This Day in FAA History: October 17th

Full FAA Chronology at this link.
19661017: Effective this date, FAA required pilots to have a helicopter instrument rating to operate a helicopter under Instrument Flight Rules conditions.
19711017: Opening of the first officially designated STOLport solely for short takeoff and landing aircraft took place at Disney World, near Orlando, Fla. (The term “STOLport” had previously been applied to that portion of an airport reserved for STOL aircraft, and not to the entire facility.) The facility was the first such site in a projected intrastate STOL transportation system. (See August 5, 1968, and July 26, 1972.)
19771017: A U.S. Supreme Court decision ended the long dispute over landing rights for the Anglo-French Concorde supersonic transport at New York Kennedy airport. In 1976, Secretary of Transportation William T. Coleman had allowed a 16-month trial of the Concorde at Washington and New York (see February 4, 1976); however, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, operator of Kennedy airport, had banned the Concorde pending further study of its environmental impact. During the spring of 1977, citizens concerned about the Concorde’s potential noise conducted demonstrations that included the deliberate snarling of automobile traffic by driving cars very slowly down Kennedy’s access roads.
Meanwhile, on May 11, 1977, a Federal District Court ruled that the Port Authority’s landing ban was illegal because it was in “irreconcilable conflict” with Federal prerogatives. A month later, on June 14, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit modified this ruling, holding that the Port Authority had the right to establish “fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory” noise standards. The Court of appeals sent the case back to the District Court to determine whether the Port Authority’s actions met the “fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory” test. On August 17, the District Court ruled that the Port Authority’s long delay in formulating noise standards constituted unreasonable and discriminatory treatment of the Concorde. It was this decision that the Supreme Court upheld. Concorde passenger service from New York to London and Paris began on November 22, 1977.
19891017: An earthquake, registering 7.1 on the Richter scale, shook northern California, damaging runways, disrupting airline service, and causing approximately $50 million damage to FAA facilities and equipment. Among the affected facilities were the San Francisco tower cab, which lost windows and its ceiling, and the San Jose tower, which lost a window and air conditioning unit; controllers nevertheless remained on duty to ensure the safety of flights aloft. FAA subsequently allocated $8 million in discretionary airport improvement funds for partial reconstruction of a runway at Oakland.
20111017: FAA broke ground on a new $69 million, 324-foot air traffic control tower and TRACON at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. The new tower would replace one opened in 1988. FAA expected to commission the new tower and TRACON in late 2014.
20131017: A 10,800-foot runway opened at O’Hare International Airport as part of a larger expansion project. The new runway, 10 Center/28 Center, became the airport’s only airstrip capable of accommodating the largest planes in the commercial fleet – the Airbus A380 and the Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental. (See November 20, 2005; October 15, 2015.)
20141017: FAA released the “NextGen Priorities Joint Implementation Plan,” to Congress. The plan summarized the high-level commitments agreed upon by FAA and the aviation community and provided a timeline of capability milestones and locations. The plan also identified four core priorities designed to cut down on wait time between flights taking off and landing: optimizing airports with multiple runways; reconfiguring the navigation system from radar to GPS-based; increasing the efficiency of surface operations; and improving communications between aircraft and the ground through digital communication systems. (See October 8, 2014.)
20161017: Orbital ATK’s Cygnus spacecraft lifted off from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Wallops Island, VA, carrying supplies for the International Space Station. This was the first launch from the spaceport since an Antares rocket and its Cygnus spacecraft were lost in October 2014. (See October 28, 2014.)