Tag: air travel

Mysterious GPS Disruptions Spread Across Texas; FAA Issues Warning to Pilots

The Federal Aviation Administration this week warned pilots about mysterious disruptions to GPS signals in Texas as a runway at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport was shut down.

The FAA told Bloomberg that it is investigating possible jamming of the global positioning system (GPS) that aircraft use to guide them to runways and during their flights. The FAA also confirmed that the Dallas airport runway was shut down temporarily.

So far, according to the FAA, it has found “no evidence of intentional interference.” However, the agency did not appear to say what might be the cause. The Epoch Times has contacted the FAA for comment.

American Airlines told Bloomberg that the GPS problem was not affecting its business, and Southwest Airlines said it isn’t experiencing any disruptions.

Flight tracking website ADS-B appeared to have been the first to report GPS interference around Dallas on Monday.

“Significant GPS interference being reported by pilots in the Dallas area. Aircraft being rerouted onto non-RNAV arrivals,” it wrote on Monday afternoon.

Keep reading

Congressman: Government Must Address Potential UAP Crashes with Our Aircraft

The high-profile UAP cases of the past year or so have caused many to wonder what the official government response to credible accounts of alien contact should entail. One congressman has reportedly voiced his concern about a particular kind of contact presumably unwanted on both sides—in the form of mid-air collision between UAP and our own aircraft. The possibility is real and even increasingly likely, said US House Representative Tim Burchett recently, and government has to do something about it. That starts with government being more transparent about what it knows about dozens of credible instances of UAP on Earth, which, Burchett has argued, is much more than it admits to. 

Keep reading

Emirates president calls 5G rollout fiasco the ‘most delinquent mess he’s seen in his entire career’ and blames Pete Buttigieg for doing nothing to stop the chaos after dozens of flights were canceled – and then uncanceled

The president of Emirates has slammed the 5G fiasco as the ‘most delinquent, irresponsible’ mess he has seen in his 50-year aviation career and blamed it on Transport Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who he says knew about the impending chaos but failed to warn anyone in time to stop it. 

AT&T and Verizon launched their 5G network across America on Wednesday morning, switching on 4,500 towers to bring faster wireless to their customers. They had to hold back on ten percent of the towers – 500 – that are near airports because the frequencies the towers emit could interfere with the signal on some planes. 

Eighty-eight airports now have buffers to protect against it but some major airports like Boston and Memphis do not. In the most recent FAA announcement on Wednesday afternoon, the government said ’62 percent’ of flights could operate safely – leaving nearly half to reschedule.

On Wednesday, some airline passengers who were unaware of the fiasco showed up at airports ready to board their flights but were told they had been canceled. Air India, Emirates, BA, Japan Airlines and All Nippon canceled flights on Tuesday, then rushed to bring them back on Wednesday. 

In total, 239 flights to, from and within the US have been canceled so far. It’s unclear if all have been scrapped because of 5G, but the network launch is causing major issues.

It had a detrimental effect on Boeing, whose 777 and 787 planes are the ones affected and which has lucrative contracts with both the government and with the airlines; stocks fell by three percent on Wednesday as a result of the fiasco.

Sir Tim Clark, the president of Emirates, appeared on CNN, Wednesday that American airlines knew about the risks before the rest of the world, and that it forced them to scramble to cancel flights then bring them back once it was safe. 

President Biden, at a rare press conference on Wednesday afternoon, shrugged off responsibility for the fiasco and instead tried to take credit for brokering the deal. 

Keep reading

FAA Issues ‘Mysterious’ Order to Ground Air Traffic Over ‘National Security Threat’

Air traffic was grounded Monday in parts of the U.S. west coast and Hawaii, but explanations are vague, leading the website The Drive to call the incident a “Mysterious Air Traffic Halt” that “Leaves More Questions Than Answers.”

The facts of the matter are clear: At about 5:30 p.m. Eastern time Monday, what’s known as a ground stop was issued that stopped planes from taking off and had air traffic controllers calling for airborne plans to land. The ground stop lasted for five to 10 minutes.

Things start getting murky quickly, however.

A spokesman for the San Diego International Airport told CNN the airport “was instructed by Air Traffic Control that there was a national ground stop but shortly after [5-7 minutes] our operations team was told it was lifted.”

Keep reading

The FAA accidentally disclosed more than 2,000 flight records associated with Jeffrey Epstein’s private jets

In January 2020, Insider asked the Federal Aviation Administration for all the agency’s flight records, including departure and arrival data, associated with a fleet of private jets owned by Jeffrey Epstein. Filed under the Freedom of Information Act, our request seemed to have a decent chance of success: The agency in 2011 released its entire database of US-based flights to The Wall Street Journal.

In March 2020, however, the FAA denied our request, saying that “the responsive records originate from an investigative file” and were therefore exempt from disclosure. The agency cited Exemption 7(A), which Congress designed to shield records that were “compiled for law enforcement” and “could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceeding.” The FAA did not specify which enforcement proceeding the records might interfere with; Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s ex-girlfriend and confidante, faces a trial over sex-trafficking charges this month.

