Category AVIATION &ТНЕ ROLE OF GOVERNMENT

ince 1926, what little regulation the government had imposed on the aviation community had been administered by the Depart­ment of Commerce, specifically the Aeronautics Branch first and then the Bureau of Air Com­merce beginning in 1934. Even with these rules, regulation was decentralized. Jurisdictional dis­putes existed among the Post Office Department, the Interstate Commerce Commission, and the Bureau of Air Commerce.

In the meantime, flying had progressed from mail planes constructed of wood and wire with open cockpits to all-metal stress-skinned mono­planes flying in instrument conditions at speeds over three times that of early aircraft. In the middle 1930s, flying was still something of an adventure, for navigation facilities were primi­tive, instruments rudimentary, and weather prog­nostication an immature art form.

The TWA crash of the Fokker Trimo­tor in 1931 that killed Knute Rockne was the most notorious domestic airline crash until the death of Senator Bronson Cutting on May 6, 1935, aboard another TWA airplane, a DC-2, on a transcontinental flight from Los Ange­les to Newark. Cutting boarded the aircraft at Albuquerque, N. M., where it was reported that the plane’s radio transmitter was faulty. The
weather at Kansas City, which had been pre­dicted to be good, had deteriorated to a ceiling of 600 feet, 100 feet below minimums, by the time of the flight’s arrival in the area. Unable to communicate or to make the appropriate instru­ment approach, and with fuel low, the DC-2 crashed while attempting to fly visually at tree – top level.

Cutting was much beloved in the Senate. The congressional investigation of the crash centered on the Department of Commerce and its administration of aviation safety. It was determined that the Department had been lax in enforcing what few rules were in place. Then a controversy arose between the Department and TWA as to whether the 45-minute fuel reserve rule had even been properly published, or whether TWA was otherwise notified of the rule. There were questions of conflict of interest over the Department of Commerce investigating itself concerning the adequacy of existing rules and their enforcement. The Department was shown to have a propensity for laying blame on the pilot in command, a tendency, some may argue, that continues to this day. The press stirred the pot well, and the public reaction ranged from a loss of confidence in the system to outrage. The sense of the Congress was that the Department
of Commerce had failed to keep pace with the ongoing progress of commercial aviation.

Then, on October 7, 1935, a United Air­lines crash near Denver killed 12 passengers and crew. On April 7, 1936, another TWA DC-2 crashed in Pennsylvania with 12 more fatalities. On August 6, 1936, a Chicago & Southern Lock­heed went down in St. Louis with fatalities of all 8 aboard, and on February 10, 1937, a DC-3 flown by United Airlines crashed in San Fran­cisco and all 11 on board were lost. The winter of 1937, in fact, recorded 5 airline crashes with fatalities.

The airlines took it upon themselves to develop operating rules and regulations for the governance of their pilots, still a rather undis­ciplined lot, who looked upon flying as another form of freedom, not restriction. The manage­ment of the airlines understood that, in order to win the confidence of the public and take their place as a legitimate form of public transporta­tion that could compete with the railroads, order must be brought to the rather free-form society of aviation, up to that time primarily known for its airmail deliveries and stunt pilots.

In 1935, the airlines knew that someone had to control the growing number of airplanes ply­ing the skies, particularly where they converged for landing, like in Newark, New Jersey. Newark Airport had a departure or an arrival every 10 minutes. It was American Airlines that took the lead in designating a “boss,” someone in charge who could direct planes to maintain separation from each other. This was primarily accom­plished by assigning to each aircraft an altitude as they approached for landing. An agreement among six airlines created a company known as Air Traffic Control, Inc., and it was manned by employees of those companies.

The first facility was set up at Newark (see Figure 16-1) on December 1, 1935, followed by one in Chicago in April 1936, and another in Cleveland in June 1936. At first, the control­lers sought to track flights within 50 miles of the controlled airport, using blackboards, a large

table map, a telephone, and a Teletype. Flight plans were filed by departing pilots who would then keep in contact with their company’s radio operator, relaying their position at designated waypoints with their speed and altitude. This information would then be telephoned to the center guarding the destination airport, and the airplane’s position would be marked using brass weights that were moved along the table map to represent the airplane’s progress. When an air­craft approached one of the staffed centers, direc­tions to the incoming airplane would be issued by the controller to the airline’s radio operator by telephone, who would then radio the pilot of the incoming airplane to descend to a certain alti­tude, to hold at the beacon, or that he was cleared for the approach.

The authority of the controllers was debat­able, particularly among the more independent pilots who were used to doing things their own way and in their own time. It was at first consid­ered by the pilots that the controllers’ directions to them were advisory only, not mandatory, so that a direction to hold while another aircraft landed might or might not be honored. With air traffic control being taken over by the Com­merce Department’s Bureau of Lighthouses in 1936, procedures at last began to change. Disci­pline and self-control were becoming as much a requirement of good piloting technique as air­speed and altitude.

