better in next month’s Iowa caucuses...

Rayne Shultz 1922-2011: Canadian war ace shot down three German bombers in one night in 1943 BY ANDREW DUFFY, THE OTTAWA CITIZEN NOVEMBER 20, 2011 2 STORYPHOTOS ( 6 ) More Images » Canadian war ace Rayne ‘Joe’ Schultz shot down three German bombers in one night in 1943 and went on to serve 37 years in the Royal Canadian Air Force, retiring as a Group Captain. He died on Remembrance Day, 2011, at age 88. Flying Officer Rayne “Joe” Schultz began the night that would define his war at a poker game — winning money for a change. It...