The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and United Airlines have launched an investigation involving a chartered flight that was transporting the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/colorado" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Colorado Rockies</a> from Denver to Toronto.
Rockies hitting coach Hensley Meulens posted a video on social media that showed him sitting in the pilot&#8217;s seat in the cockpit while the plane was in the air, ESPN <a href="https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/39976154/rockies-coach-posts-video-cockpit-prompting-faa-probe" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>.
&#8220;Had some fun in the cockpit on our flight from Denver to Toronto. Thanks to the captain and the first officer of our United charter that allowed me this great experience,&#8221; Meulens wrote in a caption for the social media post.
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The Colorado Rockies are under investigation by the FAA and United Airlines after a video showed hitting coach Hensley Meulens in the cockpit of the team’s charter mid-flight.<a href="https://t.co/raRrpPBJzY">pic.twitter.com/raRrpPBJzY</a>
— Front Office Sports (@FOS) <a href="https://twitter.com/FOS/status/1781375768548823108?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 19, 2024</a></blockquote>
United Airlines responded to the video by saying in a statement: “We’re deeply disturbed by what we see in that video, which appears to show an unauthorized person in the flight deck at cruise altitude while the autopilot was engaged.”
“As a clear violation of our safety and operational policies, we’ve reported the incident to the FAA and have withheld the pilots from service while we conduct an investigation,” the statement added.
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The FAA said that it opened an investigation, but that it will “not comment on the details of open investigations.”
“Federal regulations restrict flight deck access to specific individuals,” the FAA added.

Colorado Rockies v Washington Nationals – Game One

Colorado Rockies Under Federal Investigation After In-Flight Incident

Air Travel

Colorado

Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)

General

U.S.

Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun will leave the company by the end of the year as it changes leadership amid quality and safety concerns with <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/boeing" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Boeing</a> aircraft. 
Other top leaders are also leaving the company, with board chair Larry Kellner resigning from his position in May and Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO Stan Deal retiring immediately. Boeing Chief Operation Officer Stephanie Pope will take over from Deal, while Steve Mollenkopf will become the company’s new board chair. 
The announcement comes after the company faced scrutiny after a Boeing plane&#8217;s door plug blew off midflight during an Alaska Airlines flight carrying more than 170 passengers in January, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing. 
“As you all know, the Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 accident was a watershed moment for Boeing,” Calhoun <a href="https://boeing.mediaroom.com/2024-03-25-CEO-Message-to-Employees" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in a letter to staff. “We must continue to respond to this accident with humility and complete transparency. We also must inculcate a total commitment to safety and quality at every level of our company.&#8221;
“The eyes of the world are on us, and I know we will come through this moment a better company, building on all the learnings we accumulated as we worked together to rebuild Boeing over the last number of years,” he added. “We have been working together for the last five years to address some of the most significant challenges our company and industry have ever faced in our 108-year history. I am confident that the way we have confronted these challenges, and how we are responding to this specific moment, is establishing standards for future generations of employees and will be woven into the fabric of how we operate for decades to come.”
The Alaska Airlines incident prompted a series of federal and congressional investigations into Boeing&#8217;s safety and manufacturing practices. 
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Earlier this month, National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/boeing-refusing-to-hand-over-records-on-alaska-airlines-plane-that-lost-chunk-of-its-wall-mid-air-gov-official-says" target="_blank" rel="noopener">testified</a> before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation that Boeing refused to tell investigators the names of people on a 25-member team that worked on a door plug that came off the Alaska Airlines plane.
“Boeing has not provided us with the documents and information that we have requested numerous times over the past few months, specifically with respect to opening, closing, and removal of the door,” Homendy told lawmakers. “Without that information, that raises concerns about quality assurance, quality management, [and] safety management systems.&#8221;
Other Boeing planes have experienced high-profile malfunctions this year, with a United Airlines Boeing 737 <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/united-airlines-boeing-737-loses-external-panel-mid-air" target="_blank" rel="noopener">losing</a> an external panel midflight this month and a Boeing 737-800 in Japan being <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/boeing-737-forced-to-turn-back-mid-flight-after-cockpit-window-cracks" target="_blank" rel="noopener">forced</a> to turn back in January because of a crack in the cockpit window. The incidents come as the Federal Aviation Authority<a href="https://apnews.com/article/boeing-safety-quality-faa-audit-fc3a23505363800e1c6d4debd98c4d74" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> found</a> that a Boeing plant in Renton, Washington, failed 33 of 88 production standards.

Orders For U.S. Manufactured Goods Decline By Largest Margin In

Top Boeing Leadership To Leave Company After Alaska Airlines Flight Loses Door Plug Midflight

