The graphic (website) version of this newsletter can be accessed at:
http://pages.prodigy.net/rockaway/newsletter479.htm

Aviation Conspiracy Newsletter 
#479........................................................................May 
4,  2008 Past newsletters can be accessed at: 
http://pages.prodigy.net/rockaway/ACNewsmenu.htm  If you want to get the 
newsletter sent to you every week, sign up to AviationWatch. Bill Mulcahy 
rockaway@prodigy.net

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Quote of the Week:  "The FAA has been pounding it into the inspectors for 
the past several years that the customers are the airlines, not the flying 
public," comment from FAA inspector, Gabe Bruno, who was removed as the 
FAA's top man in Orlando after he questioned the priorities of higher ups

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FAA Whistleblowers Expose New Corruption!!!

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As Bill Sees It (Editorial): March 2008 Video Of Southwest Inspection 
Scandal That Exposed FAA Corruption!!! The exposure of corruption in the FAA 
management continues today but it all began with Southwest Airlines 
inspection story in March of this year.

FAA Whistleblower Claims Plane Mechanics Not Properly Certified!!!  FAA 
management is STILL punishing lower echelon inspectors for doing their jobs 
correctly!!!  The latest FAA corruption is a story from Florida about a 
recently retired FAA official who blew the whistle to congress on FAA 
management's intimidating inspector's to go easy on the FAA's "customers," 
the airlines!!! Now Gabe Bruno is saying that plane mechanics got FAA 
approval simply by paying for the certification. Why not? It certainly "fast 
tracks" the process, which is something the FAA has always been doing when 
they want to expand an airport.

Anti-Heathrow Expansion Candidate Wins Mayoral Election In London!!! This 
seems to put another nail in the "third runway" expansion plan for Heathrow 
Airport. However while the new mayor opposes Heathrow expansion he does what 
almost all other politicians do when their constituents demand action on 
aviation noise, they say they will move over somebody else. In the case of 
Boris Johnson wants to build another major airport "east of the Thames 
(River)" While I think it's nice that politicians are finally seeing the 
insanity (with the help of outraged voters) of having major airports located 
in the hearts of major cities, I don't like their solution of spreading the 
noise and the global-warming air pollution to quiet rural areas in need of 
jobs. Personally I would rather have a nuclear depository located near me 
than an airport. New York Environmental Group Appeals To Sen. "Chuck" 
Schumer On Airspace Redesign Scheme!!! Good luck getting this aviation 
expansionist rat to care about people on the ground. The only thing "Chuck" 
cares about is expanding airports, protecting favored communities and of 
course his false environmentalist public relations image. Corrupt News Media 
Help While Schumer is helping dump more aviation pollution on New Yorkers he 
is busy getting local New York news media to promote him as being concerned 
with helicopter noise in the Hamptons, Long Island. This only goes to show 
that the media is corrupt as the rotten politicians they help promote. 
Schumer, along with congressmen John Hall and Maurice Hinchey refused pleas 
to get an environmental assessment on the Port Authority of New York and New 
Jersey's plan to build a 4th major New York City airport (Stewart Airport) 
in upstate in the upstate town of Windsor. Yet the local news media 
constantly promote Hall and Hinchey as environmentalist politicians who get 
"green" awards from obscure environmental groups !!!

