Federal regulators, who have handled everything from drone invasions to a man attempting to land a paraglider on the Capitol lawn, were reportedly blindsided by the avalanche of student pilot certificate applications flooding their online portal. ‘Our system was designed to process roughly 400,000 applications per year,’ one FAA spokesperson told reporters, visibly sweating. ‘We received 180,000 in the last 72 hours.’ Analysts note that the new applicants skew heavily male, aged 18 to 45, and a suspiciously high percentage listed their reason for pursuing aviation as ‘just always loved planes, man, totally always loved them, since I was a kid.’