Category AVIATION &ТНЕ ROLE OF GOVERNMENT

Along with his refusal to pay royalties, the pub­licity and success that Curtiss was obviously attaining was too much for the Wrights to bear, so they filed their first patent infringement law­suit against Curtiss and the Herring-Curtiss Com­pany in August 1909. Curtiss had formed the Herring-Curtiss Company with Augustus M. Herring in March 1909, primarily on the strength of Herring’s representations of having a patent for the airplane that preceded that of the Wrights, and further of having been extensively associated with Octave Chanute and Samuel J. Langley in their aeronautical experiments. It soon turned out that Herring possessed no patent, but Curtiss still refused to pay royalties to the Wrights. So did many other aviators. Few people could believe that the two brothers owned, to the exclusion of everyone else in the world, the right to fly.

The Curtiss litigation was only one of many lawsuits the Wrights had filed against purported patent infringers. The Wrights sued the Aero­nautic Society of New York. They sued this one and then that one, in the United States and in the courts of Europe, including England, France, and Germany. Judgment was ultimately entered in over 30 lawsuits brought by the Wrights. The Wrights’ attention had turned completely away from the excitement of flying that now gripped the European and American aviation commu­nity. Their concentration was on litigation. They set up a corporation to own and manage their patent and to prevent any competition through litigation. They were consumed with the com­mercial exploitation of their airplane, but they were being left behind as the aeronautical world flew on.

Most of those who had been active in the small fraternity of aeronauts were appalled by the Wrights’ actions. Octave Chanute, who had so openly shared the results of his experi­mentation in gliding and airfoils (which had been adopted by the Wrights in large measure), was highly critical of the Wrights and publicly rebuked their patent litigation. Perhaps the best illustration of the public feeling at the time was expressed in the Evansville (Illinois) Courier of December 2, 1909:

«For the purpose of controlling abso­lutely in this country and Canada all aviation by means of heavier-than – air machines, the Wright Company, backed by financiers controlling probably nearly a billion dollars, was formed several days ago. The men behind the latest, The Flying Machine Trust, are nearly all prominent in financial and trust affairs. The capital of the company is modestly placed at $1,000,000, and it is announced that there is no stock for sale. The com­pany, which has been formed to take over all of the Wrights’ patents and to prosecute infringements, claims as an asset even the principle of the plane and the control of the equilibrium of the machine.4»»

The Wrights’ suit against Curtiss resulted in the first court decision on the patent issue in January 1910. The federal court in the Western District of New York found that Curtiss had, indeed, violated the Wright patent. Although the Wright machines used wing “warping,” and Cur­tiss used “ailerons” to accomplish lateral control, the court ruled that the Wrights’ discovery of a workable means for achieving lateral equilibrium or balance was what was protected under the pat­ent, not the method for achieving it. Thus, the dissimilarities between wing warping control and aileron control to produce lift differential of the wings “had no bearing upon the means adopted to preserve equilibrium.”5 Curtiss immediately appealed the decision, posted a bond to super­sede the judgment, and then went back to work.

He moved forward energetically in many areas, innovating, testing, and improving his machines. He agreed to participate in an air meet in Los Angeles at the beginning of 1910, the first such major event in the United States. Although the Wrights did not compete in the event, they were there to try to shut it down. Louis Paulhan, the French aeronaut and early aviation record holder, was greeted upon his arrival by Wright lawyers serving a patent infringement suit and complaint for an
injunction to prevent anyone from flying. The event ran, nevertheless, from January 10 to Jan­uary 20 and was attended by 254,000 spectators. The Los Angeles Times said it was one of the greatest public events in the history of the west. Even the federal courts must have thought so, as no injunctions were issued.

Curtiss won $6,600 in prize money in the categories of fastest speed, endurance, and quick starting and set a new air speed record of 55 mph. From Los Angeles he traveled east and accepted the challenge issued by New York World publisher, Joseph Pulitzer, to compete for the first successful flight between New York City and Albany, New York. The challenge carried with its successful conclusion a $10,000 prize for completion of the 152-mile distance, which allowed two landings en route and completion within a period of 24 hours. Curtiss chose to fly down the Hudson River from Albany, success­fully completing the competition requirements on May 29, 1910. It was the first official cross­country airplane flight in the United States.