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New York Environmental Group Wants Sen. Schumer To Oppose Airspace 
Redesign!!! As I believe you are aware, "Quiet Rockland" is an organization 
based in Pearl River, New York. Our organization acts consonant with the 
interests of thousands of citizens in Rockland County and elsewhere. All of 
us continue to be threatened - directly and adversely affected by the FAA's 
"NY/NJ/PHL Airspace Redesign" ( "Airspace Redesign", or "Redesign" ). We are 
New Yorkers, voters, and your constituents. We are also therefore directly 
affected by your actions as an elected official and United States Senator. 
Our dependency on your stewardship is augmented by an anomalous condition 
which finds your NY-Senatorial counterpart running for an even-higher office 
this year. We are again asking you for your personal attention and help, and 
your response is vitally important.We are concerned that to our knowledge 
you have yet to publicly and forcefully oppose the FAA's planned Airspace 
Redesign. You have recently taken to the media to denounce the failed Bobby 
Sturgell administration of the FAA, which we clearly appreciate - a position 
with which we clearly agree. As I think you know, Quiet Rockland has taken 
the same position. To that extent, you and we are on a common pursuit. 
However, we understand that you have also recently taken to the media to 
support further aviation industry expansion and airport expansion. 
Specifically, you have articulated your opposition to flight caps at Kennedy 
and Newark Airports. See, e.g.and read full letter below: 
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/transportation/ny-lifaa145649777apr14,0,6581335.story
http://ny.metro.us/metro/local/article/Summer_air_pain_to_hit_new_heights/12238.html


FAA Top Man In Florida Removed After Raising Safety Concerns!!! ORLANDO, 
Fla. -- The Federal Aviation Administration's former top man in Central 
Florida claims when he raised safety concerns about unqualified mechanics, 
the government turned on him and retaliated. Gabe Bruno was removed as the 
FAA's top man in Orlando after he questioned the priorities of higher ups, 
Local 6's Tony Pipitone reported. Bruno said he insisted the FAA track down 
and thoroughly retest about 2,000 mechanics licensed through an outlaw 
school at Sanford-Orlando International Airport. The school gave passing 
grades to anybody willing to pay for them, Pipitone reported. "So, what you 
have is a real potential for having unqualified people working on these air 
carrier aircraft," Burno said. The issues he warned about included 
improperly trained mechanics, FAA coziness with big airlines and a lack of 
effective maintenance oversight, Pipitone reported. Pipitone said Bruno's 
examples included the grounding of Southwest and American Airline jets in 
recent weeks, crashes of a Chalk's Ocean Airways seaplane in Miami in 
December 2005 and an Air Midwest jet in Charlotte in January 2003. In all, 
there were 41 dead, blamed in part of the FAA's failure to oversee or pursue 
lapses in maintenance programs, Pipitone reported. "The FAA has been 
pounding it into the inspectors for the past several years that the 
customers are the airlines, not the flying public," Burno said. 
http://www.local6.com/news/16144687/detail.html

London's New Major Wants "Alternative" Airport Built Instead Of Heathrow 
Expanded!!! Boris Johnson's (pictured on the left) victory in the London 
mayoral election fight could resurrect calls for a new airport in Kent and 
pitch him into conflict with council chiefs in the county. Johnson ousted 
Ken Livingstone to become the new mayor, giving the Conservatives further 
cause for celebrations after a day in which they triumphed in the local 
council elections. The potential source of conflict in Kent lies in Johnson's 
belief that Heathrow airport's expansion plans should be abandoned and 
alternative plans for a new airport at the Thames estuary be reconsidered. 
Earlier this year, Johnson said: "What we don't want to do is entrench a 
planning error of the 1960s by further expansion at Heathrow. We should look 
at whether there's a solution to the east in the Thames Estuary." Four 
options for airports either onshore along the coast or on floating islands 
were rejected by the Government in 2005. However, Johnson believes the UK 
could learn from other countries who have relocated major airports. 
http://www.kentonline.co.uk/kol08/article/default.asp?article_id=41085



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                                                    Important Aviation News 
Stories This Week

Quiet Rockland Asks Senator Schumer To OPPOSE The FAA's "NY/NJ/PHL Airspace 
Redesign"
As I believe you are aware, "Quiet Rockland" is an organization based in 
Pearl River, New York. Our organization acts consonant with the interests of 
thousands of citizens in Rockland County and elsewhere. All of us continue 
to be threatened - directly and adversely affected by the FAA's "NY/NJ/PHL 
Airspace Redesign" ("Airspace Redesign", or "Redesign"). We are New Yorkers, 
voters, and your constituents.

