Dynalifter Floats Like A Butterfly, Lands Like A Plane
•An aircraft that combines massive freight capacity, high efficiency and low cost is taking shape in a hangar outside Toledo, Ohio, and could be airborne next year.
Contents Pages by Subject
Transportation: Air Travel
TSA Operating Manual (Secret, PDF)
Powell GammillContains screening procedures, ID info, and a whole lot more. Unredacted. 93 page PDF. Download it here on Freedom's Phoenix. Page 57 onward was most interesting.
Mysterious Radiation May Strike Airline Passengers
• LiveScienceIf jets pass near lightning discharges or related phenomena known as terrestrial gamma-ray flashes, passengers and crew members could be exposed to harmful levels of radiation, a dose equal to that of 400 chest X-rays.
TSA Leaks Sensitive Airport Screening Manual
• WiredWho needs anonymous sources when the government is perfectly capable of leaking its own secrets? Government workers preparing the release of a Transportation Security Administration manual that details airport screening procedures badly bungled their
FAA turned down Boeing 777 warnings
• ReutersThe U.S. aviation regulator decided to allow over 130 Boeing Co 777 airplanes to continue flying international trips through early 2011, despite warnings about suspect parts that have caused rare shutdowns in midair. [say what?!]
FAA glitch causes widespread US air travel delays
• APAir travelers nationwide scrambled to revise their plans Thursday after an FAA computer glitch caused widespread cancellations and delays for the second time in 15 months.
TSA releases excerpts from guidelines for searches
• Papers PleaseAs part of an effort to derail the lawsuit brought by the ACLU on behalf of Steve Bierfeldt, who was detained and interrogated at a TSA checkpoint at the St. Louis airport, the TSA has filed a public declaration with the court that includes their lat
TSA screening more than just carry-on bags
• Washington PostYou might not see them, but they're studying you. To identify potentially dangerous individuals, the Transportation Security Administration has stationed specially trained behavior-detection officers at 161 U.S. airports. The officers may be posit
Tales of the TSA
Matt SharpQuestioning the TSA is fun !
FAA probe of American Airlines may widen
• ReutersAmerican Airlines operated jets later found to have substandard repairs, and federal regulators are probing allegations that at least one plane was considered unsafe to fly at normal cruise altitude. The FAA is expanding its probe into suspected stru
6 year old boy feared floating away in homemade balloon found
• Washington Post (video)A rambunctious 6-year-old boy had climbed into a homemade helium balloon, the anchors announced gravely. Now he was floating so prettily 7,000 feet above Colorado, toward the heavens, at the mercy of the winds. For three hours on a workaday Thursd
Gallery: Let the X-Planes Begin
• WiredAnd so to mark the 62nd anniversary of Chuck Yeager’s historic supersonic flight in the Bell X-1, here are 10 X-Planes that have led to some of the most innovative and useful aircraft designs.
The 8k Personal Satellite (and Other Space Adventures)
• h+ magazineInterOrbital Systems recently announced that they were offering to send people's personal satellites into low-earth orbit on a NEPTUNE 30 rocket for the low low low cost of $8,000.
The Parajet Skycar redefines flying a car
• www.greenlaunches.comThey say that the Parajet Skycar will be the world's first carbon neutral flying car. But what piques my interest is that a Skycar Expedition team plans to fly/drive/whatever the vehicle from London to Timbouctou in 2009. Using a combination of fligh
Travelers Provide Airlines with Birth Date and Gender Starting Saturday
• www.securitymanagement.comStarting September 1st, some travelers will begin providing their birth date and sex when booking their airline reservations.
It's the second part of the government's phased-in program, Secure Flight, to match passengers' names against the government's terrorism watch list. Earlier in the summer, when passengers booked their online travel they had to provide the airline with exactly how their name appears on their government-issued identification card—whether it be a driver's license or a passport.
Giant bureaucratic Snafu Leaves Dozens Stranded on Plane Overnight
• Yahoo newsIn an act of staggering ineptitude seldom rivaled outside Poland, TSA officials and other drones left an entire airplane full of people to spend the night on the tarmac of Rochester, Minn. airport last night. (No wonder they take our weapons away at airports)
When the president comes to town your right to travel gets suspended
• AZ Central
8 pilots violated airspace restrictions that were put in place because of President Barack Obama's visit, according to Federal Aviation Administration officials.
There were 7 violations Sunday and 1 this morning within the restricted area, which encompassed a roughly 30-mile radius around Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, according to FAA spokesman Ian Gregor. The restrictions were in effect Saturday through today.