The regulations governing aircraft control adopted by the Commerce Department were actually not known to all airlines and pilots, since they were not required to be published in the Federal Register, a publication whose pur­pose it was to advise of the adoption of agency regulations. The Supreme Court case of Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan1 established the proposition that, in order to be binding, a regulation must be published in the Federal Register as notice to all concerned. The next year, 1937, saw the first codification of air traffic regulations promulgated by the federal government. They came to be known as the Civil Air Regulations. Not only did these first regulations establish rules governing the movement of airplanes within the designated airspace, they required, for the first time, that the airlines themselves draw up a detailed operations manual, approved by the government, contain­ing procedures for that airline regarding weather, minimum altitudes, approach, departure, and en route procedures. These Department of Com­merce regulations did not apply to airport control towers, however, which remained under local city control until just before the United States entered World War II, just as the airports did themselves.

ii Before take-off, a professional pilot is keen, anxious, but lest someone read his true feelings he is elaborately casual. The reason for this is that he is about to enter a new though famil­iar world. The process of entrance begins a short time before he leaves the ground and is completed the instant he is in the air. From that moment on, not only his body but his spirit and personality exist in a sepa­rate world known only to himself and his comrades, w

Ernest K. Gann, foreword to Island in the Sky

Standardization of aircraft procedures was only one aspect of the emerging airline industry that the airlines felt needed the steady hand of government control. Passenger traffic and air­mail carriage had tripled since Black-McKellar, but the airlines were still suffering financially and had, in fact, all lost money each and every year since 1934. The airlines formed their own group, the Air Transport Association, and one of its first acts was to drum up support for and draft a bill creating federal rate and route regulation designed to stabilize the airline industry. The air­line industry was demanding to be regulated.

Government involvement in the airline busi­ness since 1925 had been inconsistent. It had been both proactive and reactive, and both tenta­tive and heavy-handed. The growth of aviation in all respects caused the airline industry in 1938 to bear little resemblance to what it was in 1925.

As the reliance on airmail subsidy gradually diminished because of the growth of freight traf­fic and passenger counts, heightened concerns about safety naturally edged forward. Insuring safety was seen as a government obligation. Like the railroads before them, the airlines were also beginning to be viewed as a national domestic resource, if not a necessity. World political and military turmoil, particularly in the Far East and in Europe, caused the government increasingly to include the aviation sector in its plans for national defense.

As a result of the Airmail Act of 1934 (Black-McKellar), government regulation was broken down into three basic jurisdictional divi­sions: the Post Office Department controlled the bidding and award of postal contracts; the Interstate Commerce Commission controlled the rates that were paid for the carriage of mail, pas­sengers, and freight by the airline carriers; and the Bureau of Air Commerce within the Depart­ment of Commerce controlled the issuance and enforcement of safety regulations. This arrange­ment was cumbersome, divisive, and increas­ingly ineffective.

Never a supporter of the New Deal or Franklin D. Roosevelt, although he was a Demo­cratic senator from Nevada, Pat McCarran felt that the regulation of aviation should be central­ized. In 1935 he wrote a bill to place full control of the airline industry with the Interstate Com­merce Committee, in part to rectify what the Roosevelt Administration and the Black commit­tee had done by the 1934 Airmail Act. The 1934 Act was regarded as punitive to the airlines, and concentrated on limiting rates and eliminating excess profits. In the House, Clarence Lea, from California, introduced a bill to create an indepen­dent Bureau for Aviation within the Executive Branch. These moves were opposed by the Post Office Department and the Department of Com­merce, both of which would lose important con­trol, influence, and funding under centralization.

Vigorous debate roiled the Senate and House as members sought to ensure that the airlines and routes that served their states and districts would not be adversely affected and that any advantages to their constituents would not be lost. Neither bill received necessary support for passage because of these turf battles until 1938, when both bills were passed and then sent to joint committee conferences for the resolution of differences, from which emerged the Civil Aero­nautics Act of 1938, the McCarran-Lea Act. The statute passed by Congress on June 23, 1938 pro­vided a uniform basis of regulation for aviation in the United States and created three indepen­dent agencies to discharge the statute’s mandate: the Civil Aeronautics Authority, the Administra­tor of Aviation, and the Air Safety Board.

“Civilian aviation,” wrote President Roos­evelt on January 24, 1939, “is clearly recognized as the back log of national defense in the Civil Aeronautics Act which set up the effective machinery for a comprehensive national policy with respect to the air.”

“Underlying the statute is the principle that the country’s welfare in time of peace and its safety in time of war rest upon the existence of a stabi­lized aircraft production—an economically and technically sound air transportation system, both domestic and overseas—an adequate supply of well trained civilian pilots and ground personnel.” “This new national policy set up by the Con­gress views American aviation as a special prob­lem requiring special treatment. .. . One fact which stands out is that hardly another civil activity of our people bears such a direct and intimate relation to the national security as does civil aviation.”

