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One or More of Our Aircraft Is Missing (“Calling Daniel Hopsicker!”)

[1]

Wel­come to Ter­ror­land

Com­ment: The FAA has been less than rig­or­ous in its reg­is­tra­tion and over­sight of pri­vate avi­a­tion in the Unit­ed States. A large per­cent­age of air­craft in this coun­try have “flown beneath the radar” with regard to the FAA’s vetting/registration pro­ce­dures, a fact that can only work to the advan­tage of ter­ror­ists and crim­i­nals.

In par­tic­u­lar, the nexus of nar­co-traf­fick­ers and ter­ror­ists high­light­ed by inves­tiga­tive reporter Daniel Hop­sick­er comes into focus here. The oper­a­tions of that milieu uti­lize “rogue” avi­a­tion net­works that serve intel­li­gence ser­vices, drug deal­ers and var­i­ous groups of male­fac­tors asso­ci­at­ed with them.

“FAA Air­craft Infor­ma­tion Miss­ing for 119,000 Planes” by Chris Haw­ley; Huff­in­g­ton Post; 12/10/2010. [2]

Excerpt: The chair­man of the Sen­ate sub­com­mit­tee over­see­ing avi­a­tion said Fri­day he would rec­om­mend hold­ing con­gres­sion­al hear­ings on air­craft reg­is­tra­tion after The Asso­ci­at­ed Press report­ed the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion was miss­ing data on one-third of U.S. planes.

“We need to find out why, and how it can be brought back to have a reg­istry that has cred­i­bil­i­ty,” said North Dako­ta Sen. Byron Dor­gan, a Demo­c­rat.

The FAA says as many as 119,000 of the 357,000 U.S.-registered air­craft have “ques­tion­able reg­is­tra­tion” due to miss­ing paper­work, invalid address­es and oth­er paper­work prob­lems.

In reports in 2007 and 2008, the agency warned that the prob­lem was caus­ing loop­holes that ter­ror­ists, drug traf­fick­ers and oth­er crim­i­nals might exploit. It was con­cerned that a crim­i­nal might use a U.S. reg­is­tra­tion, known as an N‑number, to slip by com­put­er sys­tems designed to track sus­pi­cious flights. . . .