Air &amp; Space

airplanes

Boeing

Business

National transportation Safety Board

If you&#8217;ve followed my show regularly over the past few months, you know that I&#8217;ve done a couple of monologues on the aviation industry. 
The frequency of near-disasters in the sky has increased dramatically in recent years, and as I&#8217;ve noted, the increase began around the time that the Obama administration began a concerted effort to &#8220;diversify&#8221; the FAA, including air traffic control. According to a NASA database, which tracks self-reported data from pilots, we now <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-government-diversity-initiatives-are-leading-us-to-a-major-airline-disaster">average</a> roughly five near-misses per week — more than double the number from a decade ago. And that&#8217;s not even getting into the obvious maintenance issues that have been popping up — including doors and wheels that have been flying off planes lately.
Given how terrible all of this looks from the outside, I wanted to get a better idea of what&#8217;s happening internally at the FAA and major airlines in this country. We hear a lot about DEI in the abstract sense, but we rarely get a glimpse of what it looks like in practice. We don&#8217;t often hear firsthand testimonials from people affected by DEI because they&#8217;re worried about protecting their careers. They know if they speak out, they&#8217;ll face termination, and they&#8217;ll probably be blackballed from the industry forever. But with social media, some level of anonymity is possible. So to take a closer look at how far this DEI rot has spread, I <a href="https://x.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1744869138151924174?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tweeted</a>: &#8220;If you&#8217;re an airline pilot and have firsthand knowledge about the DEI agenda being forced into your profession, send me a DM and tell me about your experiences. Curious yet terrified to see how bad it is at this point.&#8221;
To say my inbox was completely flooded would be an understatement. I received too many DM&#8217;s to count from pilots and other professionals in the aviation industry. Virtually every single message told me the same thing: that the ideology of &#8220;diversity, equity, and inclusion&#8221; is the top priority in their workplaces. It goes without saying, but this is an industry where one mistake can kill hundreds or even thousands of people. This is not comparable to DEI departments in universities or corporate America, as destructive and as wasteful as those departments are. DEI in the aviation industry could lead to a catastrophic disaster. That&#8217;s why — even though it was a risk — several of these sources provided me identifying information to validate their identities, along with permission to post some of the internal documents and footage they&#8217;ve obtained. These people knew they might lose their jobs, but they decided that getting the word out was more important.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1311-i-ve-obtained-internal-footage-revealing-the-faa-s-plans-to-reduce-the-number-of-white-males-in-aviation-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h4>
Yesterday, I posted some of these materials on my Twitter feed. They reveal that, at the very highest levels of the FAA, there&#8217;s an effort underway to reduce the number of white men who work in the aviation industry. In April of 2022, the FAA&#8217;s acting deputy chief operating officer — a woman named Angela McCullough — led a meeting with the FAA&#8217;s Flight Operations division. This division is responsible for all aspects of aviation operations, including overseeing airline maintenance. 
But McCullough did not spend the call talking about ways to make sure that airplane doors don&#8217;t fly off mid-flight. She didn&#8217;t say a word about the importance of keeping the wheels attached to jetliners as they&#8217;re taking off. Instead, McCullough talked extensively about DEI. As you&#8217;ll see, she was prompted to do so by a man named Wil Riggins, who&#8217;s the FAA&#8217;s Vice President of Flight Program Operations. 
If that name sounds familiar at all, it&#8217;s probably because Riggins is the same guy who <a href="https://nypost.com/2023/09/15/faa-dot-coordinated-to-hide-cost-of-buttigiegs-flights-report/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">conspired</a> to find ways to hide Pete Buttigieg&#8217;s spending on government aircraft. So this is a completely corrupt group of bureaucrats who have assembled here. Watch:
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2/ The footage begins with FAA acting deputy chief operating officer Angela McCullough saying more workers need to go from &quot;ramp to cockpit,&quot; meaning she wants to see more baggage handlers become airline pilots. <a href="https://t.co/2KAeHNcJA2">pic.twitter.com/2KAeHNcJA2</a>
&mdash; Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) <a href="https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1755319180306346029?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 7, 2024</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;We&#8217;re looking at a need across the agency to recruit and retain a diverse population of folks,&#8221; says Wil Riggins. In response, McCullough talks about the arms race of DEI that&#8217;s occurring in the industry. She mentions &#8220;partnerships with universities.&#8221; And then she says the FAA wants to look at something called &#8220;ramp to cockpit.&#8221;
Let&#8217;s think about this. When she&#8217;s talking about &#8220;partnerships with universities&#8221; in the name of diversifying aviation, McCullough is referring to relationships that airlines have established with historically black colleges and universities. For example, United Airlines has <a href="https://www.northcarolina.edu/news/elizabeth-city-state-university-united-airlines-launch-partnership/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">allied</a> with Elizabeth City State University. The airline describes this as, &#8220;a partnership that seeks to not only train future pilots, but also bring more women and people of color into the ranks of commercial aviation.&#8221;
In case it&#8217;s not obvious, Elizabeth City State University is not a hotbed of engineering or aviation talent. In fact it&#8217;s not a hotbed of any kind of skill whatsoever. The average SAT score at the school is 960 out of 1600, which is one of the lowest scores that you&#8217;ll find anywhere in the country. The only reason for partnerships like this is because of the racial makeup of Elizabeth City State University, which is overwhelmingly black. This is the kind of partnership that, based on this video, senior FAA officials want to see more of. 
They aren&#8217;t interested in seeing the best pilots in the cockpit. They&#8217;re interested in seeing more black pilots in the cockpit.
That also could explain why McCullough is promoting something called &#8220;ramp to cockpit&#8221; in that footage. When she says &#8220;ramp,&#8221; she&#8217;s referring to ramp agents, who are responsible for loading and unloading baggage on airplanes. Evidently, the FAA believes that these employees deserve some sort of specialized program to encourage them to become pilots. But nowhere in this footage does McCullough explain why this makes any sense whatsoever. It doesn&#8217;t follow in any way. The job of a baggage handler is completely different from the job of an airline pilot. There are precisely zero transferable skills or even interests. Just because you have a job working around a plane doesn’t mean you should be flying them. This is like having a “janitor to surgeon” pipeline at a hospital, or setting up a program so that the window washer cleaning the outside of the skyscraper can one day become an architect designing skyscrapers. These two lines of work have almost nothing to do with each other. So what’s the point of this?
A few seconds later, McCullough provides something of an answer. She tells the FAA&#8217;s senior leadership in Flight Operations that their whole division is &#8220;white-male dominated.&#8221; Then she says that should change. And Wil Riggins, rather than reacting with surprise to this suggestion, agrees with her. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="008 FAA COO Angela McCullough" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/m9MmG1zYRg0?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
There&#8217;s no pushback from anyone in that clip, as they listen to this. No one says, &#8220;wait a minute — why should baggage handlers become pilots? And what&#8217;s wrong with having a lot of white men in Flight Operations, exactly?&#8221; Instead, this woman gets complimented for her insights.
But of course, not everyone on the call was in agreement. They didn&#8217;t want to speak up because they&#8217;d be fired. But they knew this was going to happen. So one individual recorded the meeting. This source had seen several white men get passed over for jobs because of their skin color, and he or she heard these kinds of remarks all the time at the FAA. That&#8217;s why the source saved it, and it&#8217;s why we have it now.
As of this morning, neither the FAA nor the secretary of transportation, Mayor Pete, has responded to this footage. That&#8217;s because it reflects exactly what they believe. This is what they talk about behind closed doors. They want fewer white people flying planes and working in Flight Operations, including maintenance. They want more baggage handlers to become pilots. And they are not remotely concerned about professional standards or competence. That topic just doesn&#8217;t come up in their discussions.
This what DEI is all about, and it&#8217;s not limited to Pete Buttigieg&#8217;s agency. In response to my post, I received several other tips from sources outside of the FAA who say they&#8217;re seeing similar policies all across the aviation industry. Airlines are promoting DEI as well, even when it clearly endangers passengers. One source — a pilot at Delta Airlines — told me this: &#8220;We recently had a transgender pilot repeatedly receive negative reviews during his first-year probationary period from Captains he flew with regarding attitude, CRM, and judgment, yet the Chief Pilot’s Office (CPO) was unwilling to address the issue. Had this not been a transgender pilot, the individual would likely not have successfully completed their probationary period. Coincidentally, that CPO has a management pilot on staff who recently transitioned who is able to weigh in on these matters.&#8221;
This is what the airlines and the FAA will never admit publicly. They&#8217;ll never admit that they&#8217;re lowering standards, and endangering the public, in order to get more &#8220;diverse&#8221; pilots flying planes. But that&#8217;s exactly what&#8217;s happening. The source also sent along this internal Delta Airlines manual that&#8217;s designed to help Delta pilots &#8220;transition&#8221; into another gender. Here&#8217;s what that looks like:
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7/ The source also notes that Delta routinely makes exceptions for trans-identifying pilots concerning grooming and behavioral standards. Internally, Delta has even published a lengthy guide for pilots who believe they were born in the wrong body. <a href="https://t.co/8aQszhqVJw">pic.twitter.com/8aQszhqVJw</a>
&mdash; Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) <a href="https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1755319191123439760?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 7, 2024</a></blockquote>
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It reads, &#8220;Helpful Steps for Transitioning at Delta.&#8221; And of course there&#8217;s the pilot with the trans pride flag draped over his body.
It goes without saying that this is incredibly irresponsible for several reasons. Put aside the fact that Delta is discriminating against qualified pilots on the basis of their skin color and gender, and promoting incompetent pilots instead. This document shows that Delta is also going out of their way to recruit trans-identifying pilots — people with extremely high rates of mental illness, and a propensity for suicide. Remember, these are people who, according to the trans activists themselves, are at risk to kill themselves if they’re misgendered or if they don’t receive all of the “affirmation” they feel they need. And the FAA and Delta want to more of them flying commercial aircraft.
In fact, in private, they&#8217;re open about the fact that they&#8217;re willing to endanger the public in order to hit diversity goals. Recently on Twitter, someone named Trace Woodgrains has been looking closely at FAA documents that were unearthed in a long-running class action lawsuit filed against the agency back during the Obama years. And he found further proof that the agency does not care if &#8220;diversity&#8221; costs people their lives. They&#8217;ve put it in writing. In 2013, for example, FAA leaders reviewed this slide:
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Interesting questions being posed by the FAA in 2013 <a href="https://t.co/tnit9ipsRx">pic.twitter.com/tnit9ipsRx</a>
&mdash; TracingWoodgrains (@tracewoodgrains) <a href="https://twitter.com/tracewoodgrains/status/1752378790846796038?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 30, 2024</a></blockquote>
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It reads: &#8220;Key questions for leadership: What are the relative values of diversity and the prediction of performance/outcomes? There is a trade-off between diversity (adverse impact) and predicted job performance/outcomes. How much of a change in job performance is acceptable to achieve diversity goals?&#8221;
So there it is, as clear as it could possibly be. The answer to that question should be: No trade-off in job performance is acceptable to achieve any diversity goals. The mission of the FAA is to make sure people don&#8217;t die on airplanes. But increasingly it&#8217;s clear that&#8217;s not important to the FAA. I didn&#8217;t mention this on Twitter, but one of the sources who DM&#8217;d me sent this information over: &#8220;I was unaware of this until recently, but the FAA has authorized special issuance medical certificates to individuals on SSRIs &#8230; The FAA and the [airline pilots association] are looking to broaden/expand the SSRI and mental health on-ramps back to being able to exercise a first class medical certificate.&#8221;
In other words, the agency is doing everything it can to ensure that pilots taking antidepressants can fly. At the same time, the source says: &#8220;The FAA just sent a letter requesting Congress NOT to raise the mandatory retirement age from the current age of 65, and the FAA primarily states safety as a justification. Obviously, there’s zero safety data that shows a switch is flipped when you turn 65 and you are somehow instantly less competent; we all know competent 70 year olds and incompetent 50 year olds running around. &#8230;The point is that the FAA and [the pilot&#8217;s association] are much more willing to go along with the idea that SSRIs and transitioning pilots being at the controls is somehow more safe than someone who just woke up on their 65th birthday.&#8221;
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These are the kind of incoherent medical standards we&#8217;ve come to expect in the FAA. A year ago, for example, the FAA abruptly lowered its medical certification guidelines for pilots with heart block. This is a serious condition; it makes it harder for the heart to pump blood effectively. Before the change, pilots with first-degree block had to provide medical documentation proving they had, “no evidence of structural function or coronary heart disease.&#8221; Now, many pilots with first-degree heart block can fly without this documentation. There was a lot of speculation this was due to complications of the COVID shot, or that this might implicate the safety of passengers. The FAA denied that, but of course we have no reason to believe anything they say anymore. This is what we can expect from the federal government at this point. Even on matters of life-or-death, they have absolutely no credibility.
There are some more documents I posted on Twitter along these lines, including some insider information on how the FAA awards contracts to various small businesses. These small businesses handle important engineering and logistics tasks for the agency. But it turns out that these contracts, like everything else these days, often prioritize &#8220;socially disadvantaged&#8221; businesses, which according to federal regulations, typically means businesses that aren&#8217;t owned by white people. In the FAA&#8217;s &#8220;eFast&#8221; contract system, these &#8220;disadvantaged&#8221; businesses get first dibs at contracts valued under $150,000.
What this means is that the FAA has adopted a gender and race-based spoils system for pretty much everything. At every step — whether you&#8217;re a baggage handler, a pilot, or a contractor — you will get priority treatment if you look a certain way. The only way to bring an end to this is for more whistleblowers to do what they did yesterday, and speak out about it. Record the meetings where they tell you they don&#8217;t want white people working for them. Save the documents showing they&#8217;re promoting incompetent pilots because they&#8217;re &#8220;trans.&#8221; If we expose enough of this, then it might finally collapse under the weight of its absurdity. If we don&#8217;t — if we allow it to fester, as everyone on that FAA videoconference did — then before long, people will die as a result.

