The Federal Aviation Act

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esponsibility for aviation safety had been lodged in the Civil Aeronautics Authority (CAA) by virtue of the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938, as amended in 1940. Over the course of the ensuing 20 years, aviation safety had dramatically improved, largely due to the reliability of aircraft and engines and the development of instruments and navigation aids. The skies were much more crowded in 1958 than they had been in 1938, no doubt; but progress had been made in refining the airway (navigation) structure since the days of the lighted (beacon) airways. Beginning in 1947, VHF Omni-directional Radio transmitters (VOR) were installed across the country. An aircraft with a VOR receiver could track inbound from any point, directly to the station, by means of visual refer­ence to the display shown in the onboard aircraft receiver. The direct routes between the VOR trans­mitters were established in 1950, designated as Victor airways, and were given numbers to distin­guish one from another. Instead of flying from city to city as previously, or from one low-frequency radio transmitter to another (the radio range navi­gation system), aircraft that were equipped with these high-frequency radio receivers flew these new routes as aerial highways.

For years the CAA had been authorized to fashion rules and regulations to promote aviation

safety and to thus establish standards for aircraft, engines, propellers, and mechanics, as well as for flight schools and the training of airmen. It was also charged with developing and administering the Air Traffic Control system (АТС), the system oper­ated by the federal government that regulated the movement of aircraft throughout the United States. Control of aircraft by АТС could range all the way from taxi to takeoff, departure and en route clear­ance, to arrival and landing clearance at destination. Most aircraft in the 1950s flew under Visual Flight Rules (VFR), which required little or no АТС control. Airline passenger operations, however, flew largely under Instrument Flight Rules (IFR), the procedure that was designed to ensure that an aircraft had airspace reserved specifically for it, so that no other airplane flying under IFR would occupy that same airspace. But it was not uncom­mon for airline traffic to also fly under visual flight rules, at least for part of the planned route of flight.

These regulations were known as Civil Aero­nautic Regulations (CARS) and were published in the Code of Federal Regulations. The CAA appears to have dutifully performed its administrative func­tion regarding such matters. It can be argued with the aid of hindsight, however, that there was a lack of long-range vision within the CAA during its first 20 years of existence, between 1938 and 1958.

For one thing, the CAA was buried within the Department of Commerce along with the agencies that dealt with highways, maritime issues, textiles, the census, and myriad other matters. To make things worse, its appropriations had been slashed following World War II. Voice communication between pilots and ground controllers using high frequency radio had only been completely imple­mented in 1955. CAA air traffic control centers, which exercised control over all IFR traffic within large geographical areas throughout the country, now had direct voice contact with most aircraft within their sectors, although in some remote areas of the country it was still necessary for aircraft to relay and receive communications with АТС through airline company channels, particularly in uncontrolled airspace. CAA controllers kept track of the location of each aircraft in the sector by means of position reports given by the pilots themselves. These position reports included time, altitude, last radio fix or location, next radio fix, and the estimated time of arrival at that fix. Posi­tion reporting was cumbersome and that system required extremely large blocks of airspace to be reserved for a single aircraft.

Radar, only recently invented (WWII), was slower to be adopted. Radar was first implemented by АТС only as an aid to making instrument approaches to airports during instrument or bad weather conditions. Gradually, as the number of large planes increased and began competing for the available airspace, it became more and more dif­ficult for the air traffic control center personnel to keep track of aircraft. Distance Measuring Equip­ment (DME), the system that allowed an airplane to determine its distance from an equipped navigation facility, was incorporated into the VOR (Victor) airways system beginning in 1951. Now an air­craft could not only determine its azimuth location (bearing) from the station, it also could determine its distance. DME was a big help in tracking air­craft in the “voice only” system but, even so, the control problem was becoming unmanageable.

In 1955 there were surveillance radars in place at 32 locations to service traffic arrival and depar­ture at airports, but there were no long-range radars to control en route traffic except in the mid-Atlantic region at Baltimore. Concerns were raised that АТС traffic congestion increased the likelihood of mid-air collision. Extension of long-range radars to provide positive radar control for en route traffic was discussed, but not implemented. Then, on June 30, 1956, a United Airlines DC-7 collided with a TWA Super Constellation over the Grand Canyon, in Arizona, killing 128 people. (See Figure 20-1.)

In order to take a closer look at this tragedy, some background regarding how АТС did things at the time is helpful. Commercial airline flights at the time were conducted under both IFR and VFR rules, at different times during the same flight. АТС provided aircraft separation only to aircraft flying under instrument flight rules, and then only to aircraft flying within “controlled” airspace. It is also important to note that the air­craft separation provided was only as to other IFR traffic, not aircraft flying under visual flight rules.

En route controlled airspace (as opposed to terminal airspace) was basically limited to Victor airways that crisscrossed the country. A disadvantage to the Victor airways system was that its zigzag courses often did not suit either favorable wind conditions or preferred airline routing. Airline operations were thus permitted on “direct” routes between points, but these operations were “off airways,” or in uncontrolled airspace, in which АТС did not provide either control or aircraft separation, even on IFR flight plans. Operations in uncontrolled airspace were therefore conducted under visual flight rules where flight crews were obligated to “see and avoid” all other aircraft traffic.

TWA 2 and United 718 both departed Los Angeles on IFR flight plans within minutes of each other. TWA 2 was assigned an altitude of 19,000 feet and United 718 was cleared to 21,000 feet. While still in controlled airspace at 19,000 feet, TWA 2 requested and was granted clearance to “1,000 on top,” which allowed it to climb to and maintain any altitude at least 1,000 feet above the general cloud layer. TWA 2 then climbed to 21,000 feet.

