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could CRAF be acronym for Civil Reserve Air Fleet?

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History
In 1952, after aircraft were commandeered for the Berlin Airlift, the Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF) was created as a more orderly way of serving emergency military needs.[1][2]

The Fleet has two main segments: international and national (domestic).

CRAF has been activated three times. The first activation was as part of Operation Desert Shield. The second was once as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. In 2021 it was activated as part of Operation Allies Refuge in Afghanistan.[3][4]

Membership commitment and requirements
The airlines contractually pledge aircraft to the various segments of Civil Reserve Air Fleet, ready for activation when needed.[5] To provide incentives for civil carriers to commit aircraft to the Civil Reserve Air Fleet program and to assure the United States of adequate airlift reserves, the government makes peacetime Department of Defense (DoD) airlift business available to civilian airlines that offer aircraft to the Civil Reserve Air Fleet.[5] DoD offers business through the International Airlift Services. For fiscal year 2005, the guaranteed portion of the contract was $418 million. Air Mobility Command (AMC) previously reported that throughout fiscal 2005 it planned to award more than $1.5 billion in additional business beyond the guaranteed portion of the contract.

To join Civil Reserve Air Fleet, carriers must maintain a minimum commitment of 40% of its Civil Reserve Air Fleet capable passenger and cargo fleet.[5] Aircraft committed must be US registered, and carriers must commit and maintain at least four complete crews for each aircraft.


Fleet
As of August 2021, the Civil Reserve Air Fleet consists of 450 aircraft from 24 airlines. This breaks down to 413 aircraft for international operations, with 268 considered to be in the "long-range international" category and 145 in the "short-range international" section, as well as 37 aircraft in the "national" segment. These numbers are subject to change on a monthly basis.[6]

The Civil Reserve Air Fleet does not have anything to do with the Cooper hijacking.  The Civil Reserve Air Fleet is composed of specific aircraft owned by airlines some of which have been modified (such as floor reinforcements) at the expense of the US Government to provide support to the USA military airlift capability during national emergencies. 

During the just-concluded Afghan evacuation, about 20 or 30 of the aircraft in the CRAF were activated to support that evacuation.  Those aircraft were such things as the Boeing 777 and they did not enter Kabul but instead flew people from their first landing point to their final destination.

No "special routing information" was needed for the NWA hijacked airliner.  Any "special routing information" for CRAF would probably apply to such things as operating from military bases in places that had agreements with the US government to support USA activities.

Ok so... could they have supplied CRAF maps just in case 305 wound up in Mexico or some other country? Maybe somebody was taking Mexico City seriously ? Or ..
. ?

Jeppesen probably published all the IFR maps and flight information data that would be required for operations in Mexico.  But I doubt if Al Lee had access to that in Seattle.

In 2005, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency was proposing new restrictions on the sale of certain map info.

here's a powerpoint discussing that proposal.
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Proposed Action: Remove NGA’s Aeronautical Products from Public Access
• Target Date: 1 October 2005
• Authority: D/NGA on 24 June 2004
– Investigate merit, feasibility and impact
– Report back with recommendation
• Original Focus: Entire suite of the NGA aeronautical publications and products

One of the public sale comments/significant concerns  on page 12 was:

Public Sale Comments
Significant Concerns
Issue: Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF) & commercial contract air carriers need continued access to FLIP and DAFIF

commercial contract air carriers need continued access to FLIP and DAFIF
• Answer: CRAF is a DoD mission --
command that oversees CRAF activities can continue to provide access to data


So CRAF gets access to special FLIP/DAFIF data. this includes maps (well it includes the sets of information I listed in prior posts, at least in modern times)

If CRAF isn't getting special info, then why the big deal about possibly restricting access here?

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Hector Aponte (who was one of the early jumpers to jump off El Cap, in 1979) posted the pic of Saigon Sport Parachute Club. Not sure if Hector is still alive. REALLY interesting he returned from vietnam, kept jumping and eventually even jumped El Cap. 377 will be very jealous. I sent 377 pics of Hector's El Cap jump in 1979.