(Media-Newswire.com) - Below is a Letter from Quiet Rockland:

Dear Honorable Senator Schumer:

As I believe you are aware, "Quiet Rockland" is an organization based in 
Pearl River, New York. Our organization acts consonant with the interests of 
thousands of citizens in Rockland County and elsewhere. All of us continue 
to be threatened - directly and adversely affected by the FAA's "NY/NJ/PHL 
Airspace Redesign" ( "Airspace Redesign", or "Redesign" ). We are New 
Yorkers, voters, and your constituents. We are also therefore directly 
affected by your actions as an elected official and United States Senator. 
Our dependency on your stewardship is augmented by an anomalous condition 
which finds your NY-Senatorial counterpart running for an even-higher office 
this year. We are again asking you for your personal attention and help, and 
your response is vitally important.

We are concerned that to our knowledge you have yet to publicly and 
forcefully oppose the FAA's planned Airspace Redesign. You have recently 
taken to the media to denounce the failed Bobby Sturgell administration of 
the FAA, which we clearly appreciate - a position with which we clearly 
agree. As I think you know, Quiet Rockland has taken the same position. To 
that extent, you and we are on a common pursuit. However, we understand that 
you have also recently taken to the media to support further aviation 
industry expansion and airport expansion. Specifically, you have articulated 
your opposition to flight caps at Kennedy and Newark Airports. See, e.g.:

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/transportation/ny-lifaa145649777apr14,0,6581335.story

http://ny.metro.us/metro/local/article/Summer_air_pain_to_hit_new_heights/12238.html

Please be aware that we, affected citizens and your constituents, summarily 
reject the aviation expansion which you might consider further championing. 
Aero-mercantile expansion is wrong for New York and wrong for New Yorkers. 
We want the straining of the system to stop, now. We want no further 
over-scheduling of flights. We want no further over-saturation of skies. We 
want no more runway incursions and near-misses. We want no more air traffic 
controller fatigue, demoralization and understaffing at the hand of the FAA. 
The solution to current travel difficulties is to stop placing even more 
planes on the runways and at the airports which cannot hold them in the 
first instance, Senator Schumer. The solution is to cap the number of 
flights-per-hour at a number consonant with the physical limitations of the 
airports. This will surely have the incidental benefit of improving each 
airport's on-time flight percentage if they want to continue to measure 
success that way. More importantly, it will keep us safe and unharmed.

Through the Redesign, FAA seeks to introduce new low-altitude flight 
patterns over densely-populated residential communities throughout the New 
York metropolitan area. This change has already been partially effected in 
regions south of us, an implementation which the FAA already made sure to 
ram through before the GAO audit report on the Redesign issued. FAA next 
seeks to effect this same change for jumbo-jet arrivals into Newark Liberty 
International Airport. Though couched in what we believe is an illusory 
time-savings-per-flight rationale, the Redesign is simply another quest to 
add incremental capacity to area airports and pump more money out of the 
sky. Yet this FAA quest decidedly puts area residents, your New York 
constituents, in harm's way, in the path of low-flying and sometimes 
defective and under-inspected aircraft.

Sometimes they even arrive out of gas. See, e.g.,

http://menendez.senate.gov/newsroom/record.cfm?id=296304,

and

http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/04/continentals-75.html.

"In some cases flights approached Newark so close to empty that they 
received priority landing clearance, effectively allowing them to jump the 
line to avoid running [totally] out of fuel". Avianca Flight 52 crashed 
while landing at JFK Airport after running out of fuel, in 1990.

In a hearing regarding the FAA before the Senate Appropriations Committee on 
Thursday, April 17, 2008, thankfully webcast for all of us to see and posted 
at http://appropriations.senate.gov/, our new-found hero to the south 
Senator Lautenberg ( D-NJ ) asked Inspector General Scovel about the I.G.'s 
investigation of "low-fuel landings" at Newark Airport. Mr. Scovel referred 
to a "disturbing situation". While Year 2005 saw 44 "minimum and emergency 
fuel declarations" for Newark arrivals, Year 2007 found 151 minimum and 
emergency fuel declarations.