As the two flights neared the Grand Canyon, both aircraft were at 21,000 feet on converging courses. They were in uncontrolled airspace, in clear weather with only scattered buildups that could be circumnavigated. Both aircraft were

• Phoenix

FIGURE 20-1 Collision of United Airlines DC-7 and TWA Super Constellation, June 30, 1956.

flying under visual flight rules that required each to “see and avoid” each other, but somehow they did neither. While no definitive causation could be established, the crash investigation panel sug­gested that the towering cumulous might have obscured the aircraft from each other.

This accident caused the largest loss of life since the beginning of commercial aviation. It focused public attention on the increasingly crowded skies developing over America as com­mercial aviation grew. The addition of jets to the aircraft fleet, flying at almost twice the speed of the fastest piston aircraft, would only increase the hazard. Another problem was the mix of military aircraft with civilian aircraft in common airspace. Bomber and fighter jet aircraft operated under one set of rules run by the military, and civilian aircraft operated under a different set of rules administered by the CAA.

The civilian-military dichotomy of aircraft control soon produced a second midair catastrophe. On January 31, 1957, a Douglas Aircraft owned DC-7 and an Air Force F-89 collided near Sunland, California at 25,000 feet. The DC-7 had a crew of four who were onboard in connection with a test flight of the aircraft, with no passengers. The F-89 Scorpion, with a crew of two, was conducting an unrelated test flight. Near head-on closure at high
speed was deemed the probable cause. A par­ticularly regrettable and high profile aspect of this midair collision was the fact that aircraft debris fell onto the occupied school yard of Pacoima Junior High School, where hundreds of students happened to be engaged in athletic activities. Three boys were killed and some 71 children were injured.

The lack of uniformity and coordination in aircraft control between civilian and military authority was further highlighted by the midair collision of a United DC-7 with a U. S. Air Force F-100 on April 21, 1958 very near the Grand Can­yon. The F-100 was based at Nellis AFB and the DC-7 was en route from Los Angeles to New York at 21,000 feet when the collision occurred. Neither aircraft was aware of the presence of the other, and neither were their respective controlling authorities. On May 2, 1958, yet another midair occurred when a military jet trainer and a civilian airliner collided over Brunswick, Maryland. This time the death toll was 12. It was clear that something had to be done.

Although it had been apparent to many people in authority since the early 1950s that technological advances in aviation and the growth of commercial aviation had compromised the government’s func­tion to properly promote safety in commercial air travel, no consensus for remedial action formed until this series of midair collisions occurred. The
first action taken was the formation of the Air­ways Modernization Board (AMB) in 1957, which was really no more than a temporary fix to try to address the problem. The AMB had been created as a result of a Presidential report that warned of “a crisis in the making” as a result of the inability of the airspace management system to cope with the complex patterns of civil and military traffic ply­ing America’s skies. Seemingly fulfilling this dire prediction, the midair collision in 1958 occurred. Another temporary fix followed to combine rule making authority for control of all aircraft, military as well as civil, in the CAB in 1958.

The day after the Brunswick midair, the Federal Aviation Act draft legislation was intro­duced into both the Flouse and Senate chambers of Congress. The primary mover of the Act was Sena­tor Mike Monroney of Oklahoma, a frequent critic of existing aviation policy. President Eisenhower sent a special message to Congress soon after in which he referenced the “recent midair collision” and the “tragic losses of life,” and through which he asked for the establishment of a federal agency to consolidate the functions required to administer the needs of both civil and military aviation in the country. Congress finally acted.

The Federal Aviation Act of 1958 was signed into law by President Eisenhower on August 23, 1958. While the Act incorporated virtually all of the provisions of the Civil Aero­nautics Act of 1938 that related to economic reg­ulation (entry, rates, routes, mergers, interlocking directorates, and agreements among air carriers), its great impact was on safety. The CAA was abolished and in its place was created the Fed­eral Aviation Agency, which was organized as an independent agency answerable to Congress.

The Federal Aviation Agency was given authority to make long-range plans and to imple­ment such plans without interference from compet­ing government interests. All air safety research and development was consolidated and placed with the new agency; thus, the work of the Airways Mod­ernization Board, the Air Coordinating Committee, and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronau­tics (NACA) was assumed by the Federal Aviation Agency. Recall that an example of the work of

NACA includes the engine cowl research originally incorporated on the Boeing 247 and DC-1 back in the 1930s. Rule making was taken away from the CAB and placed in the new agency, as was the responsibility for recommendation regarding aviation legislation. This new rule-making authority included consolidation and unification of authority for rule making for control of all aircraft, both civil­ian and military, flying in United States airspace.

Jurisdiction over suspension or revocation of airmen certificates was removed from the CAB and placed in the Federal Aviation Agency; the CAB was then designated as an appeal board to review the Administrator’s certificate action with authority to reverse or modify the action taken by the agency against an airman. The CAB retained its responsi­bility for aircraft accident investigation as well as all aspects of economic regulation of the airlines.

In the fall of 1958, the first Federal Avia­tion Agency Administrator to be appointed was retired Air Force General Elwood R. “Pete” Quesada. (See Figure 20-2.) He stepped up enforcement procedures in the airlines, assessing fines and issuing suspensions for rules violations. He led the way for the adoption of military-style radar for control of civilian aircraft. His tenure with the Federal Aviation Agency was marked by stormy relations with the airlines and its pilots, as well as with general aviation, but it set the country on a course of placing safety first for the flying public, a priority constant to this day.

FIGURE 20-2 Pete Quesada being sworn in at the FAA in the fall of 1958.

Source: FAA.