Cockpit of a modern passenger aircraft. Pilots at work.

I’ve Obtained Internal Footage Revealing The FAA’s Plans To Reduce The Number Of White Males In Aviation 

I've Obtained Internal Footage Revealing The FAA's Plans To Reduce The Number Of White Males In Aviation 

Airlines

American Airlines

Delta Airlines

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

Flights

Matt Walsh

Racism

Readers Pass

Transgender

Daily Wire host Matt Walsh posted a thread on X on Wednesday that featured internal footage of Federal Aviation Administration officials “workshopping a plan to reduce the number of white males in aviation.”
The footage obtained by Walsh shows a video conference from April 2022 where acting Deputy Chief Operating Officer Angela McCullough argued for more airline workers to go “from ramp to cockpit,” complaining that Flight Operations is “white-male dominated.” McCullough then argued that the agency needs to “get a little uncomfortable” and “talk about what the future could look like.”
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2/ The footage begins with FAA acting deputy chief operating officer Angela McCullough saying more workers need to go from &quot;ramp to cockpit,&quot; meaning she wants to see more baggage handlers become airline pilots. <a href="https://t.co/2KAeHNcJA2">pic.twitter.com/2KAeHNcJA2</a>
&mdash; Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) <a href="https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1755319180306346029?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 7, 2024</a></blockquote>
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David Wil Riggins, the FAA’s vice president of Flight Program Operations, responded to McCullough’s comments, saying, &#8220;That&#8217;s great, honestly. Those are some words that we really need to spend some time digging through and thinking about.&#8221;
“This footage, which is from April of 2022, is a sign of a much larger problem,” Walsh said in his post unraveling the FAA meeting. “Over the past few weeks, I’ve heard from several members of the aviation industry who tell me that DEI is endangering the public and distracting them from their work.”
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3/ As the meeting goes on, McCullough declares that it&#39;s important to &quot;get a little uncomfortable.&quot; She complains that Flight Operations is &quot;white-male dominated&quot; and tells the managers they need to “talk about what the future could look like.&quot; <a href="https://t.co/cZCSAluWyN">pic.twitter.com/cZCSAluWyN</a>
&mdash; Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) <a href="https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1755319182076325926?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 7, 2024</a></blockquote>
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Walsh said that this radical DEI-centered thinking has already affected airline pilots, some of whom are allegedly being prioritized for their gender identity.
“A second source – a pilot I’ve confirmed works at Delta – tells me that Delta has recently promoted a trans-identifying pilot who repeatedly received bad reviews from captains,” the Daily Wire host said. “According to the source, this pilot ‘would likely not have’ survived probation if he weren’t trans.”
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6/ A second source — a pilot I’ve confirmed works at Delta — tells me that Delta has recently promoted a trans-identifying pilot who repeatedly received bad reviews from captains. According to the source, this pilot “would likely not have” survived probation if he weren’t trans. <a href="https://t.co/VnnTVXbTeO">pic.twitter.com/VnnTVXbTeO</a>
&mdash; Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) <a href="https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1755319188975919594?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 7, 2024</a></blockquote>
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“For example, the source notes that Delta routinely makes exceptions for trans-identifying pilots concerning grooming and behavioral standards. Internally, Delta has even published a lengthy guide for pilots who believe they were born in the wrong body,” Walsh continued.
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7/ The source also notes that Delta routinely makes exceptions for trans-identifying pilots concerning grooming and behavioral standards. Internally, Delta has even published a lengthy guide for pilots who believe they were born in the wrong body. <a href="https://t.co/8aQszhqVJw">pic.twitter.com/8aQszhqVJw</a>
&mdash; Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) <a href="https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1755319191123439760?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 7, 2024</a></blockquote>
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Another source told Walsh that he is inundated with DEI proposals such as making “gender inclusive seatbelts” even though his job is to design advanced military systems.
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“We have affirmation groups, protections, and heritage months for every single type of person except for white men,” the source said. “If I don’t have at least two DEI/ESG meetings or trainings per week on my calendar then the all-hands/town hall meetings have some sort of DEI baked into the agenda.”
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8/ This industry-wide embrace of overt mental illness afflicts every aspect of aviation. Another source told me that his job is to design advanced military systems, but he’s constantly side-tracked by DEI proposals like “gender inclusive seatbelts.” <a href="https://t.co/jtEqR8Q5JG">pic.twitter.com/jtEqR8Q5JG</a>
&mdash; Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) <a href="https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1755319193006702720?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 7, 2024</a></blockquote>
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Walsh said other sources have sent him info about an FAA program called “eFast” which <a href="https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/afn/offices/acquisitions/efast/business" target="_blank" rel="noopener">prioritizes</a> &#8220;Indian Tribal Owned corporations” and “Socially and Economically Disadvantaged Businesses” for grant funding worth billions of dollars. According to the FAA’s Master Order Agreement for eFAST, FAA contracts worth $10,000 to $150,000 are “automatically reserved exclusively” for “Socially and Economically Disadvantaged Businesses.”
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9/ Several sources have also sent me documentation about one of the FAA&#39;s largest programs, called &quot;eFast,&quot; which prioritizes &quot;Indian Tribal Owned corporations” and “Socially and Economically Disadvantaged Businesses” for billions of dollars in critical grant funding. <a href="https://t.co/3LyXkTGhAI">pic.twitter.com/3LyXkTGhAI</a>
&mdash; Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) <a href="https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1755319195493896585?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 7, 2024</a></blockquote>
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“It&#8217;s only a matter of time until this combination of incompetence and anti-white discrimination leads to a major air disaster,” Walsh added. “The aviation industry needs a completely new mandate — one that&#8217;s focused solely on safety — before a lot of people die.”