In other words, the already-unacceptable number tripled and almost 
quadrupled.

In other words, as of Year 2007, a Newark arrival runs low on fuel on the 
average of almost once every two days.

Would you want even one of those fuel-depleted sputtering planes over your 
house? God forbid if one of those planes crash-lands to change Chestnut 
Ridge forever, it will be a result of aero-mercantile excess and airport 
over-expansionism - the bad collective decision to run the airspace, 
airports, airlines, and resources beyond their limitations, beyond what they 
can handle. A low gas tank and an over-stacked runway are really the same 
problem. Why doesn't our society and government simply suck it up, and act 
and live within its means? Please take a stand to stop the straining of the 
system. The people who bought houses in Chestnut Ridge did not bargain to 
live on an airport runway. Yet they are the very constituents you are bound 
to protect, and they and we look to you to do so.

The real experts can further weigh in. The new proposed Redesign flight 
paths will strain the subject airports beyond their physical limitations, as 
virtually all of the air traffic controllers with personal knowledge of 
those airports will attest if you ask them. We can bring those ATCs to you, 
if you have not already spoken with them. They can attest to the 
multiplicative dangerous possible outcomes of an over-taxed airport combined 
with low-fuel jumbo jet arrivals.

Additionally, the Redesign eliminates long-established noise-abatement 
procedures, and threatens to harm our environment and thereby ruin our 
quality of life. Those facts are already amply briefed in multiple federal 
court litigation files and otherwise.

The real reason for which the new flight paths are being implemented and 
considered, and the real reason for aero-expansionism generally, is the 
resultant economic benefit to the airline industry, its executives, and its 
and their compensation and bonus structures. See, e.g.:

http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2008/04/07/daily70.htm

Keeping more planes in the air per unit time, makes these aero-mercantalists 
more money, period. We want your assurance that you are not even sympathetic 
to their crassly- and unabashedly-commercial enterprise. With all due 
respect, Senator Schumer, voters and citizens should have rightful and 
serious concerns about why any public official would support harmful 
air-oversaturations and flight-overschedulings. Why would any elected 
official pursue aero-mercantile expansion at the expense of the health and 
safety of the very constituents who put the official in office, and who gave 
that official their trust to foster their well-being while in Washington? 
Our government and our representatives should never put money before people. 
We ask that you please carefully reconsider, and clarify to us, your own 
position. We want your unequivocal assurance that you put people over money.

Senator Schumer, we want you to protect us, your constituents and fellow 
citizens, on the ground. We do not want you to at all be perceived by anyone 
as fostering the paychecks and bonuses of aero-mercantile executives, at our 
expense. We want you to reject airport over-expansionism, and take a firm 
and unequivocal stand against the NY/NJ/PHL Airspace Redesign. That is what 
your constituents want, and I can bring you thousands of them too, if that's 
what you want to validate the point.

Specifically, we believe that the permanent institution of flight caps at 
NY-area airports is an appropriate and correct method to protect our safety, 
our health, and the environment. We ask that you please provide us all the 
information and data which you may be utilizing as your basis to oppose the 
Newark Airport flight caps, so that we may further respond to it. We believe 
that flight caps would reduce and perhaps totally eliminate any FAA-claimed 
need to implement onerous new Redesigned low-altitude flight patterns which 
would otherwise put us at physical risk, generate unacceptable noise, and 
adversely environmentally impact our residential communities. We want the 
Redesign to wash away with the imposition of the Newark Flight Caps, and we 
want you to support the Newark Flight Caps and airport flight caps 
generally. We await your reply.

Respectfully submitted,


John J. Tormey III, Esq.
 Quiet Rockland