Full FAA Chronology at this link.
19350112: Amelia Earhart took off in a Lockheed Vega from Honolulu and landed in Oakland, Calif., 18 hours 15 minutes later–making the first solo flight from Hawaii to the U.S. mainland.
19370112: Franklin Roosevelt submitted to Congress the Report of the President’s Committee on Administrative Management, popularly known as the Brownlow Report, named after chairman Louis Brownlow, a public administration expert. The committee had examined the proliferation of Federal boards, commissions, and agencies that operated independently of the President’s executive powers, and constituted a “fourth branch of Government.” The committee had no quarrel with the Congress’s intent in creating these agencies–they were needed to perform quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial functions. But the committee did take exception to the fact that these agencies also exercised executive or administrative powers that, in its opinion, properly belonged to the President. The committee recommended that those entities be placed within executive departments and divided into judicial and administrative sections. The judicial section would be independent of executive branch control; the administrative section, however, would be headed by a chief directly responsible to a member of the President’s cabinet. The Brownlow Report had a profound influence on the organizational structure of the Civil Aeronautics Authority, as set forth in Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938 (see June 23, 1938).
19840112: The Federal Aviation Administration awarded a contract to Hazeltine Corporation for 178 Microwave Landing Systems (MLSs). (See January 28, 1982, and May 20, 1987.)
19890112: FAA revised the pilot and equipment requirements for conducting operations in terminal control areas and established a single class of terminal control area (TCA) instead of the two classes which previously existed. (See August 31, 1986.) In addition, pilots needed at least a private certificate to fly in a TCA. Student pilots were permitted to conduct certain operations with specified training and logbook endorsements from a certified flight instructor except at 12 TCA primary airports, where student pilot operations were prohibited. In addition, helicopters operating within a TCA had to install a VOR or TACAN receiver by July 1, 1989.
20000112: FAA achieved initial operating capability on its second EDC of the Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System (STARS) at the Syracuse, New York, TRACON. January 28, FAA Administrator Jane Garvey formally dedicated the new system at Syracuse. (See December 20, 1999; May 9, 2002.)
20090112: FAA issued instructions (Notice 8900.63) to agency inspectors with oversight of HEMS operators to find out how many operators had adopted FAA-recommended best practices. With reports in from all 74 operators surveyed, the percentages that had adopted various programs were
* Decision-making skills and risk assessment programs – 94 percent
* Response to FAA guidance on Loss of Control (LOC) and Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT) avoidance – 89 percent
* Integration of operation control center – 89 percent
* Installation of Flight Data Recorders and devices that can re-create a flight. – 11 percent
* TAWS equipage – 41 percent
* Use of radar altimeters – 89 percent (See November 14, 2008; October 12, 2010.)
20100112: Controllers at the Houston Air Route Traffic Control Center began using automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) to manage aircraft flying over the Gulf of Mexico. Houston was the first of four sites selected to demonstrate ADS-B services to go live with the service. (See November 23, 2009; April 26, 2010.)
20110112: The City of St. George, UT, opened a new airport with a 9,300-footlong runway. The new airport replaced the old St. George Municipal Airport.