Airplane/Matt Walsh

‘Plan To Reduce The Number Of White Males In Aviation’: Matt Walsh Reveals Troubling Internal Footage Of FAA Discussion On DEI Agenda

Airplane

A Boeing 737-800 in Japan carrying 59 passengers and six crew members was forced to turn back mid-flight after a crack developed in the cockpit window. 
The plane, with Japan’s All Nippon Airway, was headed to Toyama airport but was forced to return to Sapporo-New Chitose airport after the crack was discovered. The crack was found in the most outward of four cockpit windows, Reuters <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/japan-ana-boeing-737-800-flight-turns-back-due-cockpit-window-crack-2024-01-13/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>. The accident comes as airlines face increased scrutiny over safety concerns amid an uptick in crashes and airplane malfunctions. 
&#8220;The crack was not something that affected the flight&#8217;s control or pressurization,&#8221; an airline spokesperson said. 
Aviation expert John Strickland said the crack may have been caused by the plane hitting a bird or also could have been a stress fracture.
&#8220;These things do sometimes happen, something may have struck the window, for example a bird, a large hailstone, it&#8217;s not unheard of,” he <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-67968526" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> the BBC. &#8220;You might occasionally get a stress fracture too, from wear and tear.”
The incident comes less than two weeks after a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/plane-carrying-379-people-catches-on-fire-after-runway-crash-in-tokyo?ref=mc.news" target="_blank" rel="noopener">fiery plane crash in Japan</a> and amid widespread airplane safety concerns in the United States. In Japan, a passenger plane carrying nearly 400 people burst into flames after a suspected collision with a Japanese Coast Guard plane in Tokyo. 
Remarkably, all 379 passengers and crew onboard the passenger plane were able to evacuate safely as the plane burned, but five of the six passengers onboard the Coast Guard plane died as a result of the crash, <a href="https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/backstories/2941/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">according</a> to local media.
In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration is investigating Boeing after a chunk of an Alaska Airlines plane was blown out mid flight causing an emergency depressurizing situation. The plane, a Boeing 737 Max 9 <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/im-going-to-die-alaska-airlines-makes-emergency-landing-after-chunk-of-plane-blown-out-on-nightmare-flight" target="_blank" rel="noopener">carrying</a> more than 170 passengers, had to make an emergency landing in Oregon. 
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“This incident should have never happened, and it cannot happen again,” the FAA <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/11/business/faa-boeing-737-boeing-max-investigation.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>. 
As a result, the FAA has temporarily grounded all Boeing 737 Max 9 planes and called for more stringent safety inspections. Boeing has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/11/business/faa-boeing-737-boeing-max-investigation.html">said</a> it will fully comply with the FAA’s investigation and will cooperate “transparently.”
“Safety is our top priority and we deeply regret the impact this event has had on our customers and their passengers,” Boeing spokeswoman Jessica Kowal said in a statement. “We agree with and fully support the FAA’s decision to require immediate inspections of 737-9 airplanes with the same configuration as the affected airplane.”

