Tag: faa

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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How Obama’s FAA used a skewed multiple-choice quiz to prioritize DEI applicants and bar the brightest from air traffic controller jobs

A job questionnaire for aspiring air traffic controllers introduced by the Obama administration was designed to meet secret DEI target numbers, DailyMail.com can reveal. 

The aspiring controllers were given extra credit for being ‘risk takers’, in the bizarre multiple-choice quiz to secretly prioritize DEI applicants. 

It required virtually no knowledge of aviation to pass but top marks were awarded to candidates who ‘need a great deal of time to complete assignments’ and ‘take chances very often’.  

And playing three or more sports in high school was rated more valuable than having a stint as an air traffic controller in the military.

Now DailyMail.com has obtained the quiz so you can see how you would fare. 

The 2014 entry test proved notoriously hard to pass for elite, mostly white college graduates who excelled in traditional cognitive tests.

But race reformers said it paved the way for more ‘off the street’ hires – namely women and minorities – to land high stakes jobs responsible for the lives of millions of air passengers.

‘Bonkers is the right word for this,’ one aviation expert told DailyMail.com.

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FAA embroiled in lawsuit alleging it turned away 1,000 applicants based on race — that contributed to staffing woes

The Federal Aviation Administration is fighting a class-action lawsuit alleging it denied 1,000 would-be air traffic controllers jobs because of diversity hiring targets — as it was revealed that staffing levels were “not normal” at the time of this week’s deadly midair collision.

Complaints about the FAA’s hiring policies resurfaced after the American Airlines passenger plane and a Black Hawk helicopter crashed in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, killing 67 people in the country’s deadliest aviation disaster in almost a quarter-century.

Details of the litigation re-emerged, too, as Andrew Brigida, the lead plaintiff in the suit filed in 2015, suggested the federal aviation agency’s obsession with diversity hiring and inclusion had only ensured that an accident was likely to happen.

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Fact Check: Yes, Obama and Biden Had FAA Hire People with Intellectual, Psychiatric, Severe Physical Disabilities

As someone whose father was in the aeronautics business — and who got passed on plenty of his wisdom from a young age — there are two things that I know, even as an unskilled observer, about airplane crashes.

The first is that there’s never one single thing to blame for disasters, especially when it involves airliners; so much redundancy is built into the system that numerous things have to go wrong, either simultaneously or over a period of time, for a crash to happen. The second is that nobody — nobody — knows what caused the disaster in the first 24 hours. (Anyone old enough to remember how wrong we were about TWA Flight 800 being bombed or hit by a missile?)

The collision between American Airlines Flight 5342 and a U.S. Army helicopter, which claimed 67 lives, may have reached a new low in this department. As Dan McLaughlin pointed out at National Review, people are already blaming Trump administration Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy for the disaster just outside of Reagan National Airport near Washington, D.C.

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Drone Psy-Op Timeline: Why Lying Was Useful To Biden, His 11th Hour FAA Hire Was Obama’s Guy

In mid-November, shortly after the election, the drone sightings began to mount. You remember. It was eerie. Easily written off by the media at first, the sightings–and video evidence–slowly flooded social media. The size and quantity of the vehicles (and footage) became impossible to ignore.

The Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP) became a new fact of life…during the transition of power.

Our government, led by the lamest of lame ducks in modern memory, repeatedly failed to provide clarity. The sound of dragging bureaucratic feet was deafening. Hearings were held for the mayors of affected municipalities, then for congress. Attendees left these meetings frustrated, with no solid answers.

In an information vacuum, the conspiracy theories naturally mounted. Were they here to spy? Protect? Locate stolen nuclear material?

Space Oddities

Before the drone outbreak, there were ominous events in governmental expansion and legacy media which set the table for the Biden administration psy-op.

First, the Trump administration green-lighted Space Force, a new branch of the armed forces, and the eighth national, uniformed service group.

Star Trek jokes abounded, especially when the logo–looking very much like a version of the franchise’s Starfleet Command–was revealed.

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White House Clarifies ‘Dronegate’: New Jersey UAPs Authorized By FAA For “Research Purposes”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt provided much-needed transparency regarding the “dronegate” incident that sparked nationwide concerns over potential threats from China and Russia.

In a press conference on Tuesday afternoon, Leavitt said the drones spotted over New Jersey and New York in December had been authorized by the Federal Aviation Administration for “research purposes.” 

“An update on the New Jersey drones. After research and study, the drones flying over New Jersey in large numbers were authorized to be flown by the FAA for research and various other reasons. Many of these drones are hobbyist and recreational drones that enjoy flying drones,” Leavitt said during her press conference. 

She concluded on the drone subject: “This was not the enemy.” 

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