Problems quickly arose with the new statu­tory setup. The jurisdiction and authority of the three agencies created by the Act (the Civil Aero­nautics Authority, the Administrator of Aviation, and the Air Safety Board) overlapped, causing friction and inefficiencies in meeting the man­dates of the Act. The president shortly ordered an investigation into these problems. Within a period of two years from its passage, Congress enacted the 1940 Amendment to the Civil Aeronautics Act, which dissolved the three agencies origi­nally created by the Act and redistributed their functions between two new agencies that would administer the Act for the next 20 years.

rior to the creation of the Department of Transportation, the broad function of the administration of transportation fell to the Under­secretary of Commerce for Transportation. The Department of Commerce, a cabinet-level execu­tive department under the direction of a secretary and also a member of the president’s cabinet, had been the catch-all repository for the various forms of transportation. The nation’s regulation of trans­portation was administered by agencies, like the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Civil Aeronautics Administration, within the department created to deal with specific modes of transporta­tion. Aviation matters had been removed from the Commerce Department by the Federal Aviation Act of 1958 so that, in 1966, both the CAB and the Federal Aviation Agency (formerly the CAA) were independent agencies. Others remained within the Commerce Department. Administration of the nation’s transportation system was fragmented. Some transportation modes were over-funded and over-regulated, while others were under-funded and operated under a system of benign neglect. Debate on the bill was lively, given that many bureaucrats, with their supporters in Congress, had long staked out their turf with respect to their own agencies and authority. The maritime industry opposed the bill, and some in the Federal Aviation

Agency voiced fears that its newly won indepen­dent status (by the Federal Aviation Act of 1958) would be lost. Nevertheless, by October 1966, a compromise had been reached, and President John­son signed the bill into law. It was known as the Department of Transportation Act of 1967.

The needs of the country from the earliest times were seen as including an efficient and accessible transportation infrastructure. But no overall plan had ever emerged to develop or administer transportation.

In 1965, the then-administrator of the Federal Aviation Agency, Najeeb Halaby, recommended to planners in the Johnson Administration that a cabinet-level Department of Transportation be created based, in part, on his experience as head of that agency. For one thing, Halaby believed that the Federal Aviation Agency had been frozen out of the deliberations surrounding the admin­istration’s consideration of a supersonic aircraft transport program. To Halaby, this aviation endeavor was something that the FAA should be consulted on. He wrote to President Johnson that there existed “. .. no point of responsibility below the president capable of taking an evenhanded, comprehensive, authoritarian approach to the development of transportation policies. . .” and that no means existed “. . . to ensure reasonable

coordination and balance among the various trans­portation programs of the government.”

Others in the Johnson Administration also saw the need for unification of transportation activities, legislation, and oversight. At the urgings of Joseph A. Califano, Jr., Special Assistant to the President, and Charles Schultze, Director of the Bureau of the Budget, a special Task Force was created to explore the wisdom and feasibility of creating such a cabinet-level department. In Octo­ber 1965, Alan S. Boyd, then Undersecretary of Commerce for Transportation, and who had been appointed to head the Task Force, forwarded to the president recommendations that included the cre­ation of a Department of Transportation. The Task Force report further recommended that all separate sub-agencies that dealt with transportation matters be included in the proposed department. Represen­tative of these were the Federal Aviation Agency, the Bureau of Public Roads, the Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation, the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Civil Aeronautics Board, and the Panama Canal Administration.

Legislation was forwarded to Congress on March 6, 1966, with a letter from Johnson in which he stated: “America today lacks a coordi­nated transportation system that permits travelers and goods to move conveniently and efficiently from one means of transportation to another, using the best characteristics of each.” The thrust of the proposed legislation sought to create one venue for the coordination and management of gov­ernment-funded transportation programs, and to provide a center for the development of a national transportation policy and its administration.

Debate on the bill was lively, given that many bureaucrats, with their supporters in Con­gress, had long staked out their turf with respect to their own agencies and authority. The maritime industry opposed the bill, and some in the Federal Aviation Agency voiced fears that its newly won independent status (by the Federal Aviation Act of 1958) would be lost. Nevertheless, by October 1966, a compromise had been reached, and Presi­dent Johnson signed the bill into law.

The Department of Transportation (DOT) began operations on April 1, 1967, becom­ing the fourth-largest cabinet-level department within the United States government. It com­bined over thirty transportation agencies and functions, and their employees, who numbered some 95,000. During the organizational phase of setting up the DOT were born the Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal High­way Administration, and the Federal Railroad Administration. DOT absorbed functions that previously belonged to departments other than Commerce. Urban mass transit, for example, was removed from the Department of Hous­ing and Urban Development, which in turn caused the creation of additional agencies (the Urban Mass Transportation Administration, later renamed the Federal Transit Administra­tion). The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) was created, which assumed the inves­tigative responsibilities formerly carried out by the CAB’s Bureau of Aviation Safety. The administration of aviation was placed in the new department and named the Federal Aviation Administration.

