This Day in FAA History: July 31st

Full FAA Chronology at this link.
19340731: The Bureau of Air Commerce designated the first full-time aeronautical inspector for permanent duty in Alaska. Heretofore, Department of Commerce responsibilities in Alaska under the Air Commerce Act had been accomplished in the course of an annual visit by an inspector. The duties of the inspector included examination of airmen and aircraft for licensing, enforcement of airline regulations and air traffic rules, inspection of flying schools, rating of airports, and all other matters under the jurisdiction of the Department of Commerce. An important part of these duties was to cooperate closely with the territorial government in seeking to develop airports and stimulate interest in flying.
19410731: Lt. H. A. Boushey, Army Air Forces, made the first successful jet-assisted takeoff (jato) in the United States, at March Field, Calif., in an Ercoupe with pressed-powder-propellant jato rockets developed by the California Institute of Technology.
19490731: CAA inaugurated the first direct radiotelephone communications service between aircraft and an Air Route Traffic Control Center at the Chicago ARTCC. Extension of this capability to all ARTCCs was completed in 1955.
19520731: Two USAF Sikorsky H-19 helicopters made the first transatlantic helicopter flight, flying from Westover Field near Boston to Prestwick, Scotland, with stopovers in Maine, Labrador (for 10 days), Greenland, and Iceland. (See May 31-June 1, 1967.)
19540731: CAA launched an Aviation Incentive Movement (AIM) designed to stimulate interest in aeronautics among precollege students. Prompted by CAA’s concern over the shortage of engineers and other trained aeronautics personnel, AIM proposed to equip grade schools with aviation displays, conduct a series of nationwide clinics and competitions in the building and flying of model airplanes, and award flight or technical-training scholarships. Budgetary restraints limited the program to a modest effort. (See September 30, 1964.)
19590731: Effective this date, FAA required that one pilot at the controls of a turbine-powered airliner operating above 25,000 feet wear and use an oxygen mask, and that the other cockpit crew members wear masks ready for immediate use. This rule was modified as experience with jet operations grew and oxygen mask design evolved. Effective February 1, 1960, the altitude above which one pilot was required to use a mask was raised to 30,000 feet if all cockpit crew members wore masks designed for fast donning when needed. Effective September 30, 1965, the altitude above which these requirements applied to turbine aircraft equipped with fast-donning masks was raised to 41,000 feet.
19610731: Work began at Anchorage on the installation of an automatic telecommunications system to modernize FAA’s aeronautic communications in the Alaskan area. The new system was able to automatically switch reports coming in from 65 stations to the proper receiving station. It would handle mainly messages in FAA’s Service B, which covered primarily aircraft movements, flight plans, and messages related to air traffic control and aviation safety. Additional steps were taken in September to modernize major portions of FAA’s Alaskan telecommunications network with the award of a contract for 200 high-speed teletypewriters and associated equipment.
19630731: FAA issued a Guide to Drug Hazards in Aviation Medicine, the first work of its kind. Dr. Windsor Cutting, professor of therapeutics at Stanford University, prepared the work for the agency with the assistance of of other eminent pharmacologists and staff members of FAA’s Aviation Medical Service. A comprehensive listing of all commonly used drugs, both prescription and nonprescription, the Guide treated these by groups with similar pharmacological characteristics. For each group there was a concise statement of side effects, if any, making the drugs undesirable for fliers, and recommendations concerning the length of time a pilot should wait after taking a drug before resuming flight activity.
19680731: General William F. McKee resigned as FAA Administrator effective this date (see July 1, 1965). On August 1, 1968, Secretary of Transportation Alan S. Boyd designated FAA Deputy Administrator David D. Thomas as Acting Administrator. No one was named to the FAA Administrator post during the remaining months of the Johnson Administration. (See March 24, 1969.)
19700731: FAA issued to Pan American World Airways the first aviation war risk insurance premium policy under a new coverage plan. Previously, FAA’s only war risk insurance for which a premium was charged was a standby plan that would make coverage available in the event of war between major powers (see June 14, 1951). The new plan was offered in response to the entry into airline service of the Boeing 747. Because of the high cost of this aircraft (some $24 million), commercial insurers would cover only about 60 percent of its value. FAA’s new policy covered war risks for the commercially uninsurable portion of Boeing 747s flying international routes, and was later expanded to cover the aircraft’s whole value.
