Tag: faa

FAA Updates Controller Manual to Reflect New UAP Reporting Policy

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has formally replaced the term “Unidentified Flying Object” (UFO) with “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena” (UAP) in its core air traffic control manual, marking a notable procedural update that aligns with recent federal terminology and U.S. code. The change was highlighted by Americans for Safe Aerospace (ASA) and its founder, former Navy pilot Ryan Graves, who praised the revision as a step toward transparency and improved aviation safety reporting.

The update was issued under FAA Notice N 7110.800, effective October 26, 2025, and applies to all Air Traffic Organization (ATO) personnel. The notice modifies two key sections of FAA Order JO 7110.65, the governing document for air traffic control procedures. Specifically, it updates paragraph 1-2-6, “Abbreviations,” and paragraph 9-8-1, “General,” to remove the word UFO and introduce UAP in its place.

(Editor’s Note: As of publication, the FAA’s online version of Order JO 7110.65 does not yet reflect the revisions outlined in Notice N 7110.800. The updated language appears only in the notice itself, pending formal incorporation into the manual.)

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FAA Records Add ‘Black Cube’ Sighting to Wright-Patterson AFB Drone Mystery

Newly released Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) documents obtained by The Black Vault under FOIA case 2025-04622 add significant new information to the still-developing story about a series of unauthorized drone incursions at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB) in December 2024. These records, drawn primarily from the FAA’s SKYWATCH system, supplement the earlier Air Force FOIA release (2025-01757-F) previously covered by The Black Vault, and they introduce a striking new element: the report of a “black cube”-shaped “UAS” observed at around 16,000 feet.

SKYWATCH is an FAA operations security platform used to collect and disseminate reports of suspicious or unauthorized aerial activity, often relayed through Air Traffic Control Towers, FAA regional offices, and the Domestic Events Network. It serves as a central alert system for potential security risks, with reports often shared with law enforcement and military security forces.

Here is a breakdown summary of the events just released as a result of this case, and drawing from the SKYWATCH system. The documents themselves (located at the bottom of this article) go into greater detail.

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FAA Unveils Pilot Program to Fast-Track Drone, Air Taxi Deployment

A new pilot program announced on Sept. 12 by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy could one day see Americans traveling short distances in unmanned aerial taxis.

The Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing Integration Pilot Program (eIPP) has five components consisting of both piloted and unmanned aircraft, the Federal Aviation Administration said. They are Short-range air taxis; long-range fixed-wing flights; cargo services; new types of airlift methods for emergency management, medical transport, or offshore energy facilities; and enhanced safety and efficiencies in automation for advanced air mobility (AAM) operations.

The five pilot projects are expected to run for three years after the first one becomes operational, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said in a news release. The program will be a public-private partnership between state and local governments and private-sector industries working in conjunction to develop new methods and regulations for safe operations of drones and other types of AAM vehicles, Duffy said.

“The next great technological revolution in aviation is here,” he said.

“The United States will lead the way, and doing so will cement America’s status as a global leader in transportation innovation. By safely testing the deployment of these futuristic air taxis and other AAM vehicles, we can fundamentally improve how the traveling public and products move.”

The action follows a June 6 executive order by President Donald Trump to put America at the forefront of the nascent drone and unmanned aircraft industry, which is crucial to reshaping the future of aviation, the order stated. Emerging technologies—especially electric vertical takeoff and landing—have the potential to modernize the way cargo and passengers are transported, the order noted.

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Surge in pilot deaths and incapacitation began in 2021, and the FAA has been trying to cover it up

  • A sudden, unprecedented surge in pilot deaths and incapacitations began in 2021, with a 40 percent increase in pilots dying before retirement age and a tripling of long-term disabilities, coinciding with COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
  • FAA regulations were violated en masse when airlines coerced pilots into taking experimental mRNA injections, despite federal laws prohibiting pilots from using unapproved medical products.
  • Pilots were trapped in an impossible choice: Violate their religious or medical convictions and risk their health, or refuse the jab and lose their livelihoods — all while the FAA abandoned its duty to track vaccine-related adverse events.
  • The spike protein produced by mRNA jabs is directly toxic, causing inflammation, blood clots, myocarditis, and neurological damage — conditions that are catastrophic in a cockpit.
  • The FAA dismantled its pilot incapacitation database in 2022, eliminating a critical tool for tracking trends in pilot health just as incidents began to skyrocket.
  • Near-misses and in-flight emergencies have reached crisis levels, with aviation officials attributing the chaos to everything but the elephant in the room: the COVID-19 vaccines.
  • Pilots describe a culture of fear and silence, where speaking out against the jabs means professional suicide, leaving passengers unknowingly at the mercy of impaired crews.