Cockpit Windows of Boeing B737 Passenger Aircraft

Boeing 737 Forced To Turn Back Mid-Flight After Cockpit Window Cracks

Air and Space

airport

Japan

World

Here’s a thought experiment. Imagine one of your buddies comes up to you with a big smile on his face and tells you he just got a brand-new job. He&#8217;s vague on the specifics, but he says it&#8217;s a federal government gig that pays six figures. It didn&#8217;t require any kind of bachelor or associate degree, or a physical fitness test. But your friend does tell you that, as part of the application process, he had to complete a couple of computer exams.
Then, as the conversation goes on, your friend recounts a few of the questions from one of those exams. He tells you the questions went something like this: &#8220;Would more classmates remember you as humble or dominant? What age did you first start making money? How many high school sports did you participate in?&#8221;
At this point, you&#8217;re thinking to yourself, this is a little odd. What kind of job would ask questions like this? This all sounds kind of dumb and unserious. So your friend reassures you that he had to complete a second test as well. This second test asked slightly more <a href="https://www.tsatestprep.com/atsa-practice-test/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">challenging questions</a>, like, &#8220;What&#8217;s the difference between the numbers 8 and 6?&#8221; If you answered &#8220;2,&#8221; then congratulations, you could also pass this test.
Now, at this point, if you had to guess what job your friend just landed, what guess would you make? Based on all of the information provided, and knowing this is a government job, what would you think? Well, you’d probably make some obvious assumptions right away. You&#8217;d think, at a minimum, that whatever job your friend is gunning for in the federal government, it can&#8217;t be that important. And, indeed, there are a lot of very unimportant jobs in the federal government. Jobs that were made for incompetent and unimpressive people. Maybe your friend got a gig in the Department of Education, for example, or the IRS. That would make sense.
But then imagine that your friend informs you that he is not working in some frivolous government agency that contributes nothing of value to humanity. Imagine he tells you that, in act, he applied to be an air traffic controller. And after just a few months of training, very soon, he&#8217;s probably going to be directing planes with hundreds of people onboard. This may be a hypothetical thought experiment, but it is very much grounded in reality. I didn&#8217;t make up any of the test questions I mentioned earlier. They&#8217;re all based on real air traffic control <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/06/27/the-disastrous-initiative-to-hire-air-traffic-controllers-based-on-diversity-not-talent/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">exams</a> or <a href="https://www.tsatestprep.com/atsa-practice-test/#atsa-memory-game" target="_blank" rel="noopener">practice exams</a>.
Now ten years ago, this little hypothetical scenario would&#8217;ve been unthinkable. But everything changed very quickly in 2013, when the Obama administration <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/06/27/the-disastrous-initiative-to-hire-air-traffic-controllers-based-on-diversity-not-talent/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">embarked</a> on a plan to diversify the ranks of air traffic controllers. Obama&#8217;s FAA chief announced that he intended to &#8220;transform&#8221; the agency, which includes air traffic control, into a, &#8220;more diverse&#8221; workplace. As part of that plan, air traffic controllers no longer needed to take a more demanding cognitive assessment before being hired. Instead, all they needed was a high school diploma and the ability to speak English. All of the tests were dumbed down to the point of being absurd.
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The result, over the past decade, has been exactly what you&#8217;d expect. The number of air traffic controllers who are not white men has significantly increased, according to the FAA. Coincidentally, so have the number of near-collisions involving commercial airlines. According to a database maintained by NASA, which relies on data self-reported by pilots, the number of &#8220;near misses&#8221; has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/21/business/airline-safety-close-calls.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">more than doubled</a> over the past ten years. 
In just the past year, there have been more than 300 near misses involving commercial airlines, averaging more than five per week. Just to emphasize that point again: they diversified the FAA, and near-misses immediately doubled. Correlation does not prove causation, but it can point towards it. And in this case there is a giant, glowing sign pointing in that direction.
Of course, only a handful of these incidents receive any major media attention. So it&#8217;s easy to underestimate the scale of the problem, no matter what media outlets or social media platforms you frequent. That&#8217;s why, in a moment I&#8217;m going to go through some of the near-misses that have gotten very little coverage.
But I&#8217;ll start with an incident that did get some attention from the national news media, because it helps put the broader problem into some context. This incident happened in July, when air traffic controllers put two aircraft — an Allegiant air passenger plane and a Gulfstream jet — on a collision course, shortly after the Allegiant plane took off from Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Allegiant plane avoids mid-air collision at 23,000 feet" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3k2j31B3Dak?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
The report goes on to mention that the pilot&#8217;s last-minute evasive maneuver was so extreme that it sent one flight attendant to the hospital.
If there&#8217;s anything reassuring in this clip — something that might make you feel a little better if you, like me, plan on boarding a plane in the near future — it’s that automated software called &#8220;TCAS&#8221; saved the day. This is a system that relies on transponders that are installed on all domestic aircraft. As you heard, it&#8217;s capable of sounding an alarm in the cockpit, and directing planes away from one another if there&#8217;s a risk of an imminent collision. It&#8217;s a failsafe for when air traffic controllers mess up and command planes to fly into one another.
But TCAS isn&#8217;t perfect. It certainly doesn&#8217;t prevent all mid-air collisions. In 2002, for example, a passenger jet and a DHL cargo plane <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_%C3%9Cberlingen_mid-air_collision" target="_blank" rel="noopener">collided</a> over Germany, because one pilot followed TCAS while another listened to the Swiss air traffic controller — who, incidentally, was later murdered by a surviving family member of several passengers. In fact, just this year, TCAS failed to prevent a mid-air collision at an international airport in this country — Houston Hobby. Fortunately, and miraculously, no one died as a result of that collision, but it was very close to being disastrous.
This incident illustrates the obvious, which is that the failsafe is not capable of solving all mid-air collisions, nor is it designed to. Particularly when planes are close to the ground, and covering a lot of ground very quickly in close proximity to one another, things can happen too quickly for the system to respond.
Those are the kind of incidents that are happening more and more often. A month ago, at Portland International Airport, for example, an Alaska Airlines jet turned directly into the path of a departing Skywest airliner. Air traffic controllers didn&#8217;t notice this until the planes were right on top of each other. In that case, the Alaska plane was trying to land, but it had to execute a &#8220;go around&#8221; because of high winds. Around the same time, the air traffic controller tells a departing Skywest plane to turn right. But for some reason, the Alaska pilot responds to that command, and turns to the right — straight into the path of the Skywest plane. And the controller completely misses it until pretty much the last possible moment. Radar data shows that the planes came within 250 feet vertically and less than 2,000 feet horizontally.
An even closer near-miss took place in August at San Diego International Airport. Controllers cleared a private plane to land right on top of a Southwest plane. They noticed their mistake just before the private plane hit the Southwest jet on the runway. The plane got within 100 feet of the Southwest passenger jet. There&#8217;s no TCAS system that can prevent something like that, either. If the visibility had been worse, and if the controllers didn&#8217;t notice the problem, there would have been a collision. Hundreds of people would likely be dead.
You can go to YouTube and find many clips showing these near misses. We won’t review all of them here, but I do want to share one that may be the most shocking recent example. It&#8217;s from JFK airport in New York City earlier this month, which is one of the busiest airports in the world. An American Airlines passenger jet was lining up for its approach, when air traffic controllers told a small private plane to line up for a parallel runway. But the private plane didn&#8217;t follow that instruction. Instead it made a beeline for the same runway the American Airlines plane was going for. At no point in this process did controllers notice the problem. They also didn&#8217;t notice that the private plane didn&#8217;t read back the right clearance. Instead, the only person who noticed anything wrong were the pilots of the American Airlines jet, when the private plane was right on top of them:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="“If we hadn’t bailed out, we would have collided”. American A321 has problems at New York. Real ATC" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-2XVD2yIDww?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&#8220;If we hadn&#8217;t bailed out, we would have collided.&#8221; That&#8217;s what the pilot of an American Airlines Airbus said, just a couple of weeks ago, at JFK airport. There was apparently no TCAS instruction to take evasive action. (If there had been, the pilots should have called it out. But they didn&#8217;t.) There was certainly no ATC warning. One of the pilots just looked out his window, or maybe saw something on his screen, and realized a plane was coming right for him. And he realized it just in time, to save a lot of lives.
I could go on and on. There&#8217;s the Southwest Airlines flight on July 2nd, which had to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/21/business/airline-safety-close-calls.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">abort</a> its landing at New Orleans International Airport because a Delta plane was taking off from the same runway. The passenger planes came within seconds of hitting each other. That same month, an American Airlines plane nearly crashed into a Frontier Airlines jet on takeoff, because nobody — including the ground controllers — noticed that the nose of the Frontier Airlines jet was jutting out into the runway. Earlier this year, in February, an air traffic controller routed a Spirit Airlines flight within 200 vertical feet and 700 horizontal feet of a cargo plane. You get the point.
It&#8217;s true that we can&#8217;t blame this dramatic rise of near-misses solely on diversity and equity efforts, single-variable explanations are rarely sufficient. This is a complex issue. For one thing, when Ronald Reagan fired more than 10,000 air traffic controllers who went on strike in 1981, in violation of federal law, a bunch of new controllers needed to be hired. And many of those controllers recently hit retirement age — all at once. That creates a staffing crunch. That&#8217;s all true.
But that staffing crunch was foreseeable. It&#8217;s been obvious it would happen since Reagan fired the controllers more than four decades ago. The problem is that, instead of providing incentives for competent people to become air traffic controllers — say, by raising the salary, and providing more training and offering better hours — the government chose to do what it always does. It drastically lowered standards, in the name of equity. 
And the Biden administration is still proud of it. Right now, on the FAA&#8217;s <a href="https://www.faa.gov/jobs/diversity_inclusion" target="_blank" rel="noopener">website</a>, you&#8217;ll find this line: 
<blockquote>The mission of the FAA involves securing the skies of a diverse nation. It only makes sense that the workforce responsible for that mission reflects the nation that it serves.</blockquote>
Actually, that doesn&#8217;t make sense at all. The job of the FAA, and air traffic control, is preventing catastrophic accidents where a lot of people die. It doesn&#8217;t matter what the workforce looks like. Everyone knows this, because deep down, everyone knows that diversity doesn’t matter. That’s why no passenger on a plane has ever cared in the slightest about the racial makeup of the guys in the cockpit, or the ones on the ground directing the plane. Just like nobody has ever cared about the diversity of fire departments when they’re trapped in a burning building, and nobody has ever cared about diversity among brain surgeons when they have a tumor that needs to be removed. 
When it comes down to it, when it really matters, diversity doesn’t matter. And we all know it. 
But that&#8217;s all the FAA has been focused on lately. Just a year ago, the FAA <a href="https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-launches-be-atc-campaign-recruit-next-diverse-generation-air-traffic-controllers" target="_blank" rel="noopener">launched</a> yet another initiative to &#8220;diversify&#8221; the ranks of air traffic controllers — meaning to hire people based on qualities other than competence. The FAA calls this the &#8220;Be ATC&#8221; campaign. The agency says in a press release that: 
<blockquote>Building on last year’s successful campaign to receive more applications from women and other underrepresented groups, the FAA will again work with diverse organizations, host Instagram Live conversations, and work with social media influencers.</blockquote>
That&#8217;s what the FAA is working on right now. We&#8217;ll be getting more women and more &#8220;underrepresented groups,&#8221; courtesy of Instagram influencers. That much is clear. What&#8217;s not clear is whether we&#8217;ll be getting a workforce that&#8217;s capable of preventing two jetliners, full of passengers from colliding with one another while they&#8217;re each going in excess of 500 miles per hour. And that&#8217;s alarming, to say the least, because every single week we&#8217;re discovering that the existing crop of air traffic controllers is barely capable of doing that.
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Keep in mind that this is all happening even as airlines also begin their own quest to add more equity to their ranks. It was only a couple of years ago that United Airlines pledged to diversify its pilots. Many other airlines have followed suit. Soon we will have diverse air traffic controllers directing diverse airline pilots, while thousands of lives hang in the balance — and inevitably many are lost in the process.
You often hear aviation experts say that nothing ever gets fixed until a lot of people die, which is not a thought that will help cure your anxiety about flying. But it’s true and it’s been true throughout the history of aviation. Planes didn&#8217;t have wind shear detectors until commercial airliners started crashing in bad weather, just shy of the runway. TCAS wasn&#8217;t mandatory until there were a lot of mid-air collisions. Pilots didn&#8217;t have to de-ice until an Air Florida plane nose-dived into a Potomac after sitting for too long on the tarmac on a snowy day.
What this means is that, if history is any guide, soon enough, we may finally start to get some solutions to the air traffic control debacle we&#8217;re seeing right now all over the country — from Portland to San Diego to New Orleans to New York, to pretty much any other major metropolitan area in this country. That&#8217;s because, as problematic as it may be for the Biden administration&#8217;s equity agenda, we&#8217;re closer than we&#8217;ve been in more than a decade to a disaster of truly historic proportions. And when that happens, a lot of people will die. And then, and only then, when it’s too late, will anything be done about the problem.