On February 4, 1971, FAA transferred the responsibility for administering the aviation war risk insurance program from its General Counsel to the Assistant Administrator for International Aviation Affairs. In November 1977, Public Law 95-163 expanded the scope of insurable risks to allow the FAA Administrator broad discretionary authority in extraordinary circumstances to insure air services deemed in the national interest. On February 4, 1984, the aviation insurance program was transferred from the Office of International Aviation to the Office of Aviation Policy and Plans. In 1992, legislation further expanded the scope of the program by allowing coverage for some domestic flight segments and certain services in direct support of flight operations.
In addition to the 747 coverage mentioned above, examples of uses of the aviation insurance program have included both premium and non-premium coverage of: flights in the Vietnam area during 1967-75; Middle East flights during the 1990-91 Operation Desert Shield/Storm; and flights to Somalia in support of Operation Restore Hope in 1992-93.
19710731: The Departments of Defense and Transportation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration issued a national plan for developing a microwave landing system (MLS) for civil-military common use. The plan, designed to meet all civil and military needs for instrument landing systems at domestic and foreign airports during this century, outlined two complementary development efforts: an industry program to produce prototype equipment at the earliest possible date; and a series of government programs concerned with such issues as validation, the investigation of subsystem concepts and techniques, and the application of MLS to civil-military aircraft operations.
MLS was intended to replace the instrument landing system (ILS), a unidirectional system employing VHF and UHF radio frequencies. The ILS, which had remained essentially unchanged since its introduction in the 1940s, suffered from limitations that included dependence on a fairly smooth airport surface to transmit an acceptable signal. Consequently, the system could not be installed in some areas without expensive reconfiguring of the terrain. The construction of a new hangar or even the accumulation of snow could adversely affect the system. MLS would provide precision, high-integrity guidance that would be relatively insensitive to the effects of terrain, structures, other aircraft, and weather. It could operate at airports where the conventional ILS could not operate because of terrain irregularities. Moreover, the new system would make more flight paths available because it would employ a wide-angle scanning beam, as opposed to the unidirectional beam of the old system.
On July 26, 1972, the responsibility for developing the new system was entrusted to a newly formed Microwave Landing System Branch within FAA’s Systems Research and Development Service. (See June 19, 1970, and January 27, 1972.)
19740731: A Delta Air Lines DC-9 crashed against a sea wall while making an instrument approach to Logan International Airport in Boston, Mass., with the loss of 89 lives. The National Transportation Safety Board attributed the accident to flight crew error. Although the Board also named “nonstandard” air traffic control service as a contributory factor, a U.S. district court cleared FAA of liability.
19760731: A slowdown by PATCO-affiliated air traffic controllers disrupted traffic around the country. PATCO president John F. Leyden had ordered the slowdown to protest the U.S. Civil Service Commission’s delay in completing a pay reclassification study for controllers. Leyden had also protested a Civil Service proposal to downgrade controllers at certain low-activity facilities. The slowdown ended when the Civil Service Commission agreed to reconsider its position and expedite the review, while FAA Administrator John L. McLucas publicly confirmed his support of upgradings at certain facilities. FAA took no disciplinary action against PATCO. (See May 7, 1975, and November 12, 1976.)
19830731: After testing in the areas of the Jacksonville and Miami Air Route Traffic Control Centers, FAA adopted the Hazardous Inflight Weather Advisory Service (HIWAS) for national implementation. HIWAS was designed to provide continuous broadcast of information on dangerous weather. FAA first implemented the system in the area where it had been tested, and in September 1985 expanded it to the Houston center’s airspace. By September 1989, the agency had completed nationwide delivery of sufficient HIWAS equipment to provide coverage at or above 4,000 feet.
19840731: FAA conducted an agency-wide Employee Attitude Survey as part of a drive for improvements in employee/management relations. Some 26,000 persons responded to the questionnaire, which a Civil Aeromedical Institute research team prepared and analyzed. Preliminary results announced on November 27 showed most employees to be generally challenged by their work, satisfied by their pay and job security, but less than positive about FAA’s human relations skills and certain related issues. Four questions addressed to air traffic control personnel helped to identify groups more prone to “burnout.”
The survey became a tool to evaluate Human Resources Program steps that included: on-site reviews by Secretarial panels of management experts; Employee Involvement Groups intended to give employees a greater voice in developing policy and procedures; a new Office of Human Resource
Management, headed by an Associate Administrator reporting directly to the Administrator (see March 19, 1985); and a “hotline” linking employees with the Administrator’s staff, beginning on August 6, 1984. Measures to combat burnout included stress management counseling and a June 1984 policy to allow more air traffic controllers to achieve full performance level, thus sharing difficult work more widely among the workforce.
