6.2 Legislative Acts
Birth of Federal Aviation Agency
Although the Civil Aeronautic Authority(CAA) was doing it's best to conduct accident investigations and recommend ways to prevent accidents, the aviation world of technology was rapidly growing. The British overseas aircraft corporation introduced the first commercial jet service in 1952. The 36-seat comet flew at 480 mph. In comparison, the top cruising speed up the DC-3 piston aircraft was only flying 180 mph. By the mid 1950s U.S. companies begin designing and building their own jet airliners.
The straw that broke the camel’s back struck on June 30th 1956, a Transworld Airlines Super Constellation and a United Airlines DC-7 collided over the Grand Canyon, Arizona, killing all 128 occupants of the two aircraft. This tragic accident dramatized the fact that even though U S air traffic add more than doubled since the end of World War Two little had been done to mitigate the risk of midair collisions.
On August 23, 1958, U.S. President Eisenhower signed a bill called the Federal Aviation Act. This bill was introduced by Senator A. S. Monroney on May 21, 1958. It was created to overtake the Civil Aeronautic Authority's functions to a new independent Federal Aviation Agency responsible for civil aviation safety. Thanks
to the work of FAA, over the past 50 years, aviation has become central to the
way we live and do business, linking people from coast to coast and connecting
America to the world. In fact, FAA has created the safest, most reliable, most efficient,
and most productive air transportation system in the world.
The commercial aviation system in the United States operates at an unprecedented level of safety. During the past 20 years, commercial aviation fatalities in the U.S. have decreased by 95 percent as measured by fatalities per 100 million passengers. I strongly believe we achieved this safety record because the FAA continually evolved in how it approaches safety through detecting risks and in responding to the risks identified. This approach is a longstanding commitment to sharing data through an open and collaborative safety culture to detect risks and address problems before accidents occur.
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References
- Out Front on Airline Safety: Two Decades of Continuous Evolution (August 2,2018)
https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/out-front-airline-safety-two-decades-continuous-evolution
- A Brief History of the FAA/FAA.
https://www.faa.gov/about/history/brief_history/
- Milestones in International Civil Aviation
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