FAA works hard to manage its image. After a disastrous year in 1996, FAA created their first PDF ‘chronology’, presenting the history of aviation and FAA from 1926-1996. Of course, FAA’s ‘Chronology’ was no exception to the general rule that history tends to be defined by whomever writes it. Subsequent updates to the official version by FAA were created, covering 1997-2010, then 1997-2012, and eventually 1997-2014. Links to copies of all these PDF files are listed below, under ‘Sources’.
The pro-aviation ‘spin’ woven into FAA’s official history documents is telling. In fact, any critical thinker could easily produce enough examples of spin to present a solid doctoral thesis on FAA’s biased creation of propaganda. This is but one more example of how a captured regulatory agency misbehaves – how it ends up serving the industry, to the detriment of the people it was intended to serve.
A core objective of aiReform is to balance out the FAA/industry propaganda, to help people to see past the spin and comprehend the whole picture. So, the FAA History Pages were created by aiReform, using the contents of the official history within FAA’s PDF files as the seed documentation. The entire text within the PDF files was converted into HTML, thus allowing full searches online. Color-coded tags were also added, to make it easier to read and navigate through the content.
The FAA History Pages is a very large project, covering nearly a hundred years of FAA/aviation history. Construction of these pages is ongoing and will continue for many more months; frankly, as is typical with historical documentation, there will always be new details to add. Once these webpages are fully developed, FAA’s narrowly spun version will become supplemented with the many accidents, errors, cover-ups, whistleblower-retaliations, grandstanding, deceptions, schemes and other details FAA chose to leave out. Readers will then be able to view a complete FAA History.
How the Pages are Laid Out:
The content is laid out graphically, with different fonts and alignments. As presented in the example below (green box), there is ‘the FAA story’ (aligned with the LEFT MARGIN), and then there is ‘the rest of the story’ (aligned with the RIGHT MARGIN):
The core content of the FAA History Pages was compiled using these FAA PDF files:
- FAA, a Historical Perspective, 1903-2008 (200p)
- FAA Historical Chronology, 1926-1996 (303p)
- FAA Chronology, 1997-2010 (update to 1926-1996 Chronology, 154p)
- FAA Chronology, 1997-2012 (copied 8-16-2013 from FAA.gov, 178p)
- FAA Chronology, 1997-2012 (copied 12-10-2015 from ntl.bts.gov, 178p)
- FAA Chronology, 1997-2014 (copied 5-13-2015 from FAA.gov, 223p)
The other FAA History Pages content will be compiled from FOIA response documents or online sources. One excellent online source is Wikipedia’s Timeline of Aviation.
TAGS & COLOR-CODES:
The following color-coded tags are being added to each dated entry within the FAA History Pages, to aid in research:
— limited to major fatal accidents, as well as some non-fatal accidents that were especially significant for evolving new safety rules. Most of these color-coded markers contain links to accident information at Wikipedia, NTSB, Aviation-Safety.Net, or elsewhere.
— includes news articles and other key dates related to Whistleblower cases. The emphasis is on specific FAA Whistleblowers, but some non-FAA cases may also be tagged, where relevant.
— typically includes news items about PATCO/NATCA, controller errors, ATC equipment upgrades, new ATC facilities, revised ATC procedures, etc.
— includes noise, air pollution, and climate change, as well as FAA actions, decisions, or restructuring related to the environment.
— includes major popular news stories. Occasionally, FAA or ATC news stories may be listed with this tag, but more commonly, this tag will be attached to non-aviation news stories (e.g., world/national events).