Exploding passenger traffic after World War II and the advance in aircraft technology were only part of the problem confronting airports. Air­craft hijacking began as a means for oppressed citizens from communist regimes to escape to freedom in the West. As long as the hijackings were of communist-controlled airlines and the destination was freedom, the public generally applauded this audacity. But when the hijacking traffic started moving in the other direction, from the United States to Cuba, people began to view hijacking a bit differently. The first such United States to Cuba effrontery occurred in 1961 when a National Airlines airliner was commandeered to Havana, and was followed by more. It was unthinkable. No federal laws adequately covered the activity, so Congress hurriedly passed appro­priate legislation making the hijacking of an aircraft a federal crime. Things then cooled off and it began to look as though the few hijackings from the United States had been an aberration. But in 1968, there were 17 hijacking attempts; in 1969, there were 33 more.

Hijacking commercial airliners soon became a worldwide phenomenon when two Arabs grabbed a TWA flight bound for Tel Aviv. Hijacking was gradually evolving into terrorism; that is, hijacking to accomplish a political pur­pose. Palestinians seized a Pan American 747 in September 1970 and forced it to Cairo, where it was blown up. This kind of terrorism was repeated on several occasions, resulting in destruction of the aircraft amid full-blown television coverage. Hostages were taken; ransoms and the release of imprisoned terrorists were demanded.

The United States initiated a program of air marshals, G-men who rode anonymously aboard selected airliners for the purpose of foil­ing would-be hijackers. Eastern Air Lines began using metal detectors for boarding passengers. Then the infamous D. B. Cooper, a thief with no particular social or religious philosophy, took over a Northwest Airlines 727. He directed the aircraft to a designated landing site where he released the passengers but demanded and got $200,000 and four parachutes. After the aircraft departed, and while airborne over the vast forests of the northwestern United States, he lowered the 727’s unique rear stairwell and disappeared, with his cash, into the night.

But hijackings worldwide were taking on a deadly and tragic caste. In October 1972, an Eastern 727 was hijacked to Havana by wanted murderers, and in November, an escaped convict and two accomplices seized a Southern Airways DC-9 and proceeded to take the airplane and crew on an extended 29 hour odyssey, making eight landings. The airplane and crew finally wound up safely in Havana, even after agents in Miami shot out the tires during takeoff. The FAA responded by ordering the installation of metal detectors at all gates at airports serving certificated carriers.4 In December 1972 the FAA changed the passenger airline business forever by ordering the airlines to carry out electronic screening of all boarding passengers, as well as the inspection of carry-on luggage.

In the years since the first electronic screen­ing began, scrutiny of airline passengers has steadily intensified. The list of prohibited carry – on items has persistently lengthened. Surveil­lance methods and sources have increased. Many more security personnel have been employed. Since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, security procedures have been greatly amplified, as well as modified to address the threat of international terrorism. Responsibility for airport security has been removed from the FAA and given to the new Transportation Secu­rity Administration (TSA). Please see Chapter 35 for a more thorough discussion of the TSA.

his is a story that begins with man’s earli­est reported technological accomplishment, the invention of the wheel, and continues with an ever-increasing intensity. A curve plotted on one axis as time and on the other as the rate of technological advance will depict a flat to gradu­ally rising line, becoming at a point a rapidly rising line, disclosing a recent very high rate of technological accomplishment. (See Figure 1-1.) Between 1790 and 1870, for example, there were just over 40,000 patents granted in the United States for that entire 80-year period. During the 30 years between 1870 and 1900, the Patent Office granted over 400,000 patents, a 10-fold increase in slightly more than one third of the time. In 1870, there was nothing in America that could be called a steel industry; but by 1900, over 10 million tons of steel were being produced annually, more than the rest of the world com­bined. As men struggled to fly, the rate of tech­nological innovation was beginning to move up, but it had been a long time coming.

All modern-day accomplishments are based, to one degree or another, on the efforts and accomplishments of those who went before. The ancient Phoenicians sailed the confines of the Mediterranean Sea by reference to land, and also by reference to the sun and stars. The length of
the Mediterranean, its east and west limits, were known to them as Asu (east) and Ereb (west), the word roots that form the names of Asia and Europe in use today. Ocean travel was coast­wise. Improvements were made to the shapes of sails and hulls used in early maritime commerce. Insurance and accounting came into vogue in the maritime trading centers around the Mediterra­nean, in the city-states such as Venice. Gunpow­der arrived by the 9th century and, by the late 12th century, the magnetic compass was coming into common use on land and sea.