I'd like to see those El Cap pics, if you could either post them or send them to me. I jumped El Cap a couple times, first time in '81. Half Dome, too.

If you find Hector, let me know. I've got a name or two to run past him.

Impressive dudeman!  I've climbed Half Dome by two routes. Must have been scary launching off!

Here's the old-time facebook group (Oldschool Skydiving) I got the info from
I didn't join, but their posts are visible.
You should join that group! Some posts from oldtimers are interesting

his el cap group jump pics and account are here:
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Some interesting old stuff (magazines etc) are here:
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members list is here:
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Thank you for posting that. I don't have a Facebook page, it wouldn't let me see the 2nd or 3rd link, but it did show the link to Hector's El Cap story. I'm well familiar with the footage of his 4-way jump, as well as some of the people mentioned in the story and the following comments. I did know Carl Boenish, the guy Hector mentions as the organizer of his trip. A very unique, interesting, and inspiring man. He is considered the father of base jumping. He died in a cliff jump from Norway's Troll Wall in '84. A feature film was made about him, 'Sunshine Superman', and that 4-way footage (and a lot of other early El Cap film) is featured in the closing credit sequence.

I have jumped with that same 16mm camera that Hector did. Carl had a couple of 16mm 'gun cameras' that he got from the military. After he died, another skydiving filmmaker, Tom Sanders, bought them. I made some jumps with them, from a building in L.A., and from Angel Falls in Venezuela.

The launch point at Angel Falls is a fair distance to the right of the falls. If you go during the 'dry' season, then there is less water going over and you can access a closer landing area and take longer delays. And the water mists out, and if the lighting is right, then on exit you see a circular rainbow below you. I likened it to looking God in the eye.

And downtown L.A. - during the 80's and 90's when a lot of the buildings were built, you wouldn't believe how many jumps were being made by how many people. Different days, pre-911 security and all. We had access to a building pretty much any night we wanted for many years. While they were under construction, you could just hop a fence, climb the stairs, hang out and enjoy the view for a while, jump off, go home, and pretty much no one was the wiser. We would go in the middle of the night, less wind and traffic. Sometimes you'd go with your 2 or 3 buddies, get to the top, and there would be several other people hanging out up there. Good weather nights between 2 and 4 am was like flippin' Disneyland. And the cops didn't seem to mind. I did spend a couple hours on a couple nights in a holding cell afterwards, but never faced any charges. But usually - well, one Sunday morning we jumped at first light on one of the aforementioned camera jumps. There were 4 of us going to jump. A friend and I went first, doing a 2-way, and just as we were landing a green and white State Police car comes around the corner. He gathered us up and was trying to figure out what to do with us. A black and white LAPD drives up, doesn't even park or get out of his car. He looks at the State guy and says, "Oh, these guys? They do this all the time, don't worry about it" and drives off. The State guy scratched his head, shrugged his shoulders and let us go. A few minutes after he left,  our other 2 friends jumped, and we all went home laughing. Fun days...

Okay, I found it.
Cooper was always telling me, that he did something with the bills he planted on Tena Bar, so people would know he made the jump.
He kept going on an on about serial numbers. I thought he was yammering about consecutive serial numbers..i.e. incremental serial numbers.

But that wasn't it.

He took two bills that were in the sorted FBI ransom list of 9998 bills (remember, these were 9998 random bills).

Two bills that were *not* consecutive serial numbers, but consecutive in the sorted list that the FBI published.

And he put them in the stack of bills Ingram discovered.

These two bills are:
L03160387B 1963A
and
L03166965B 1963A

Sure, they just look like two random bills.
But look at the FBI list (snippet attached)
They are consecutive in the FBI sorted list.

And I attached the two ha.com auction notes that have those serial numbers, verifying they were in the Ingram find.

Thanks for the message, Cooper!