But despite its original denial, the FAA inadvertently mailed Insider a portion of Epstein’s flight records alongside correspondence for an unrelated FOIA request earlier this year. The records contained data on 2,300 flights among four private jets registered to Epstein between 1998 and 2020. Most of them had appeared in Insider’s searchable database of all known flights connected to Epstein.

The new FAA records also reveal 704 previously unknown flights taken by Epstein’s planes. These include hundreds of trips from a three-year gap in the public record, from 2013 to 2016, when the jets’ movements were unaccounted for.

Keep reading

Biden’s Welcome Gifts for Illegal Aliens Include Bypassing Airport Security, Free Airfare into U.S.

President Joe Biden, in partnership with non-governmental organizations (NGOs), is flying border crossers and illegal aliens into the United States on domestic commercial flights, for free, with waivers for them to bypass airport security requirements that American citizens must abide by.

For months, Breitbart News has reported that Biden’s immigration policies are facilitating flights of border crossers and illegal aliens into the U.S. interior. In the first few months of the year, about 7,200 border crossers and illegal aliens were boarded.

The border crossers and illegal aliens, unlike American citizens, can bypass TSA requirements — providing no proof of identification.

A report from Just the News details the waivers that are given by the Biden administration and its powerful Rolodex of NGOs, corporations, and open borders groups that help get border crossers and illegal aliens into the U.S. interior with only the promise that they will check in with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.

Documents obtained by Rep. Lance Gooden (R-TX) show NGOs like the San Diego Rapid Response Network and Jewish Family Services — both partially funded by American taxpayers — are helping the Biden administration fly illegal aliens in for free and without having to face airport security requirements.

Keep reading

Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein Introduces Bill to Require Proof of Covid Vax or Negative Test For Domestic Flights

Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein (CA) on Thursday introduced a bill to require proof of vaccination or negative Covid test for domestic flights.

The 88-year-old senator, who has been spotted in airports without a face mask throughout the pandemic, introduced the “US Air Travel Public Safety Act” which would force Americans to show their papers in order to move about the country.

“The U.S. Air Travel Public Safety Act would require the Department of Health and Human Services and the Federal Aviation Administration to develop standards for airlines to verify that a person has either been vaccinated, tested negative for COVID-19 or has fully recovered from a coronavirus infection to be able to fly.” The Hill reported.

Keep reading

Israel To Conduct COVID “Genetic Scanning” For All Inbound Air Passengers

The world’s most “ultra-vaxxed nation” Israel is continuing to struggle to keep its coronavirus infections down, despite enacting some of the most stringent rules and requirements on its population, including rolling out one of the earliest versions of a vaccine passport to visit public venues, which has to be “updated” each six months or so based on a booster shot timeline. 

Now Israel will go so far as to conduct “genetic scanning” for travelers arriving in the country. It’s considered a huge and experimental high tech step in screening inbound passengers for coronavirus infections at Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett made the announcement at a meeting of his cabinet on Sunday, confirming plans to eventually deploy it at Ben Gurion. “We are working on a scanning system for everyone who comes into Israel,” Bennett said. The statements were reportedly not intended to be made public, but were leaked to local Israeli media.

“Israel will thus become the radar for the virus,” he added. However, no further details on how the ‘genetic scanning’ will work were given, nor whether there might be an opt-out mechanism. Thus a Covid passport, which Israel calls its “green pass” – may be linked to an eventual regimen of forced genetic testing at international travel points.

The technology, which will no doubt be hugely controversial given privacy concerns, is being discussed as part of Israeli efforts to keep further Covid variants from entering the country, as The Times of Israel describes:

Bennett expressed support for Social Equality Minister Meirav Cohen, who had warned that “the next variant will come to Israel through Ben Gurion,” saying the proposed genetic testing would help prevent that from happening.

Conventionally since the start of the pandemic airports have often monitored passengers’ temperatures with a quick and simple thermometer scan of their foreheads, but Israeli health officials are now seeking a method which might given greater certitude over whether someone has the virus or not, and especially whether they are carrying a variant.

Keep reading

Dems Intro Bill Banning Unvaxxed Americans From Flying.

Democratic Congressman Ritchie Torres unveiled a legislative effort to ban Americans opting to not get vaccinated against COVID-19 from taking domestic and international flights. 

The New York Congressman sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) lobbying the agencies to only allow Americans vaccinated against COVID-19 on domestic and international flights.

He introduced a complementary bill in the House necessitating that “any individual traveling on a flight that departs from or arrives to an airport inside the United States or a territory of the United States is fully vaccinated against COVID–19.” It has since been referred to the Committee on Homeland Security, where he serves as the Vice-Chair.

“The TSA never allows people to enter planes or airports with a weapon, and the delta variant is a weapon,” Torres remarked. “It is a threat to everyone in an airport and everyone on a plane,” he added in defense of the bill.

Keep reading