This Day in FAA History: July 19th

Full FAA Chronology at this link.
19300719: Incorporation action took place as a first step in the merger of Transcontinental Air Transport and Western Air Express to form Transcontinental and Western Air (TWA), which later changed its name to Trans World Airlines on May 17, 1950. Western Air Express, meanwhile, had retained its corporate identity on some routes and evolved into Western Airlines, a name it adopted in 1941.
19340719: The Bureau of Air Commerce announced the creation of a Development Section to conduct and promote work on new types of aircraft, engines, and accessories, with specialization in the development of a low-priced airplane for general public use (see November 8, 1933). The new section reported directly to the Director of Air Commerce.
19670719: A midair collision near Hendersonville, N.C., between a Piedmont Airlines Boeing 727 and a Cessna 310 killed all 82 people aboard the two aircraft. The fatalities included Secretary-designate of the Navy John T. McNaughton. The National Transportation Safety Board listed the probable cause as the Cessna’s deviation from its Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) clearance. The Board could not specifically identify the reason for the Cessna’s deviation; however, it cited the “minimum control procedures” used by FAA in handling the Cessna as a contributory factor in the accident. The Board’s recommendations included improvements to the air traffic control system and more stringent requirements for IFR pilots, including an annual proficiency flight check.
19680719: Air traffic congestion reached critical proportions when a total of 1,927 aircraft in the vicinity of New York City were delayed in taking off or landing, some for as long as three hours. The jam, which spread to other major transportation hubs, was exacerbated by PATCO’s decision to conduct a slowdown. (See July 3, 1968, and January 15, 1969.) At the root of the problem, however, was the inability of an inadequate and long-neglected air traffic control and airport system to accommodate the heavy tourist-season traffic. The jam was symptomatic of conditions that forced FAA to develop schedule restrictions for certain airports. (See June 1, 1969.)
19890719: A United Airlines DC-10 crashed while attempting an emergency landing in Sioux City, Iowa, after debris from a failed engine damaged the aircraft’s control system. The accident killed 110 of the 296 people on board. On August 3, FAA announced the formation of an agency/industry task force on improving aircraft survivability following major in-flight structural damage (see, June 5, 1990). Preliminary investigation of the accident indicated that one of the two titanium disks holding the engine’s fan blades separated, either intact or in fragments, from the rest of the engine. On September 15, FAA issued the first of several directives requiring fan disk inspections. In its final report on the crash, the National Transportation Safety Board listed the probable cause as the failure of the airline’s engine overhaul facility to detect a fatigue crack in the fan disk, a failure the Board attributed to inadequate consideration of human factors limitations.
19970719: A Cessna 172 and Beech Bonanza mid-air collision near Chicago’s Meigs field killed all seven onboard the two aircraft. The accident resulted in a safety review of FAA’s contract tower program.
20000719: Department of Transportation Rodney Slater announced that FAA had awarded contracts to purchase additional certified explosives detection systems and trace explosives devices for the nation’s airports, and would begin purchasing X-ray machines with new imaging software to improve screener performance. The Threat Image Projection (TIP) system projected digital images of hundreds of different guns, knives, and bombs onto the X-ray displays to test screeners’ abilities to detect threat objects. TIP would project the images at random into real carry-on bags going through the X-ray or inside bag images created by TIP. When a screener hit the button to stop the suspect bag, TIP flashed a “congratulations” for detecting the threat and recorded the screener’s performance. It also recorded missed threat images. (See May 19, 2000; July 27, 2000.)
20130719: FAA issued restricted category type certificates to a pair of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), a milestone leading to the first approved commercial UAS operations later in the summer. The newly certified UAS – Insitu’s Scan Eagle X200 and AeroVironment’s PUMA – were small UASs weighing less than 55 pounds. Each was about 4 1/2 feet long, with wingspans of ten and nine feet, respectively. (See June 19, 2013; September 12, 2013.)
20210719: FAA opened a safety field office in Houston to increase its oversight of commercial space operations in Texas and New Mexico. From this location, FAA inspectors could more effectively and efficiently monitor the ongoing testing programs and commercial space tourism operations of SpaceX and Blue Origin in Texas and Virgin Galactic in New Mexico, along with others in the region. (See July 11, 2021; July 20, 2021.)