(you can verify this all yourself. The ransom list is from fbi file 55 page 168. group C. rows 28 and 29.

Dudeman17!!!

Just watched "Sunshine Superman" this evening...available on amazon prime streaming.

Excellent documentary. Seems (to me) like it really captures the era and how people were exploring things then. And a good take on Carl B. Reminds me of so many personalities that are "out there" ...where we wonder if it's too "out there"...but when we don't know the boundaries, how can we rightly say what's "too out there" ??

I could really feel the energy from all the people.

I was thinking of you, dudeman, standing on those buildings and El Cap, leaning forward and saying "See Ya!" to your buddies and the sudden whoosh where time changes.

Very cool movie. Recommend it to all. Thanks for mentioning it.

I'm surprised no one got interested in my post about
L03160387B 1963A
L03166965B 1963A

Think about it: two of the small number of bills that went to auction, end up being successive serial numbers in the FBI sorted list. I wasn't joking about that.

EDIT: I've expanded this to show that 6 of the auction bills are from the same single FBI ransom list page! i.e. 6 out of 300 on one of the 34 pages of the ransom list)

links to auction photos for closer examination: (create login and sign in to get highest res photo. Can't post hi res here because of size limitations) ....

Even crazier is the # of auction bills that are present from that page of the FBI ransom list: 6 in total. Out of 300 bills on that page. That strongly suggests the original bill distribution was not random. Right?

the two bills above, which are successive:
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The other 4 auction bills that are on the same page 168 of fbi file 55
L01781113A 1969
L01842041A 1969
L02882111B 1963A
L06832736A 1969

links for these 4
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possibilties:
1) Bills weren't as randomized as we believe. It can be very hard to determine if a distribution is random or not. Dilbert covered this well. See attached.

2) An error in the ha.com determination of the fragment serial number? I've not re-examined the pic I posted closely

3) The calculation of the probability of this happening, is complicated to determine. First: we don't know if the original bills actually were randomly distributed in packets among all the 9998 bills. I have a suspicion that certain groups of bills were more likely to be in a single packet. Like maybe star notes were in a packet? Not sure.

Too bad we don't have the original 1 can of microfilm referred to in the FBI files, that had the $230,000 worth of bills. That had some order. I wonder if the order in that microfilm matched the order within each bill stack (strapped or otherwise). Since start/end pairs (serials) were recorded, and that was used to "lookup" groups of bills in the microfilm, that would mean the start/end pairs were ordered amongst themselves (to determine the bills between a start/end, the start/end had delineate a "group" of bills that were likely to be ordered? It's hard to imagine how a start/end would delineate an unordered group, int erms of how the microfilm was likely created with restrapping post-recording?...which raises the possibilty that all the bills in the microfilm order, were ordered in the same order in the packets Cooper received

Although FBI had difficulty figuring out which $30k to remove from the original list of $230k, they originally "thought" just 15 packet start/end pairs, for the extra $30k, (15 packets of 100 bills) where sufficient to determinate what entire set of 1500 bills to remove from the original list.

Which makes me think microfilm order may have matched "delivery to Cooper" order.

There's no way to know for sure. It is tantalizing to ponder if the order was recorded and preserved on delivery to Cooper, Then it would have been possible to see if any of the Ingram bills in a corroded "packet" were out of order relative to the order cooper received packets.

4) I've been pondering how to calculate the probabilty of the auctioned bills having a pair of bills that are successive in the sorted FBI list, assuming random distribution of bills in packets originally

I think it's similar to "birthday paradox" calcs, except using 9998 bills rather than 365 days. And calculating probably of occurence assuming 300 random bill choices. That would be a close approximation.

I've looked and one interesting thing is that if you remove the leading and trailing letters from all the ransom serials, the numbers are unique.

I'm guessing though, that the probability is low, of the sequence occurence. Hard to explain. A non-random original distribution of bills to packets, would make it more likely, and is probably what happened, contrary to the "fully random" assumption that's currently told about the bills.

