This Day in FAA History: July 17th

Full FAA Chronology at this link.
19380717: Douglas Corrigan took off from Floyd Bennett Field, N.Y., on a 28-hour solo flight to Dublin, Ireland. The pilot had failed to receive clearance for a transatlantic flight, and his persistent claim that he had intended to fly to California earned him the sobriquet “Wrong Way” Corrigan.
19570717: President Eisenhower appointed Elwood R. Quesada as his Special Assistant for aviation matters and charged him with “taking the leadership in securing the implementation of the Curtis plan of action.” (See April 11, 1957.)
19630717: FAA reconstituted its International Aviation Service as the Office of International Aviation Affairs, under an Assistant Administrator for International Aviation Affairs reporting to the Administrator. The same order directed decentralization of operational responsibility for the agency’s international aviation activities to the regions. Full implementation was achieved in September 1963. As a result, the mission of the new Washington headquarters organization changed from an operating function to a staff activity; however, the new office retained responsibility for the management of FAA’s role in technical assistance programs.
19650717: A 16-year absence of air service between the United States and any part of the Communist bloc by United States or Communist-bloc airlines ended this date when Pan American World Airways began serving Prague, Czechoslovakia.
19680717: The Department of Transportation formed an Air Traffic Control Advisory Committee for the purpose of recommending air traffic control systems and requirements for the 1980s and beyond. (See December 1969.)
19700717: New Orleans’ Moisant International Airport became the first U.S. airport to subject all passengers to the FAA-developed antihijacking screening system. (See January 1969.) The system was based on a behavioral profile used in conjunction with weapons detection by magnetometer. If a person identified by the system as a possible risk did not satisfactorily resolve the question with airline personnel, he was further investigated by a U.S. marshal or deputy marshal. Previously, individual airlines had used the system only on selected flights. (See February 2, 1972.)
19780717: At an economic summit conference in Bonn, the leaders of United States, West Germany, France, Great Britain, Japan, Canada, and Italy announced a joint resolution to isolate from international air traffic all countries harboring air hijackers. In the resolution, they stated their intent to stop all flights to any country that refused to extradite or prosecute those who have hijacked an aircraft and/or failed to return such an aircraft. The resolution also called for a ban on incoming flights from an offending nation, as well as a ban on any traffic to it by airlines of participating countries. The conferees informally agreed to make no exceptions, not even for persons escaping from totalitarian governments. Diplomatic efforts were begun to gain the agreement of as many other countries as possible.
The Bonn Resolution followed the doubling of hijacking attempts throughout the world in 1977 — the death toll in hijackings for that year was 129 persons. In December, a Malaysian Airlines Boeing 737 crashed after being hijacked, killing all 100 persons aboard. The most spectacular incident of 1977, however, was the five-day odyssey of a Lufthansa B-737 hijacked in October over the Mediterranean and flown to various places in the Near East. The hijackers murdered the pilot, and later, in Somalia, threatened to massacre the other 86 people on board. Just 90 minutes before their deadline, West German commandos stormed the aircraft and rescued all the hostages. After this episode, the International Federation of Air Line Pilots threatened a two-day international pilots’ strike unless the United Nations took immediate action on air piracy. In December, the Flight Engineers International Association urged extradition or prosecution of hijackers held in four countries.
19920717: The United States and the European Economic Community signed an agreement placing certain limitations on government subsidies for the development and production of large civil aircraft.
19960717: Trans World Airlines Flight 800 exploded in midair and crashed into the Atlantic off Long Island after taking off from New York Kennedy airport for Paris. All 230 persons aboard the Boeing 747 died. Initial speculation as to the cause focused on terrorism. On the day after the tragedy, FAA confirmed that the security measures announced during the previous summer (see August 9, 1995) remained in effect, with some adjustments. On July 25, President Clinton announced increased security for air travel. FAA stated that steps would include more intensive screening of passengers on international flights, increased screening of carry-on bags for both international and domestic flights, as well as other actions not disclosed to the public. Clinton also announced that Vice President Gore would head a commission to review aviation security. This White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security was formally established August 21, 1996. (See September 9, 1996.)
Despite painstaking recovery of the wreckage, the TWA disaster proved difficult to explain. Throughout 1996, the National Transportation Safety Board refused to rule out any of three possible causes: a bomb, a missile, or mechanical failure. As the investigation progressed, however, the possibility of an accidental fuel tank explosion received increased media attention. On December 13, 1996, the Board announced a group of recommendations for improving the safety of the 747 fuel system. FAA, which had been conducting a review of 747 safety issues in the wake of the crash, issued on December 23 an airworthiness directive requiring inspection of certain wiring in the fuel systems of older 747s.
20010717: FAA released final rules on airport and aircraft security, as recommended by the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security following the 1996 crash of TWA 800. (See July 27, 2000; September 11, 2001.)
20020717: The White House announced its intention to nominate National Transportation Safety Board Chair Marion Blakey to become FAA Administrator after Jane Garvey’s five-year term ended. Blakey, 54, had been at NTSB for less than a year, having been selected for the post in June 2001 and sworn in September. Before becoming NTSB chairman, Blakey, a native of Gadsden, Alabama, spent eight years – during the Clinton Administration – running her own public affairs consulting business, Blakey & Associates. Before that she held numerous government posts in Republican administrations, including jobs with the Departments of Commerce and Education, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the White House. She was Administrator of Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration under the senior President Bush from 1992-1993. She was a 1970 graduate of Mary Washington College, and did graduate work in Middle East affairs while attending the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. (See August 2, 2002.)
20060717: The engineered materials arresting system installed at Greenville Downtown Airport, Greenville, SC, successfully stopped a Mystere Falcon 900 aircraft that overran the runway. (See January 22, 2005; July 18, 2008).
20140717: FAA issued a notice to airman prohibiting, until further notice, U.S. flight operations in the airspace over eastern Ukraine because of recent events and the potential for continued hazardous activities. A Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 flying over the Ukraine had been shot down earlier in the day with a suspected surface-to-air missile, with the loss of all 290 people onboard. The restricted area included the entire Simferopol and Dnepropetrovsk flight information regions (FIRs). This action expanded a prohibition of U.S. flight operations issued by FAA in April over the Crimean region of Ukraine and adjacent areas of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. No scheduled U.S. airlines flew routes through this airspace. (See April 15, 2014; December 29, 2014; October 13, 2015; October 18, 2018.)