In July 1910, six months after the trial court ruling in the Curtiss case, the Court of Appeals of New York reversed the trial court and sent the case back for further evidentiary hearings at the
trial level, effectively putting the parties to the litigation back where they had started.

In the middle of the 1920s, aviation in America was emerging from its long period of confusion and stagnation. But aviation in Europe had captured the imagination of the people and of industry almost immediately after the Wright brothers’ tour of Europe in 1908-9, and it still led the way. The United States government had been significantly involved in promoting aviation at least since 1918 with subsidy and direct investment in infrastructure, and in 1926 it would begin to legally promote safety
and standards in aviation in order to boost the public confidence. But the job was big. The list of individual citizens with ardent interests in aviation in the 1920s was long, and the record of their contributions was even-then impressive. Corporate America, as well, had shared in the promotion and advancement of aviation. But the going was still slow.

One of the more beneficial byproducts of the American system of private enterprise is the philanthropic activity of its successful practitioners. The giving of one’s time, interest, and assets to causes of one’s choosing is a time-honored tradition in America. The Guggenheim family of New York made its money in the mining industry. In 1924, Daniel Guggenheim and his wife, Florence, established a foundation to promote a variety of charitable causes. One of their sons, Harry Guggenheim, was a pilot during World War I and became com­mitted to the advancement of aviation. Father and son established, in 1926, a separate fund called the Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics, and by 1930 the family had given almost $3 million to aviation-related projects.

The Guggenheims believed, like the government, that the public would embrace air travel if confidence could be established in its safety. A significant part of the safety of air travel depended on reliably designed and constructed aircraft, yet there was no such thing as what we now know as an aeronautical engineer in 1925. The Guggenheims began to fund the establishment of schools at universities across the country, and by 1929 aeronautical engineering programs or research centers had been set up at the California Institute of Technology, Stanford, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard, Syracuse, Northwestern, the University of Michigan, and others.

In 1927, the Guggenheims offered a prize of $100,000 for the construction of safe aircraft in a contest called the “Safe Aircraft Competition.” The prize went to the Curtiss Tanager, which had incorporated into its design the first short takeoff and landing (STOL) characteristics, including reduced stall speeds, ever demonstrated.

The Fund subsidized an operation in California by Western Air Express (WAE) in 1928 known as the “Model Airway,” between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Airmail was not carried on this route since no award had been made by the Post Office to WAE. Instead, the airline carried only passengers along the corridor in an effort to show that commercial passenger service was feasible without airmail subsidies, as well as safe and reliable. The Fund provided a Fokker F-10 Super Trimotor to WAE for this scheduled service and had implemented a weather-reporting regimen along the route that utilized two-way radio. This was the first PIREPS (pilot weather reporting system) in history. The passenger operations ended in 1929, and although the experiment was not profitable, it did demonstrate that passenger – only (non-airmail) service could be feasible and popular with the public, at least between certain population centers. At a time when one of the most frequent causes of airplane crashes was allocated to adverse weather conditions, not one weather-related incident was recorded. Upon the termination of the experiment in June 1929, the weather bureau assumed the reporting of aviation weather locally, and the practice ultimately spread all across the country.

When Charles Lindbergh, in 1928, suggested that it would be helpful to navigation if the names of cities and towns could be painted on the roofs of large buildings, the Guggenheims funded the cost. The Postmasters of some 8,000 communi­ties arranged for the painting on rooftops of their towns’ names in large letters, with arrows point­ing to the north and, if available, to the nearest landing field.

The Guggenheims made a very significant contribution to advances in instrument flying by funding research involving gyroscopic instru­mentation invented by Elmer Sperry (directional gyrocompass and artificial horizon) and Paul Kolls – man (precision altimeter). Guggenheim-funded engineers worked with the Aeronautics Branch of the Commerce Department and the Bureau of Standards to advance radio navigation, and with Jimmy Doolittle to test and implement instrument procedures in 1929 that made safe instrument flight routine within a decade.

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.