But the rising curve of progress really only begins with the rise of Western Civilization and the Rule of Law. Circumstances conducive to invention and innovation depend on many fac­tors, including incentive to innovate—like the profit motive—and protection for the results of invention, like patent law. These and other rel­evant factors depend on a stable, progressive, and lawful society, and a strong government. Magna Carta (The Great Charter), in 1215, establishing for the first time limitations on the arbitrary pow­ers of the King of England, is widely regarded as the cornerstone of personal liberty. Its principles have evolved into broad constitutional concepts embraced today. In 1420 began a period of prog­ress and enlightenment known as the Renaissance

(rebirth), a time of advances in astronomy, anatomy, engineering, physics, and art. Great leaps of mind made by the luminaries of that day included the idea that man might actually fly—or so believed Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). His sketches depicting wings to support manned flight disclose that he understood the same basic airfoil concept used today. His ideas on the subject were lost for a period of 300 years before rediscovery.

«When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return, w

Curtiss remained busy. His sojourns in California during 1910 convinced him of the benefits of the winter climate there compared to the snow of Hammondsport and frozen Lake Keuka in New York. Late that year he leased North Island in San Diego Bay and offered free pilot training to both the Army and the Navy, receiving his first military students early the next year. In Novem­ber 1910, a pilot employed by Curtiss, Eugene Ely, was the first to take off an airplane from a Navy vessel, the USS Birmingham, anchored at Hampton Roads, Virginia. (See Figure 8-8.) Two months later in January 1911, Ely became the first to land an airplane back aboard a vessel, the USS Pennsylvania anchored in San Francisco Bay, utilizing in both cases specially constructed wooden platforms on the ships, and in both cases without the benefit of any wind over the decks of the anchored ships. (See Figure 8-9.)

He set up shop facilities for conducting experimentation with floats in order to develop a successful seaplane, at that time called a

hydroplane. Although he had experimented with floats on the June Bug in 1908, and again in May and June 1910 with a canoe fitted centrally beneath one of his D2 machines, he had not been successful in getting an airplane off the water. At North Island, tests showed that significantly greater engine power was required to permit a takeoff from water as compared to land, so vari­ous hull designs were tested.

A breakthrough known as a “stepped” con­figuration essentially solved the problem of the water takeoff. The “stepped” hull design

incorporated a recessed aft section, so that the bottom of the aft section of the hull was higher than the forward portion of the hull. As speed increased, the aft section of the hull came out of the water first, which greatly reduced drag and produced a planing effect of the hull on water that later came to be known as “being on the step.” These original designs were modified and improved, spray patterns were controlled, and the improved hulls ultimately allowed take off from the water with close to the same horse­power as that required from land. By 1912, the Curtiss-designed aircraft hull had become state – of-the-art for the world. Further improvements were made as engines were mounted on the upper frame of the airplane, and as airframes were redesigned to account for pitch changes caused by these changes in the center of thrust. The Curtiss flying boats proved highly popular and sales were made to many foreign countries all over the world.6 (See Figure 8-10.)

In February 1911, he built his first tractor seaplane, with the engine and propeller at the front of the airplane (to avoid damaging water spray to the propeller) and the elevators at the rear. At the request of the Navy, he person­ally flew this craft out to the USS Pennsylvania anchored in San Diego harbor, where the airplane was winched aboard and then redeployed to the

water, completing the demonstration for what would become a common practice for the use of airplanes for scouting missions from warships. On May 8, 1911, the Navy ordered two Curtiss hydroplanes.

By the end of 1927, the government had extended the lighted portion of the airway system from New York to Salt Lake City on the transcontinental route, and on portions of feeder and parallel segments, such as Los Angeles to Las Vegas, New York to Atlanta, Chicago to Dallas, and between Los Angeles and San Francisco. That year there were 4,121 miles of lighted airways operated by the Aeronautics Branch of the Department of Commerce. By 1933, there were 1,500 beacons in place, extending the lighted airway systems for a length of 18,000 miles. While the lighted airway was of significant aid in navigation, it had serious limitations in the context of an all-weather air carrier system. It was still a visual navigation system, dependent on reasonably good weather in order to operate effectively.

The Bureau of Standards in the Department of Commerce began, in 1926, to work with radio as a means of communication and navigation. As government involvement in aviation began to kick in as a result of the Air Commerce Act, money and effort were applied to solve problems and to attempt to eliminate limitations on the commercial development of air commerce. In 1926, for instance, there was no two-way voice communication possible with aircraft in flight. This amounted to a serious limitation in safety, including a lack of pilot awareness of developing weather. By 1927, the first radio transmitter was established at Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, allowing communication with aircraft in a 150-mile radius.

In 1928, the Bureau of Standards developed a new radio beacon system of navigation, the first non-visual navigation system in the world. The Aeronautics Branch, which had authority over the lighted airway system, took over the installation and control of the new radio navigation system in 1929. The system was known as the “four-course radio range,” and it would provide the first step in allowing a true all-weather air carrier system to begin to develop. It would remain the standard navigation system in use until World War П.

The four-course radio range utilized low frequency radio waves (190 to 535 kHz radio band) transmitted from powerful 1,500-watt beacons spaced 200 miles apart on the airway. The beacons transmitted two Morse code signals, the letter “A” and the letter “N.” In Morse code, these signals are opposite, “dot-dash” for A, and “dash-dot” for N. When the aircraft was centered “on the beam,” these signals merged into a steady, monotonous tone. If the aircraft ventured to one side of the airway, the signal heard was either the Morse A or N, depending on the aircraft’s position from the beacon. (See Figure 13-3.)