The great airline vaccine heist: How pilots were strong-armed into a medical experiment

When the COVID-19 vaccines rolled out under Emergency Use Authorization, they came with a critical caveat: No one could be forced to take them. That legal protection was swiftly ignored. For airline pilots, the choice wasn’t really a choice at all. It was a gun to the head — comply or be erased. Major carriers like United Airlines didn’t just encourage the jab; they demanded it, offering cash bonuses to the compliant and pink slips to the resistant. Never mind that federal aviation law explicitly prohibits pilots from using experimental medications. Never mind that the FAA’s own Aeromedical Advice Manual warns against unapproved substances that could impair performance. The rules were rewritten in real time, not by scientists or safety experts, but by corporate executives and bureaucrats who had already decided the narrative: Get the shot, or get out.

Dr. Kevin Stillwagon, a retired airline pilot and immunology expert, doesn’t mince words. “They were illegal,” he says of the mandates. “You cannot put an experimental product into a pilot.” The law is clear: If a pilot takes an unapproved substance, flight surgeons must ground them until the FAA verifies its safety. But in 2021, that process was bypassed entirely. Airlines, backed by the federal government, bulldozed through legal and ethical barriers, turning pilots into lab rats in a real-world trial with no control group. The result? A wave of cardiac arrests, neurological disorders, and sudden deaths that has left the industry scrambling to explain away the carnage.

Stillwagon’s data is damning. Before 2021, pilot incapacitations were rare — about eight per year, according to a 2018 study in Aerospace Medicine and Human Performance. But in the wake of the vaccine rollout, the numbers exploded. At Washington National Airport alone, near-misses jumped from one in decades to 28 in a single year. The FAA’s own 2004 research found that pilot cardiac events were the leading cause of in-flight fatalities. Now, those events are happening at an unprecedented rate, and the agency’s response? Cricket sounds. Worse, they discontinued their centralized database for tracking pilot incapacitations in 2022, just as the crisis was unfolding. Coincidence? Stillwagon doesn’t think so. “The data silence that the FAA has created is preventing systemic trends from being detected,” he warns. In other words, they’re hiding the bodies.

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NTSB chair blasts FAA over deadly DC crash: ‘Are you kidding me? 67 people are dead’

The head of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) criticized the Federal Aviation Administration for not “taking ownership” in the deadly Black Hawk helicopter collision with a passenger jet near Washington Reagan National Airport in January.

During a hearing on Wednesday that is set to continue this week, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy alleged that some FAA tower employees knew there “was a problem” with U.S. Army helicopters flying in close proximity to passenger aircraft near the airport.

Sixty-seven people died on Jan. 29 after a regional American Airlines jet collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter over Washington, D.C., officials said, the nation’s first major commercial airline crash since 2009.

The Army helicopter was on a training flight at the time of the collision.

“Every sign was there, that there was a safety risk and the tower was telling you that,” Homendy said of the air traffic controllers working at Reagan National Airport (DCA) at the time.

“Yet you know what FAA did, after the accident occurred, you transferred out the air traffic manager, two assistant general managers,” Homendy continued. “You transferred people out instead of taking ownership over the fact that everybody in FAA tower was saying there was a problem.”

According to Homendy, who cited FAA surveillance data, there were over 15,000 close proximity events between helicopters and commercial aircraft at DCA between October 2021 and December 2024.

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Former FAA contractor pleads guilty to spying for Iran, sharing private info on US airports, energy industry

A naturalized U.S. citizen living in Great Falls, Virginia, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to working with Iranian government and intelligence officials on their behalf in the U.S. as a contractor for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) between 2017 and 2024.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) said 42-year-old Abouzar Rahmati pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiring to act and acting as an agent of the Iranian government in the U.S. without prior notification to the Attorney General.

Rahmati previously was an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) 1st Lt., a branch of the Iranian Armed Forces, from June 2009 to May 2010. The IRGC is a designated terrorist group by the U.S. government.

Court documents show that from at least December 2017 through June 2024, Rahmati worked with Iranian intelligence operatives and government officials on their behalf in the U.S.