In a continuing effort to evaluate improvement actions, FAA conducted a follow-up survey of all employees in 1986, and followed this with Job Satisfaction Surveys administered to a randomly selected 15 percent of the workforce. The survey series revealed the following overall job satisfaction percentages: 53 (1984); 56 (1986); 67 (1988); 65 (1990); 72 (1993); and 69 (1995).
19970731: The U.S. Senate confirmed Jane Garvey as FAA Administrator. August 4, Garvey was sworn in as the 14th FAA Administrator, the first to be appointed to a five-year term. (See June 11, 1997.)
19980731: FAA’s new Sexual Harassment Accountability Board began operations. The Board had responsibility for providing timely response to complaints while making senior officials accountable for their workplace environments. (See July 2000.)
20000731: FAA expanded the scope of its Accountability Board. In addition to dealing with allegations of sexual harassment, it would start to rule on allegations of harassment based on race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, age, or disability as well as other misconduct that might create a hostile work environment. (See July 1998.)
20000731: FAA completed the Common ARTS (Automated Radar Terminal System) program with the commissioning of the Huntington, West Virginia, site. Common ARTS was now fully operational at all 133 ARTS IIE sites and five ARTS IIIE sites. Besides providing upgraded equipment, the other major benefit of the common ARTS program was that, regardless of location, it allowed all ARTS systems to share a common software baseline that could be adapted to the size and complexity of a facility. These innovations facilitated the standardization of procedures, training, and logistics support.
20010731: FAA awarded a contract to ITT Industries Aerospace/Communications Division, of Ft. Wayne, Indiana, to provide the agency with multi-mode VHF digital airto-ground radios. The contract was for an initial $20.5 million and would be worth as much as $580 million if all options were exercised. ITT Industries partnered with Park Air Systems, Federal Data Corp., and Operational Technologies Services, Inc., to provide the equipment. This first building block of the Next Generation Air/Ground Communications (NEXCOM) system would, in phases, replace air traffic controllers’ aging analog radios with digital radios. When completed, the entirely digital system would enhance the FAA’s ability to meet expanding air traffic control communication demands. (See February 22, 2002.)
20030731: FAA began issuing new, security-enhanced airman certificates to the nation’s 650,000 active pilots. FAA Administrator Marion Blakey unveiled the new certificate before hundreds of aviation enthusiasts at the annual Experimental Aircraft Association AirVenture. The new credit card-sized certificates were made from high-quality composite media card stock and incorporated new security features, such as a hologram of the FAA seal. They replaced the existing paper airman certificates which were easily damaged.
20060731: FAA’s performance-based operations aviation rulemaking committee, a government and industry group, released the second version of the “Roadmap for Performance-Based Navigation.” The first road map, released in 2003, covered concepts and principles, but included very few details. The revised version spelled out how FAA planned to proceed in the near-term (2006-10), mid-term (2011-15), and far-term (2016- 25), and outlined dates for mandates on the types of equipment that would be needed by the airlines, business aircraft, and general aviation operators. The near-term period focused on the investment aircraft operators had already made in avionics and FAA spending on satellite-based navigation. It included the wide-scale rollout of RNAV procedures, including the instrument departures and arrivals commissioned at airports such as Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International and Dallas-Fort Worth International. (See December 20, 2005; August 6, 2007; March 2007.)
20130731: A new ground and satellite-based air traffic control system, the wide area multilateration system went into operation at the Telluride airport in Colorado. The Colorado Division of Aeronautics, FAA, and a $110,000 contribution by the Telluride Regional Airport Authority funded the new system, which allowed controllers to track planes below 12,000 feet all the way to the ground. (See December 3, 2012.)
20130731: FAA released its draft “Established Practices for Human Space Flight Safety” for public comment. It updated the draft with its “rationale” on September 23, 2013. According to the report’s introduction, FAA developed “this document to share our thoughts about established practices for human space flight occupant safety. Ultimately, our goal is to gain the consensus of government, industry, and academia on established practices as part of our mandate to encourage, facilitate, and promote the continuous improvement of the safety of launch and reentry vehicles designed to carry humans. The outcome of this effort may also serve as a starting point for a future rulemaking project.” (See April 29, 2013; December 4, 2013; September 16, 2014; October 15, 2020.)
20190731: Pilots and researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Alaska Center for Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration conducted the first official BVLOS unmanned aircraft flight in the country approved by the FAA. (See January 8, 2019; August 14, 2019.)
20230731: FAA named Kyle A. deCant, senior labor policy advisor. He will oversee strategic planning on labor issues and advise the agency’s acting administrator and deputy administrator. This is the first time FAA’s front office has had a permanent position focused on labor issues.