Passenger airplane taking off at sunset

How Government ‘Diversity’ Initiatives Are Leading Us To A Major Airline Disaster

Biden Administration

Two pilots ejected from a MiG-23 jet during an air show in Michigan on Sunday, shortly before an explosion occurred in mid-air that sent the aircraft crashing into several unoccupied parked vehicles in a nearby apartment complex.
Wayne County Airport Authority told local media the pilots crashed a MiG-23 demonstration plane into the parking lot at the Waverly on the Lake Apartments in the city of Belleville around 4:00 p.m. while performing at the Yankee Air Museum&#8217;s Thunder Over Michigan air show.
&#8220;The pilot and backseater successfully ejected from the aircraft before the crash,&#8221; Wayne County Airport Authority <a href="https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/jet-crashes-during-thunder-over-michigan-air-show-at-willow-run-airport" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> Fox 2 Detroit. &#8220;While it did not appear they sustained any significant injuries, first responders transported the pair to a nearby hospital as a precaution.&#8221;
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NOW &#8211; MiG-23 aircraft crashes during an air show in Michigan.<a href="https://t.co/UVPGNh0viZ">pic.twitter.com/UVPGNh0viZ</a>
&mdash; Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) <a href="https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1690839038519869440?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 13, 2023</a></blockquote>
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Authorities reported the aircraft struck unoccupied vehicles in the apartment complex&#8217;s parking lot, and no one at the apartment complex nor the air show sustained any significant injuries.
Emergency crews rescued the pilots from Belleville Lake and transported them to a nearby hospital, according to <a href="https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2023/08/13/plane-crashes-during-airshow-finale-at-willow-run/70563452007/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Detroit News.</a>
Kevin McNamara, Van Buren Township supervisor, <a href="https://www.wtol.com/article/news/local/mig-23-jet-crashes-at-air-show-outside-of-detroit/512-f405d122-ed42-4730-b1b0-841b42bba8c1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> WTOL11 one pilot ejected into the lake while the other landed in a tree, hurting the two &#8220;pretty bad,&#8221; but both &#8220;will be okay.&#8221;
McNamara said the jet slid about 100 yards near an apartment building after it initially crashed on an abandoned golf course.
&#8220;We&#8217;re a subdivision community,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It landed next to a lake. There are not very many empty properties next to lakes. This happens to be one of the rare properties there are. It&#8217;s a miracle.&#8221;
Although the cause remains unknown, the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board have reportedly stated both agencies would investigate and provide updates when available.
Thunder Over Michigan started roughly an hour before the incident occurred. Around 4:30 p.m., officials directed attendants to leave the airfield in a post on the event&#8217;s <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ThunderOverMichigan/posts/pfbid0kRhPDUNoTKvTz8kDgZacvKXFWuS393yzZ9svSFGFdNjiXU7Q8drLX5RD8ZZdvzHYl" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Facebook page</a>.
&#8220;Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a situation that requires us to stop the show,&#8221; the post reads. &#8220;Please make your way into your vehicles and calmly make your way out of the airfield.&#8221;
Before it began, president and CEO of the Yankee Air Museum, Kevin Walsh, reportedly said the event showcases 55 modern and vintage military planes from around the world.
Walsh, who has been coordinating the event for the last 25 years, said he hopes the show inspires people.
&#8220;Everyone that flies one of these planes went to an airshow as a kid, and it&#8217;s sensational,&#8221; he said. &#8220;How they feel, how they fly, how they smell and how they sound, it&#8217;s all about the experience.&#8221;
Mark McCulloch, 49, from Saline, told local media he witnessed the jet malfunctioning after another airshow attendant pointed toward the plane and said, &#8220;Oh my God.&#8221;
&#8220;I had my Nikon D-800 with a 600 mm lens — that&#8217;s what I saw,&#8221; McCulloch said. &#8220;I hope no one got hurt at the crash site. There was no loud noises or indication that I witnessed. Two engines blew out, you could see that, but I couldn&#8217;t hear it because the guy on the PA was talking next to us.&#8221;

SYRIA-CONFLICT

WATCH: Pilots Eject From MiG-23 In Mid-Air, Jet Explodes During Michigan Air Show

Jets

Michigan

Several conservative measures, including a measure to reinstate pilots who lost their jobs after not taking the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/covid-19-vaccine" target="_blank" rel="noopener">COVID vaccine</a>, failed in the Republican-controlled <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/u-s-house-of-representatives" target="_blank" rel="noopener">House</a> on Wednesday during debate on a bill to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
An amendment that would have required airlines to reinstate pilots who were fired or lost their job because they did not want to take the COVID vaccine <a href="https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2023346?Page=3" target="_blank" rel="noopener">failed</a> 141-294 in the House. Eighty-three Republicans voted against the measure, and Maine Democrat Jared Golden voted for the measure. 
Rep. Mary Miller (R-IL) offered the amendment on the House floor after it was filed by Rep. <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/marjorie-taylor-greene" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Marjorie Taylor Greene</a> (R-GA). 