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New FAA Rule Allows Private Jet Owners To Hide Travel Information From Public

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is implementing a data privacy policy that allows people with private jets to hide travel information from the public.

“Private aircraft owners and operators can now electronically request that the FAA withhold their aircraft registration information from public view,” the agency said in a March 28 statement.

“Starting today, they can submit a request through the Civil Aviation Registry Electronic Services (CARES) to withhold this information from public display on all FAA websites.”

In its statement, the FAA said the data protection decision was taken based on a privacy provision included in the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024.

The provision allows aircraft owners to request that certain personally identifiable information not be made publicly available via FAA websites.

“The FAA will publish a request for comment in the Federal Register to seek input on this measure, including whether removing the information would affect the ability of stakeholders to perform necessary functions, such as maintenance, safety checks, and regulatory compliance,” said the agency.

“The FAA is also evaluating whether to default to withholding the personally identifiable information of private aircraft owners and operators from the public aircraft registry.”

While some say that such trackers allow people to record carbon emission info, there have been concerns that monitoring aircraft movements puts at risk the people who use that mode of transportation, often high-profile individuals.

The new rule could negatively affect jet trackers that use FAA information as a key source to track and report flight details of famous personalities.

In December 2023, attorneys for Taylor Swift issued a cease-and-desist letter to a university student, blaming his automated tracking of her private jet travel for revealing the celebrity’s whereabouts to stalkers.

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FAA Admits It Missed Dangerous Patterns Leading Up To DC Plane Crash, Vows Fixes

The head of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) told Congress on Thursday that the agency “[has] to do better” in identifying safety threats following January’s deadly midair collision over Washington, D.C., that claimed 67 lives.

During a hearing before the aviation subcommittee of the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, FAA Acting Administrator Chris Rocheleau stated that an artificial intelligence-led review of airports with similar helicopter-airplane congestion is expected to be completed within a couple of weeks.

“We have to identify trends, we have to get smarter about how we use data, and when we put corrective actions in place, we must execute them,” Rocheleau said during the hearing.

The Jan. 29 collision between an Army helicopter and an American Airlines jetliner over the Potomac River left no survivors, marking the nation’s deadliest plane crash since November 2001. Of the 67 deaths, 64 were passengers and crew on the jetliner, and three were the crew of the Black Hawk helicopter.

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FAA, NASA, NOAA Admit Jets Spray Chemicals That Linger in the Sky, Alter Weather

A newly released document titled “Contrails Research Roadmap 2025,” published by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), NASA, and NOAA, lays out plans for “routine, system-wide contrail management” by 2050.

Now, to be clear, the government isn’t calling these “chemtrails.”

They refer to them as “contrails,” but what they describe in this document is functionally the same thing people like me have been reporting on for years.

Jets spraying substances that linger in the sky, alter the weather, and affect temperature on the Earth—whether intentional or not, this is an admission of widespread atmospheric manipulation, dressed up as a side effect rather than a deliberate operation.

According to the government document itself, there are two types of persistent contrails that can last for hours to days and have significant impacts on the atmosphere:

Persistent Non-Spreading Contrails

These “can remain visible and retain their linear features for hours to days.”

The document explains they “form in ice supersaturated regions of the atmosphere and are likely to be more impactful than short-lived contrails.”

The agencies even admit they are “easily identified from the ground and satellites as being formed from aviation activity.”

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SpaceX Starlink Needed to Save FAA From Failing Verizon Air Traffic Control

The Verizon communication system to air traffic control is breaking down very rapidly. The FAA assessment is single digit months to catastrophic failure, putting air traveler safety at serious risk.

The Starlink terminals are being sent at NO COST to the taxpayer on an emergency basis to restore air traffic control connectivity.

The situation is extremely dire.

The FAA is on the verge of canceling Verizon’s bloated $2.4 billion contract and handing it to Starlink—a move that would bring faster, safer, and more reliable air traffic control services.

Verizon’s system? Outdated and expensive. Starlink? Faster, cheaper, and proven. SpaceX engineers are already fixing the FAA’s mess.

The FAA’s aging air traffic control systems was exposed by a 2023 national airspace shutdown. They are high-risk, with 51 of 138 systems unsustainable, including 17 critical ones over 30 years old.

There are risks include outages disrupting air travel, endangering safety, and causing economic losses, worsened by the failing $2 billion Verizon system from 2023.

There are modernization delays, with some projects unfinished for a decade, heighten failure risks amid 6.2% annual air traffic growth.

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