So I think this is a new train of thought on what the bills can tell us.

Because of the number of unique serials (9998) compared to 365 days in the year, I think the probability of this event is much less than the birthday paradox, for the set of bills that were auctioned.

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In probability theory, the birthday problem or birthday paradox concerns the probability that, in a set of n randomly chosen people, some pair of them will have the same birthday. In a group of 23 people, the probability of a shared birthday exceeds 50%, while a group of 70 has a 99.9% chance of a shared birthday. (By the pigeonhole principle, the probability reaches 100% when the number of people reaches 367, since there are only 366 possible birthdays, including February 29.)

These conclusions are based on the assumption that each day of the year is equally probable for a birthday. Actual birth records show that different numbers of people are born on different days. In this case, it can be shown that the number of people required to reach the 50% threshold is 23 or fewer.[1]

The birthday problem is a veridical paradox: a proposition that at first appears counterintuitive, but is in fact true. While it may seem surprising that only 23 individuals are required to reach a 50% probability of a shared birthday, this result is made more intuitive by considering that the comparisons of birthdays will be made between every possible pair of individuals. With 23 individuals, there are (23 × 22) / 2 = 253 pairs to consider, which is well over half the number of days in a year (182.5 or 183).

Real-world applications for the birthday problem include a cryptographic attack called the birthday attack, which uses this probabilistic model to reduce the complexity of finding a collision for a hash function, as well as calculating the approximate risk of a hash collision existing within the hashes of a given size of population.

A musing on sorting capabilities in 1971 and random distributions and the implications of error rates.

The bills that came from the BEP would have consecutive serials, because they came that way off the printing press (I think sorted, but at the very least, same sheet probably were in same group, up to packet boundaries)

but there aren't a lot of consecutive serials in the FBI list. Some but not a lot. So the bills would have been reshuffled, randomly picked, accumulated from who-knows-where, before microfiching.

I do not think there was a machine that could read serial numbers and sort bills by serial number.
The sorted list we have, I believe was made by a computer sort and printout, after the serials were manually entered from the microfiche. There are a handful of FBI errors that probably occured in that transcription, which I can determine, knowing what serial combinations are legal (using BEP records)

Check Six has an additional set of errors, because of whatever transcription/checking process he used.
Interestingly one could wonder if there are additional FBI errors that appear "legal"...since transcription is very difficult to do with low error rates. Check six has shown what error rate he got with some # of hours devoted to the task.
Could the FBI list have undetectable errors from transcription. Maybe?

Note that only 1 character in the 10 character serial is usually wrong..because of low error rate and random distribution of errors.

The series year might have a different error rate, since the series was in smaller type on the bill (compare to the rest of the serial info)

There are some apparently 50C vs 50D series year errors.

When I google search, if I drop the leading and trailing letters from a serial, the search doesn't find the ha.com pages like it did when the full serial is used...i.e. Google isn't pattern matching the subset.

This got me thinking
What if I searched using created patterns, that cover all districts (A thru L) and reasonable suffixes (A-B, maybe C and D in some cases)

that would easily create 20x more "possible" cooper serials, given the assumption that the leading and trailing letter may have been misrecorded...either by the fbi, or some collector listing a bill for sale.

The whole issue of errors in serial # lookup is an interesting problem.

I will have a complete list of Check Six site errors when I'm done. Right now, my estimate is maybe around 200 errors. That gives a feel for the kind of error rate we might be talking about.

EDIT: ignoring the series year, each serial is 10 characters. that's 10x9998 = 99,998 characters that want to have no errors.
The series year is either 2 or 3 chars (like 63A or 69). So that might be around another (2.5 * 9998) chars = 24995 chars

just 200 errors out of around 100k chars, is a 0.2% error rate on chars. Just 200 chars need to be wrong, to get 200 serials wrong (assuming the low error rate is randomly distributed, so usually you just get single errors per serial)