This Day in FAA History: October 21st

Full FAA Chronology at this link.
19291021: Colonial Flying Service and the Scully Walton Ambulance Company of New York, N.Y., inaugurated an Air Ambulance Service.
19361021: Pan American Airways initiated regular weekly transpacific passenger service as the Hawaii Clipper took of from Almeda, near San Francisco, arriving at Manila on October 27. (See November 22-29, 1935, and April 28, 1937.)
19501021: During this seven-day period, CAA put into operation the first omnirange (VOR) airways (see Calendar Year 1947). Although 271 omniranges had already been commissioned in different parts of the United States, this marked the initial designation of a chain of these ranges as a controlled airway. The new routes, approximately 4,380 miles long, linked such major terminals as Kansas City, Denver, Albuquerque, El Paso, Omaha, and Oklahoma City. (June 1, 1952.) During fiscal year 1951, CAA began enhancing the VOR airways with distance measuring equipment (DME) to assist in low visibility approaches.
19611021: A new rule made airline management responsible for banning passengers appearing to be intoxicated. Although the pilot still retained his authority as captain in command, the new rule took into account the fact that the pilot was normally occupied with preflight checks during the time passengers were boarding.
19621021: FAA Administrator Halaby dedicated the Civil Aeromedical Research Institute’s new $8.5 million custom-designed building at the Aeronautical Center, Oklahoma City (see October 31, 1959). Key programs continued in the new facility included investigation of such topics as: the “true” age of pilots as opposed to their chronological age; effects of certain prescription drugs on aircrew members; crash-impact survival; methods for selecting trainee controllers, stress experienced by controllers, and the bearing of such stress on the desirability of an early retirement program.
19621021: Under the air route traffic control center consolidation program first announced in 1959, FAA phased out the Pittsburgh center and transferred its operational responsibilities to the Cleveland center.
19651021: Effective this date, FAA clarified its regulations governing the issuance of limited operations medical certificates. The previous language of the rule had led some applicants to believe that they had a right to attempt to demonstrate their ability to fly safely regardless of the nature of their limiting deficiency. The new wording made it clear that certain disases and disabilities could not be compensated for under any circumstances.
19681021: The Boeing Company formally announced it had abandoned its variable-sweep-wing design for the U.S. supersonic transport (SST) in favor of a conventional fixed-wing. The company’s engineers had never been able to overcome the weight penalties imposed by the variable-sweep wing design. Boeing would submit the new design to FAA for approval in January 1969. (See January 15, 1968, and January 15, 1969.)
19861021: FAA announced the award of two contracts to develop competing prototypes of the Voice Switching and Control System (VSCS). The system would provide controllers at air route traffic control centers with computer-controlled voice switching for air-ground communications and well as intercom and interphone communications within and between FAA facilities. Compared to the existing electromechanical system, the new electronic VSCS would be faster, more reliable, and cheaper to maintain. Harris Corporation received the production contract on December 31, 1991. (See June 30, 1995.)
20031021: FAA announced the nationwide deployment of the first all-digital airport radar system. The Airport Surveillance Radar (ASR-11) replaced older-generation analog radars nearing the end of their service life. The replacement technology provided improved digital aircraft and weather input needed by FAA’s new air traffic control automation systems, such as the Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System (STARS). The first ASR-11 went operational in March at the Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, Naval Air Station, and was providing radar data to STARS at the Philadelphia International Airport. The new radars grew out of a joint FAA/DoD program. FAA planned to procure a total of 112 ASR-11s, with scheduled deployment completed in 2009. FAA had procured 25 systems since the contract was awarded in December 1996.
20101021: FAA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced a five year agreement to develop aviation fuel from forest and crop residues and other feedstocks to decrease dependence on foreign oil and stabilize aviation fuel costs. Under the partnership, the agencies would assess the availability of different kinds of feedstocks that could be processed by bio-refineries to produce jet fuels. The participants would develop a tool to evaluate the status of different components of a feedstock supply chain, such as availability of biomass from farms and forests, the potential of that biomass for production of jet fuel, and the length of time it would take to ramp up to full-scale production. The agencies already had existing programs and collaborative agreements with private and public partners and resources to help biorefiners develop cost-effective production plans for jet aircraft biofuels.
20101021: TASC, Inc., announced a 10-year FAA contract award worth up to $827.8 million for national airspace system support services. The SE-2020 support services contract covered advanced systems engineering, investment and business case analysis, planning and forecasting, as well as business, financial and information management support services related to the development and the transformation of the national air transportation system. (See May 26, 2010.)
20131021: United Airlines announced plans to equip up to 397 of its aircraft over the next six years with avionics equipment necessary to provide the pilot-to-controller digital communications under the FAA NextGen data comm avionics equipage program. United became the first carrier to commit to such equipage. On September 20, 2012, FAA awarded Harris Corp., a $331 million data communications integrated services contract as part of the NextGen airspace modernization initiative. Among other things, the contract called for a data comm avionics equipage program, an $80 million fund to encourage equipping a minimum of 1,900 aircraft during the course of the first six years of the contract for the future air navigation systems (FANS) 1/A. (See September 30, 2013.)
20141021: The Obama Administration announced all passengers arriving to the U.S. from Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea must land at one of the five airports with enhanced Ebola screening: John F. Kennedy, Dulles, O’Hare, Newark, or Atlanta. On October 23, Center for Disease Control Director Tom Frieden announced that starting October 27 passengers from the three countries most affected by Ebola would be required to report their temperature daily for 21 days and call a state hotline if they showed any symptoms of the illness. The program began in six states — New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, Maryland and Virginia – and later expanded to other states. (See October 11, 2014.)
20211021: FAA published a notice of proposed rulemaking to provide an extra hour of rest to flight attendants in between shifts. The proposal would extend the federal minimum rest hour requirement for flight attendants from nine hours to ten hours when scheduled for a duty period of fourteen hours or less.