Each beacon defined four airways, thus the name “four-course radio range,” and the beacon’s identification was broadcast in Morse code twice each minute. The so-called beam width was 3 degrees, so that at the halfway point of 100 miles between beacons, the on-course deviation was about +/-2.6 miles. Station passage was

marked by a “cone of silence,” at which point the aural tone would disappear as the aircraft passed overhead. Distance from the station was later provided by marker beacons placed along the airway at intervals of 20 miles or so.

By today’s standards, the four-course radio range was primitive. Low frequency radio was subject to electrical static and other weather aberrations and distortions, but it constituted a quantum leap forward over the visual, lighted beacon system in use at the time. Pilots became very adept at flying the four-course system, and as the airlines began establishing schedules on their new routes. All-weather navigation allowed adherence to schedules that theretofore would have been impossible.

The CAB was established as an independent board of five individuals who reported directly to the president and whose function was primar­ily to exercise control over air carrier economic regulation, such as rates, routes, and mergers. The CAB was also given the responsibility to investigate aircraft accidents and for safety rule­making. It was specifically charged with “the promotion, encouragement, and development of civil aeronautics.”

Ш The Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA)

The CAA was created as an agency, headed by an administrator, which was placed back within the Department of Commerce. Responsibility for all non-military air traffic control, safety programs, and airway development was now assumed by the CAA. Compliance with Civil Air Regulations became mandatory. Training centers were established to educate and standardize train­ing for air traffic controllers and others affected by safety regulations. Coordination of all control­lers followed, with towers and en route centers falling under the CAA umbrella.

When the Department of Transportation Act cre­ated the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the function of the government in promoting, regulating, and enforcing aviation safety stan­dards finally found a permanent home. A quick review of the history of the administration of aviation safety shows the torturous path that it had taken.

The Air Commerce Act of 1926 first autho­rized safety regulation, the administration of which was placed within the Department of Commerce. The Aeronautics Branch was created as an agency in the Department of Commerce and became the first government agency to con­cern itself with aviation safety. This agency was renamed the Bureau of Air Commerce in 1934. Under the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938 (as amended in 1940), these functions were trans­ferred to the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) and remained within the Department of Commerce.

The Federal Aviation Act of 1958 signifi­cantly reallocated existing authority in avia­tion regulatory matters. The CAA was renamed the Federal Aviation Agency, removed from the Department of Commerce, and organized as an independent agency that reported only to Congress and to the president. The Federal Aviation Agency was given the responsibility previously exercised by the CAB for propos­ing air safety legislation (statutory) and for rule making, designated under the CAB as Civil Aeronautic Rules (CARs), and now known as the Federal Aviation Regulations (FARs). All air safety research and development authority was consolidated within the Agency, including that previously carried out by the National Advi­sory Committee for Aeronautics, the Airways Modernization Board, and the Air Coordinating Committee. The procedural responsibility in air­man certificate actions was also transferred from the CAB to the Federal Aviation Agency. Under the Federal Aviation Act of 1958, the CAB retained its responsibility for the investigation of aircraft accidents as well as its economic regu­lation of the airlines, and it became an appeals review board for certificate action taken by the Federal Aviation Agency.

Under the provisions of the Department of Transportation Act, responsibility for aviation safety, and virtually all logical ramifications of safety issues, were placed within the authority of the Federal Aviation Administration. Its basic mission is defined by its legislative mandate, particularly the Federal Aviation Act of 1958. In 1984, Congress authorized commercial space launches by the private (nongovernmental) sec­tor for the first time under the Commercial Space Launch Act. Regulatory authority was initially placed within the Department of Transportation in the Office of Commercial Space Transporta­tion (AST), but in 1995 this function was moved over to the FAA under the same name, Office of Space Transportation (AST). This office con­ducts the only space-related function within the FAA. FAA/AST regulates the commercial space transportation industry to ensure compliance with international obligations of the United States and to enhance safety and national security. It also licenses commercial space launches of both orbital and suborbital rockets and nonfederal launch sites, or spaceports.

The scope of the functions assigned to the FAA are pervasive. While safety has always been the mainstay of the FAA mandate, ongo­ing developments in aviation have caused new emphasis to be placed on related but separate concerns, such as security,1 the environment, airport funding, international relations, and com­mercial space activities.

The functions of the FAA could logically be examined from several different perspec­tives, but for our purposes the following break­out of FAA responsibility should be the most instructive.

The operation of airports changed in many other ways. The physical size of new airports serving modern jet airline traffic, the noise consider­ations inherent in airport operations, the large facilities necessary to accommodate the millions of passengers passing through the airports, and the newfound safety concerns resulting from the criminal and social developments of the 1960s called for a new and aggressive national airport policy.