&#8220;Hundreds of pilots were forced out of their livelihoods over the past several years for their refusal to get COVID vaccine,&#8221; Greene said on Wednesday. &#8220;They were denied medical freedom to decide whether they should take the experimental COVID vaccine or lose their job.&#8221; 
The full extent of how many pilots were fired or quit over vaccine mandates remains unclear, but some airlines strictly enforced the policy, with United Airlines <a href="https://abc13.com/united-airlines-vaccine-mandate-employees-fired-over-airline-get-covid/11069601/">firing</a> hundreds of employees who chose to remain unvaccinated. 
Other Republican-backed amendments to the FAA bill also failed, including one provision which would have made Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg disclose his travel on private jets paid for by taxpayers. Buttigieg has been criticized in recent months over his use of private planes.
“This week, I was proud to fight for taxpayers &amp; transparency with my amendment to obtain Secretary Buttigieg&#8217;s private jet records. Air travel has become chaotic in our country, including the first FAA full ground stoppage since 9/11. I&#8217;ll never stop fighting against the Swamp!” Miller <a href="https://twitter.com/RepMaryMiller/status/1682395274407481345" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tweeted</a>. 
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With 10 Republicans voting against the amendment, it <a href="https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2023352?Page=2">failed</a> 216-219, including Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO), Reps. Troy Balderson (R-OH), Jack Bergman (R-MI), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Garret Graves (R-LA), David Joyce (R-OH), Jennifer Kiggans (R-VA), Marcus Molinaro (R-NY), and Brandon Williams (R-NY). Three Democrats — Reps. Katie Porter and Ted Lieu of California and Yadira Caraveo of Colorado — <a href="https://themessenger.com/politics/house-passes-aviation-bill-without-expanding-direct-flights-to-reagan-national-airport">voted for</a> the amendment.
A spokesperson for Balderson <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/republicans-join-dems-defeat-bill-forcing-pete-buttigieg-disclose-government-jet-use">said</a> that the vote against the amendment was by accident and that he intended to file to get his vote changed. 
Another amendment that was shot down was by freshman <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/freshman-republican-lawmaker-files-to-impeach-biden-over-illicit-family-business-dealings" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tennessee Republican Rep. Andy Ogles</a>, who attempted to pass an <a href="https://americanindependent.com/house-republicans-vote-faa-climate-change/#:~:text=Ogles%27%20amendment%20was%20intended%20“to,weather%20is%20the%20proximate%20cause.”" target="_blank" rel="noopener">amendment</a> “to clarify that a study of turbulence should include a focus on weather conditions rather than climate change since weather is the proximate cause.”
Ultimately, the House <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4107729-house-approves-faa-reauthorization-bill/#:~:text=The%20House%20on%20Thursday%20overwhelmingly,a%20bipartisan%20351%2D69%20vote." target="_blank" rel="noopener">voted</a> 351-69 to reauthorize the FAA for five more years appropriating billions of dollars for airport funding, also addressing runway safety and ticket refunds in the bill.

Airline Jets Lined up on Runway

Republicans Help Defeat Measures To Reinstate Pilots Fired Over COVID Vaccine, Reveal Buttigieg Flight Records

Covid vaccine

Marjorie Taylor Greene

U.S. House of Representatives

One Chicago household had the surprise of a lifetime this week when a piece of safety equipment from a commercial airliner fell from the sky into their backyard. 
On Monday afternoon, an emergency evacuation slide <a href="https://nypost.com/2023/07/17/emergency-slide-from-plane-reaching-chicagos-ohare-airport-lands-in-backyard/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">fell</a> from a United Airlines flight arriving at Chicago O’Hare International Airport <a href="https://www.today.com/news/plane-emergency-evacuation-slide-falls-out-aircraft-flight-rcna94822" target="_blank" rel="noopener">from</a> Zurich, Switzerland. No one was injured in the incident, but the house sustained some damage. 
“I’m stunned a little bit. I’m just glad that everybody is safe and okay,” homeowner Patrick Devitt <a href="https://abc7chicago.com/emergency-slide-falls-from-plane-ohare-airport-chicago-news/13515495/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>. “Just seeing that in my backyard, like wow. This really happened. It fell off of an airplane and landed in our backyard.”
The house is not far from the airport, and Devitt’s son and father-in-law were inside when the slide hit the home, which made a sound they described as a “boom.” The house’s roof, window screen, and downspout were damaged from the impact.  
After the plane landed at O’Hare, maintenance workers discovered that the slide was missing. According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Boeing 767 was carrying 155 passengers and 10 crew members, but no one on the plane knew what had happened, according to Today Show. 
“When it’s all stretched out, like it’s a little jumbled up I’m sure in the picture from when we dragged it out, it’s larger than a small car,” Devitt told WLS-TV. “It’s a very, very big piece of equipment.”
After the slide had scraped the roof and landed in the backyard, the men called the police, and within a half hour, the FAA was at the home to investigate. On the same day, the men told the outlet that two United Airlines representatives retrieved the slide. 
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“We immediately contacted the FAA and are working with our team to better understand the circumstances around this matter,” a statement from United said. 
It’s still unclear how exactly the slide fell from the plane, but the FAA said it would continue investigating the matter. DePaul University professor Joe Schwieterman told WLS that the incident will prompt “major investigations.” 
“This was not a bird strike or something that&#8217;s routine. It&#8217;s a rare instance that could have caused fatalities on the ground or even affected the stability of that airplane when it was landing,&#8221; he said. 
However, this is not the first time an incident like this has happened. In 2019, an emergency slide fell from a Delta Air Lines plane in the yard of a Boston home, injuring no one, ABC 7 reported. Three years earlier, a similar incident occurred in Mesa, Arizona, in another case where no injuries were reported.

United Plane Evacuation Slide

Plane’s Emergency Slide Falls From Sky During Flight, Damages Chicago Home

Chicago

Illinois

United Airlines

The U.S. military released new details Monday afternoon about another mysterious balloon that recently flew over Hawaii late last week.
&#8220;Applying newly-established parameters for monitoring U.S. airspace, the Department of Defense and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) detected and observed April 28th an unmanned, balloon off the coast of Hawaii, floating at approximately 36,000 feet,&#8221; a DOD spokesperson said in a statement.
&#8220;Ownership of the balloon is unknown, but there is no indication that it was maneuvering or being controlled by a foreign or adversarial actor,&#8221; the statement claimed. &#8220;The balloon did not transit directly over defense critical infrastructure or other U.S. Government sensitive sites, nor did it pose a military or physical threat to people on the ground.&#8221;
Officials said that it did not pose a threat to civil aviation despite it flying at an altitude common in civil aviation.
&#8220;Based on these observations, the Secretary of Defense concurred with the recommendation of his military commanders that no action need be taken against the balloon,&#8221; the statement concluded. &#8220;The balloon is now out of Hawaii’s airspace and territorial waters.&#8221;
NBC News <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-military-tracking-another-mysterious-balloon-rcna82300">reported</a> on the balloon earlier on Monday and said that officials believe that it is currently headed toward Mexico.
The report comes after a Chinese spy balloon flew over the U.S. back in February after President Joe Biden&#8217;s administration failed to shoot it down when it first entered U.S. airspace.
Biden officials initially <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/09/politics/spy-balloon-technology/index.html#">claimed</a> to Congress that they took measures to prevent the Chinese spy balloon from being able to transmit whatever information that it collected as it flew over sensitive U.S. military installations.
However, a report from early last month revealed that the balloon gathered and reported intelligence from multiple sensitive American military sites despite the Pentagon’s claims that it blocked transmission.
The report, which cites two current American officials and one former administration official, says the balloon was controlled by China, which maneuvered it to make several passes over certain military sites, sometimes in a figure-eight pattern – all while transmitting the gathered data back to Beijing in “real time.” The three officials say the data obtained by China was primarily electronic signals that could be collected from weapons systems or base communications.
The spy balloon was shot down over the Atlantic Ocean on February 4 when the U.S. military used an F-22 Raptor to down the object with a single air-to-air AIM-9X Sidewinder missile.
General Glen VanHerck, Commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and United States Northern Command (USNORTHCOM), said that the balloon was up to 200 feet tall and weighed “in excess of a couple thousand pounds.”
After the balloon was shot down, the U.S. subsequently downed three more unidentified objects over Alaska, Lake Huron, and Canada.

