This Day in FAA History: October 5th

Full FAA Chronology at this link.
19311005: Clyde E. Pangborn and Hugh Herndon, Jr., made the first nonstop transpacific flight, as well as the first nonstop flight between Japan and the United States, in a Bellanca Pacemaker. The two men took off from Samushiro Beach, 300 miles north of Tokyo, and landed at Wenatchee, Wash., covering 4,448 miles in 41 hours 13 minutes.
19761005: The Labor Department certified the Federal Aviation Science and Technological Association (FASTA), a National Association of Government Employees union, as the exclusive bargaining representative of some 7,700 airway facilities employees. The employees had selected FASTA as their representative in an April 1976 election, but certification had been delayed by an objection by the American Federation of Government Employees. FAA and FASTA signed a national labor agreement in September 1977. (See December 31, 1981.)
19841005: FAA announced a contract for ground stations for the new Mode S radar beacon system, a secondary radar system employing advanced ground sensors and radar beacon transponders aboard aircraft. Two corporations participated in the joint contract to produce 78 of the stations, with an option for another 59 units. The Mode S system was designed to replace the existing air traffic control radar beacon system, know as ATCRBS (see June 23, 1981). The discrete address capability of the new system would enable controllers to interrogate aircraft individually and selectively to determine their position, identity, and altitude, without having to use voice communications. This would eliminate the overlapping and garbled signals that were sometimes a problem in busy terminal areas. Mode S would also make possible the development of a capability for controllers to transmit data to properly equipped aircraft directly without using voice communications. (See January 29, 1987, and May 9, 1993.)
20001005: Runway 7R/25L opened at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.
20171005: Effective this date, FAA and the Department of Interior agreed to restrict drone flights up to 400 feet within the lateral boundaries of these sites: Statue of Liberty National Monument, New York, NY; Boston National Historical Park (U.S.S. Constitution), Boston, MA; Independence National Historical Park, Philadelphia, PA; Folsom Dam; Folsom, CA; Glen Canyon Dam; Lake Powell, AZ; Grand Coulee Dam; Grand Coulee, WA; Hoover Dam; Boulder City, NV; Jefferson National Expansion Memorial; St. Louis, MO; Mount Rushmore National Memorial; Keystone, SD; and Shasta Dam; Shasta Lake, CA. (See June 20, 2014; December 18, 2017.)
20171005: Tetra Tech, Inc., announced it had received a $356 million contract to provide engineering and technical support services to FAA. Under the five-year navigation technical assistance contract II (NAVTAC II), Tetra Tech would support FAA in the planning, research, development, implementation, maintenance, and decommissioning of FAA’s navigation, landing, and lighting systems.
20181005: President Trump signed a five-year FAA reauthorization bill (PL 115– 254), which provided one of the longest reauthorization periods for the agency since the 1980s. Among other things, the legislation required FAA to: establish minimum standards for seat size and pitch on commercial airliners; prohibit airlines from bumping passengers once they were on board; banned the placement of live animals in storage bins and set policies for support animals in the cabin (See May 15, 2018; August 8, 2019.); prohibited customers from using cell phones in flight; required FAA to establish an aviation consumer advocate and create an Office of Spaceports; and determine whether airlines provided adequate lavatory access. The bill also required airlines to provide more information to customers about the assistance they provided in event of weather delays. It established a task force to study in-flight sexual assaults and required most commercial airlines to install a second security barrier – a wire mesh gate – to guard against cockpit intrusions. In addition, it gave FAA, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, and the Federal Communications Commission 270 days to make a determination on what spectrum drones could use to communicate and report its finding to Congress. (See September 28, 2017.)