Air Traffic Quotes



The 2013 Congress was one of those that was politically polarized and unresponsive to party leaders. This presented gridlock in legislation that was needed to appropriate the money to maintain the needed level of air traffic controllers. So they were required to take unpaid furloughs reducing the number of air traffic controllers each day. Some critics wanted the Department of Transportation to try and control the usual number of aircraft flights with the reduced workforce. The Secretary refused.


It is perhaps ironic that Langley had the vision of air flight while Wilber Wright, the inventor of the first airplane a few years later, saw it’s role much more limited. See: {42182}.


American (traitor of whistleblower depending on who is judging) Edward Snowden was in the Moscow International Airport seeking political asylum from several nations. The United States, wanting to extradite and try Snowden criminally had “intelligence” that Snowden was going to fly out of Russia in the private plane of Bolivian President Morales. The U.S. persuaded the European countries to refuse his plan “flyover” rights—usually a formality that is always granted for a foreign head of state. This forced Morales to land his plane for refueling in Austria where, under pressure from the United States, Austrian law enforcement officials boarded and searched the plane—something that is almost never done to a plane that is just refueling, much less the airplane of a head of state. The Secretary General was expressing the outrage of the OAS nations (and many others around the world). What made the situation even more embarrassing for the United States, Austria, and the other European nations which did not grant flyover rights, was the fact that the U. S. Intelligence was totally wrong. Snowden was not on the plane forcing the Austrians who had technically committed an act of war against Bolivia by forcing their way onto a Bolivian plane carrying diplomats and the president of Bolivia, to apologize. Snowden was still in Russia, and the Russians then gave him political asylum in large part because they too resented the behavior of Austria, Europe and above all the United States in the Bolivian plane incident as the pane had taken off from Moscow. This was a very difficult call for the American intelligence agencies, in that there may well have been a plan to put Snowden in that plane that was cancelled when it was clear that the Americans would try and intercept the plane somehow. The OAS and other complaining nations argued that even if Snowden had been on the plane, there was no right to intercept and search the plane anyway.