Under the Federal Airport Act of 1946, the Federal-Aid Airport Program (FAAP) had been the first peacetime program of financial aid aimed exclusively at promoting development of the nation’s civil airports. It endured for 24 years, but the growing demands of modern commercial aviation rendered that program obsolete.

In 1970, Congress passed the Airport and Airway Development Act in order to address the obvious shortcomings of the nation’s airports and the airway system. The policy statement for this law recognized the inadequacy of the nation’s airport and airway system, and commit­ted the government to its substantial expansion and improvement in order to meet the demands of interstate commerce, the national defense, and the postal service. Congress thereby created the Airport and Airway Trust Fund, which receives revenues from excise taxes paid by users of the National Air Space. Excise taxes are placed on domestic airline passenger tickets, domestic air­line flight segments, international arrivals and departures, air cargo waybills, and aviation fuels used by general aviation. See Table 23-1.

In 1982, after deregulation, Congress amended the existing statute with the Airport and Airway Development Act of 1982, reestablish­ing the FAA’s airport grants program (which had been inactive since 1981) and renaming the Trust Fund program the Airport Improvement Program (AIP). The Trust Fund was originally admin­istered by the CAA in 1946, and sequentially thereafter by the Federal Aviation Agency and then the Federal Aviation Administration.

This Act also amended the Federal Aviation Act of 1958 by requiring, for the first time, that operators of airports serving certificated air car­riers secure “Airport Operating Certificates” by application to the FAA, demonstrating the abil­ity to conduct safe and properly equipped airport operations. These requirements are set forth in Part 139 of the Federal Aviation Regulations.

Endnotes

1. Wilson, John R. M., Turbulence Aloft, 34-35.

2. Fortune magazine, August 1946, 78.

3. Denver International Airport opened in 1995.

4. FAR Part 107, effective March 18, 1972.

That enlightened period was followed by the era of European exploration and discovery,

of long distance open water navigation, and the opening of extended trade routes still in use today, along with a commercial appreciation of the meaning of time and distance. Latitudi­nal position, or north-south location, had for some time been capable of being established by reference to the celestial bodies, using instru­ments from early times like the gnomon or the Arabian kamal, and later the astrolabe, the cross­staff and, in 1731, the sextant. While a laborious methodology using the sextant could approxi­mate longitude after 1731, the lack of a defini­tive longitudinal reference had prevented from time immemorial the accurate determining of positions of longitude, which resulted in costly navigation errors, loss of life and property, and commercial uncertainty.

In 1714, British Parliament offered a prize of 20 thousand pounds sterling for a reliable method of determining longitude on a ship at sea.

The best minds in Europe, including astronomers and physicists, worked on the project for 50 years without success. John Harrison, a carpenter and clockmaker with little formal education, rea­soned that if a ship’s local time at sea could be compared to the time at the port of origin, the calculation could readily be made to find the ship’s longitudinal location. Local time could be accurately calculated at any point on earth by ref­erence to astronomical observation and, although accurate pendulum clocks existed at the time, there were no portable clocks. Due to the water’s motion, pendulum clocks would not work at sea.

Harrison produced a series of timepieces beginning in the early 1730s that produced increasingly accurate results, ultimately settling on a design that resembled a very large pocket watch. By 1762, a sea trial of his clock on a voy­age from London to Jamica showed it to be only 5.1 seconds slow. A second trial at sea in 1764 proved the clock’s error to be three times better than required to win the prize. Yet, the prize was not awarded.

The body set up by the royal government to judge the longitude prize, known as the Board of Longitude, consisted of astronomers, mathemati­cians, admirals, and a variety of other leading lights, who collectively could not bring them­selves to believe that a mere carpenter could pos­sibly have solved the longitude problem that had stumped civilization all for all time. The dispute was finally presented to Parliament and to King George III, the latter of whom said, “. . . these people have been cruelly wronged. . . , and By God, Harrison, I will see you righted!” But it was not until 1773 that an Act of Parliament finally awarded the full prize and the recognition for having solved the longitude problem to John Harrison.

The missing universal frame of reference, the Prime Meridian, was officially established in 1884 at Greenwich, England, at which Universal time is now found.

In transportation, while marginal improve­ments were seen in matters nautical, no significant advance had been otherwise made since the dawn of time. Motive power for land transport was pro­vided either by animals or by men themselves. George Washington, for instance, in 1776, was unable to travel from Philadelphia to New York City any faster than Julius Caesar could cover the equivalent distance from Rome to Pompeii. In the middle of the 18th century, the problem was the lack of motive power.