FAA: 2 Employees Investigated In Mid-Air Collision
• APAuthorities have removed from duty an air traffic controller who they
say was talking on the phone during last week's deadly midair collision
over New York's Hudson River, along with a supervisor who was out of
the building at the time.
Boeing Commits Airship Heavy Lift Design
• arcleinSetting the obvious aside, moving a truck load of fresh food from California directly to the East coast with no mechanical vibration at a speed of around 70 mile per hour is a huge commercial improvement. You also can achieve point to point delivery rather easily from a parking lot or open field in California at the processor to a field beside the distributer in New York. This technology package makes this all plausible and economically feasible.
DHS chief accused of using no-fly list for political payback
• The RegisterArizona’s state treasurer is not-so-subtly accusing President Obama’s Homeland Security chief of abusing America’s “no-fly” list to satisfy a personal vendetta against him.
168 killed in Iran plane crash
• AP[Consequences of embargo?] An Iranian passenger plane crashed Wednesday in northwest Iran, killing all 168 people on board, state media reported.
United Airlines commercial on Freedom's Phoenix
• youtubeDon't get mad, get even! :-D
Courts and Congress finally start to rein in the TSA
• Papers PleaseUntil recently, the TSA has been a domestic legal Guantanamo, and the
TSA has treated their domain of “checkpoints” and travel control and
surveillance as a law-free zone where their powers of search, seizure,
detention, and denial of passage were unconstrained by the
Constitution, human rights treaties,
judicial review, or stautory or regulatory standards. As indeed it has
been: Congress has enacted no law specifically defining any limits on
the authority of TSA agents at checkpoints (or elsewhere), and the TSA
itself has never conducted any rulemaking or issued any
publicly-disclosed regulations defining its authority, its limits, what
orders travellers do or don’t have to comply with, and which forms of
“noncooperation” are considered grounds for which sanctions
TSA Detains Traveler Over Comic Book
• SFScope"The minute I saw the faces of the agents, I knew I was in trouble. The first page of the Unthinkable
script mentioned 9/11, terror plots, and the fact that the (fictional)
world had become a police state. The TSA agents then proceeded to
interrogate me, having a hard time understanding that a comic book
could be about anything other than superheroes, let alone that anyone
actually wrote scripts for comics.
“Clear” registered traveler company fails after wasting $116M
• Papers Please
260,000 members down the tubes. No refunds.
Congratulations, suckers! Not only did you sign up for and pay money to a totalitarian program, but as usual, the police state was run by incompetents. Your little attempt to suck up to the TSA gestapo now won’t be doing you any good.
Are there any rules at airport checkpoints?
• Papers PleaseWe had a chance to ask some questions of the TSA’s Chief Privacy Officer, Peter Pietra, when he showed up at the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference to talk about the SPOT
program, under which roving teams of TSA agents watch people in
airports for a (secret, of course) checklist of “suspicious” behavior,
question some of those people, and finger some of them for more intrusive search or further questioning when they reach the “screening” checkpoints.
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Petra claimed that, “There isn’t any search or seizure … until the checkpoint”, even if you decline to respond to questions from the SPOT teams or other TSA agents. But, “At the checkpoint, it’s a different story … There’s a ’special circumstances’ exception that would
Air Pirates in Long Beach
Brock LorberOn May 22, a general aviation aircraft was hijacked by heavily-armed men in Long Beach, CA and it's not an isolated incident.
Brazilian Air Force: Bodies of Air France Flight 447 Passengers Found
• Fox NewsDEVELOPING: The first bodies of passengers of the doomed Air France flight that plummeted into the sea have been found, Brazil's air force said Saturday.
The Brazilian military said search crews scanning the Atlantic Ocean located two male bodies of passengers aboard Flight 447 — which crashed midway through a trip from Rio de Janeiro to Paris before dawn Monday morning.
The crews also found debris, Brazilian air force spokesman Jorge Amaral told reporters in the northeastern Brazilian city of Recife.
Amaral said the bodies were recovered Saturday morning and were picked up roughly 400 miles northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands off Brazil's northern coast.<
Pilot claims Air France Flight 447 was blown out of the sky by terrorists
• Mail OnlineInvestigators are examining a bomb threat called in on a flight from Buenos Aires to Paris just days before Flight 447 disappeared over the Atlantic ocean, Meanwhile an Air France pilot said it was ‘highly likely’ the jet was blown out of the sky by a bomb.
Congress to vote on virtual strip searches
• Papers PleaseWhat can you do? Visit StopDigitalStripSearches.org & sign the online petition endorsed by the Identity Project. More importantly, call/email your Congressmen today & urge them to vote FOR the “Chaffetz amendment on Whole Body Imaging” to H.R. 2200, the TSA authorization bill.
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