Chinese spy balloon flying above Charlotte

U.S. Military Releases New Details About Balloon That Flew Over Hawaii

Balloon

Global Politics

<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/southwest-airlines" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Southwest Airlines</a> temporarily paused service on Tuesday morning over an unspecified internal technical issue, resulting in delays for nearly half of its <a href="http://dailywire.com/topic/air-travel" target="_blank" rel="noopener">flights</a> only months after the company experienced a severe meltdown over the holiday travel season.
The <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/federal-aviation-administration-faa" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Federal Aviation Administration</a> (FAA) <a href="https://twitter.com/FAANews/status/1648334637574356994" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> Southwest requested a nationwide pause in departures and <a href="https://twitter.com/FAANews/status/1648343231569035266" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announced</a> less than one hour later that the “pause has been lifted and their service has resumed.” The agency added that the temporary disruption was caused by a “technical issue with one of their internal systems.”
Roughly 1,800 Southwest flights, equivalent to 43% of the carrier’s departures, were delayed as of early Tuesday afternoon, according to <a href="https://uk.flightaware.com/live/cancelled/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">data</a> from FlightAware, significantly exceeding the 5% of flights delayed at both United Airlines and American Airlines.
“We’ve resumed operations this morning following a pause in service,” Southwest said in a <a href="https://twitter.com/SouthwestAir/status/1648349441693298688" target="_blank" rel="noopener">statement</a> posted to social media, which added that the company would “work to restore operations and accommodate disrupted customers as quickly as possible.”
The technical issue comes after Southwest canceled some 16,700 flights between December 21 and December 31 amid heavy winter storms that impacted the United States in the days before Christmas. Even as other carriers resumed normal operations, Southwest continued to delay and cancel an elevated number of flights for several days. The company <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/southwest-reveals-how-much-holiday-flight-meltdown-will-cost-them" target="_blank" rel="noopener">estimated</a> that between $725 million and $825 million would be lost in the aftermath of the cancellations and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/southwest-airlines-reports-massive-revenue-hit-after-christmas-meltdown" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> an immediate $220 million loss in the fourth quarter of last year.
“Let me be clear: we messed up. In hindsight, we did not have enough winter operational resilience,” Southwest Airlines COO Andrew Watterson said in recent <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/we-messed-up-southwest-executive-testifies-on-holiday-meltdown-chaos" target="_blank" rel="noopener">remarks</a> before the Senate Commerce Committee. “This created an unprecedented amount and frequency of required changes to crew schedules that overwhelmed our crew scheduling processes and technology.”
The company is unique among other major airlines in that flights are arranged in a point-to-point system rather than a hub model. Southwest CEO Bob Jordan said in the fourth quarter earnings <a href="https://swamedia.com/releases/release-f30033abc7ead7522c3ea8021c3d5d2d-southwest-airlines-reports-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2022-results" target="_blank" rel="noopener">report</a> that “the priority of technology and other investments” will be elevated this year to bolster “operational resilience.”
Executives have attempted to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/southwest-gives-disgruntled-customers-frequent-flyer-points-in-aftermath-of-holiday-meltdown" target="_blank" rel="noopener">regain</a> the trust of disgruntled customers after thousands of passengers saw their flights delayed or canceled. At least some received reward points amounting to $300 in value; the company has also vowed to reimburse flyers for meals, hotel accommodations, rental cars, and tickets purchased with other carriers.
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“Southwest is intensely focused on reducing the risk of repeating the operational disruption we experienced in December,” Watterson added. “We are committed to running a great operation each and every day, and I have the utmost confidence that our people, processes, and technologies will do just that.”
The months since the Southwest cancellations have seen multiple air travel anomalies. The FAA <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/faa-reveals-more-details-on-system-outage-that-grounded-flights-nationwide" target="_blank" rel="noopener">grounded</a> all flights nationwide early on January 11 as the agency’s Notice to Air Missions system failed; officials later determined that “personnel unintentionally deleted files while working to correct synchronization between the live primary database and a backup database.” A terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/fire-power-outage-at-jfk-airport-causes-delayed-canceled-flights" target="_blank" rel="noopener">closed</a> on February 16 and reopened on February 17 due to a power outage and electrical panel fire.

Holiday travel woes for Southwest Airline passengers.

Southwest Sees Massive Number Of Flight Delays After Technical Issue

Southwest Delays Nearly Half Of Flights After Technical Issue

Southwest Airlines

President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has reportedly withdrawn his name from consideration after strong Republican criticism that he lacked experience in aviation safety. 
Phil Washington, the CEO of Denver International Airport and former CEO of the Los Angeles Metro Transit Authority, was nominated by Biden last July. On Saturday night, Reuters <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/biden-nominee-head-faa-withdraws-after-republican-attacks-sources-2023-03-26/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> his nomination was withdrawn because he did not have enough votes to get out of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. A statement from the White House confirmed that Washington withdrew his name. 
“Unfortunately, an onslaught of unfounded Republican attacks on Mr. Washington’s service and experience irresponsibly delayed this process, threatened unnecessary procedural hurdles on the Senate floor, and ultimately have led him to withdraw his nomination today,” Abdullah Hassan, a White House spokesman, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/26/us/politics/nominee-for-faa-post-withdraws-from-consideration.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> The New York Times on Saturday. 
A vote from the committee was expected to take place last Wednesday but was delayed. Sources <a href="https://apnews.com/article/faa-biden-nominee-phillip-washington-senate-48c1fe8ebe385294a2a5eddf45547a3d" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> the Associated Press that Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema, an independent, was holding up the vote. Both Sinema and Montana Democratic Senator Jon Tester declined to publicly say how they planned to vote. 
Republicans have strongly objected to Washington’s nomination, citing a lack of aviation background, specifically at a time when the country has experienced numerous air travel headaches and aviation near-misses. He was appointed CEO of Denver International Airport in 2021, but that&#8217;s his only aviation-related experience, <a href="https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/bidens-choice-faa-administrator-withdraws-nomination-after-lack-senate-support" target="_blank" rel="noopener">according</a> to Fox Business. Beyond this criticism, Republicans also pointed to a corruption investigation he’s reportedly connected to in Los Angeles, in which Washington denied any wrongdoing. 
“The FAA needs a confirmed Administrator, and Phil Washington’s transportation &amp; military experience made him an excellent nominee,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg posted to Twitter. “The partisan attacks and procedural obstruction he has faced are undeserved, but I respect his decision to withdraw and am grateful for his service,” he added. 
During committee hearings in early March, Republicans didn’t hold back in <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/after-recent-aviation-near-misses-gop-sen-warns-biden-faa-nominee-inexperienced-in-aviation-safety" target="_blank" rel="noopener">pointing</a> out Washington&#8217;s employment history. North Carolina Republican Senator Ted Budd said, “The FAA can’t afford to be led by someone who needs on-the-job training.” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) argued Washington’s “record is woefully lacking,” adding, “in fact, you have zero aviation safety experience.”
“Since Mr. Washington was nominated last July, it’s been clear to Democrat and Republican senators, numerous aviation groups, and any impartial observer that Mr. Washington lacked the aviation experience necessary to run the FAA,” Sen. Cruz said in a <a href="https://www.commerce.senate.gov/2023/3/sen-cruz-issues-statement-on-phil-washington-withdrawing-his-nomination-to-serve-as-faa-administrator" target="_blank" rel="noopener">statement</a> Saturday. “Given the significant challenges facing the FAA, this wasn’t the time for an administrator who needed on-the-job training. The Biden administration must now quickly name someone to head the FAA who has an extensive aviation background, can earn widespread bipartisan support in the Senate, and will keep the flying public safe.”
The current acting administrator for the FAA, pilot Billy Nolen, could have the support of at least one Republican senator already. Sen. Cruz believes Nolen could receive bipartisan support should he be nominated, the Associated Press reported. According to the FAA <a href="https://www.faa.gov/about/key_officials/nolen" target="_blank" rel="noopener">website</a>, Nolen has 33 years of experience in “operations and corporate safety, regulatory affairs and flight operations.”

Senate Commerce Committee FAA Nomination Hearing

Biden FAA Nominee Withdraws After Criticism Over Lack Of Aviation Safety Experience

Politics

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