We will begin the study of aviation, and the role of government, with the advent of the Industrial Revolution. The fruits of this period in world history would, for the first time, drastically alter essentially every aspect of human existence, and would, within the space of 54 years in the 20th century, accomplish a journey from the bicycle age to the space age.

he City of London, although of ancient Roman origin (Londinium), had little to dis­tinguish it from the other potential candidates of Europe and the Middle East (Paris, Venice, Athens, Alexandria) for the honor of becom­ing the jumping-off place for the economic and military conquest of the world. One might have thought, for example, that such a place might more logically be somewhere in the Cradle of Civilization—the Middle East—or at least the Mediterranean, where for centuries commerce had steadily proceeded as invaders and traders crisscrossed the area bartering food, raw materi­als, and spices. Those people developed new and better sailing ships and means of propulsion (such as the triangular sail as an improvement on the square rigger), and they had a leg up when it came to understanding and practicing the art of politics, the use of centralized power, the formulation of ideas, and the development of institutions through centuries of inheritance. The earliest cities, governments, law codes, and alphabets were of Middle Eastern origin, as were the earliest forms of religion—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

The roots of the Industrial Revolution, how­ever, can be found in English inventiveness. In 1750, most people in the world lived in relative self-sufficiency, filling their needs from the sea
and through the husbandry of their own or oth­ers’ land. People produced not only their food, but also their clothes, fuel, candles, and even fur­niture. Items that could not be produced locally, such as spices, tea, and precious stones, could be purchased in limited quantity from entrepreneur­ial efforts. The issue of labor was rather simple: one essentially did for oneself.

But there was a difference between England and the rest of Europe. England had developed a type of middle class, a mercantile base that dealt in the leather and wool trades, shipping, and bank­ing. Most of Europe was still stuck in the vestiges of the feudal system of the Middle Ages where one’s future was defined by one’s status at birth. In England, trade had become a leveler of class dis­tinction to some degree, where the opportunity to engage in free market exchange brought the oppor­tunity for financial gain. Financial success meant escape from dependency on the upper classes and service to those with wealth and property. A lack of dependency brought with it not only self-sufficiency, but also freedom from the servile bondage of a class-bound society. It brought hope to the common man, and it invigorated him.

Production of woolen goods was revolution­ized by inventions, like the flying shuttle in 1733 by John Kay, and the spinning jenny in 1764 by

James Hargreaves. These and other inventions led to machinery that provided a mechanized means of production whose places of operation came to be known as factories. Factories required people to operate the machines, men and women who could offer their labor in return for wages. In a society that was primarily agrarian, employ­ment opportunities were not widespread. But among the descendents of feudal peasantry, the opportunity to work for a wage, and thus gain a measure of independence, was a step up.

The implementation of the factory system brought with it a significant change in the organi­zation of work. While the production of goods had always been an individual endeavor, requiring the application of some skill in the craft, the factory system introduced a repetitive, routine, and boring set of hand-eye coordination that required, at the most, minimal skill. Over time, workers became more restive, dissatisfied, and unconnected.

Perhaps the most seminal of all develop­ments during this time was the 1769 appearance of the reliable steam engine by Scottish inventor, James Watt. This invention would institution­alize the factory system, both in terms of the development of the labor movement and in terms of the efficient production of goods. It would change the course of the maritime trade, begin­ning with the installation of a steam engine on a barge to provide motive power, the forerunner of the steamship. Not long after, the steam engine would inaugurate an entirely new mode of trans­portation on land when installed on a carriage, the precursor of the locomotive.

The Industrial Revolution set the stage for the modem age to come. Figure 2-1 lists important events in the Industrial and Technological Revo­lution. It provided the impetus for the creation of the modern corporation as a legal entity, which developed as the vehicle by which to raise the large sums of money that were required to engage in the business opportunities that were gener­ated by the Industrial Revolution. It provided the means necessary to commence the first land mass transportation system, the railroads. As the relationship was being established between the railroads and labor, and between both of them with government, the paradigm for the airlines in these same areas was being set. Procedures among the various maritime countries of the world, defining the relative rights and obliga­tions of nations engaged in international shipping, would similarly be made applicable to the airlines.

The Industrial Revolution caused a new involvement by government in the affairs of busi­ness, and spawned an era of regulation and leg­islation. It gave rise to the labor movement and cast the die for early labor-management strife. It created a new demand for manufactured goods, ranging from steel for use in the construction of railroad tracks, locomotives, and cars to cloth for denims for their workers, a consumerism that continues unabated today. It fueled an explosion of new industries, and new companies within each industry to compete under primitive free enter­prise, or laissez-faire principles. And it produced a dependent worker class whose members, because of industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and specialization, were no longer self-sufficient.

An understanding of the history and experi­ence of the railroads is important to our purpose for at least four reasons:

1. As the first modern form of national trans­portation, the railroads set the model in many ways for the succeeding modes of transport, particularly air transportation.

2. The experience of the railroads defined the relationship between carriers and the government, particularly in respect to the concept of the public interest.

3. The experience of the railroads defined the relationship between carriers and the public, the shippers, and passengers.

4. The railroad experience saw the beginning of a cohesive labor movement that was inherited by the airlines and that has been central to the airlines’ experience in the 20th century.

We will review each of these developments in more detail in the next two chapters.

FIGURE 2-1 Important events in industrial and technological development.