The Air Commerce Act of 1926
Present day aviation operations are vastly different and more complex than Orville and Wilbur Wright probably could have imagined that day on December 17, 1903 in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina when Orville Wright made man’s first successful manned, controlled, and self-propelled flight in a heavier-than-air aircraft. Today the skies are bustling with aircraft and those who are familiar with today’s Federal Aviation Regulations know that they are a thicket of rules, occupying four volumes of the Code of Federal Regulations, consisting of 460 sections extending over 3,600 pages (Parks, 2011). The birth of federal regulation in the aviation industry happened 88 years ago with the creation of the Air Commerce Act of
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Morrow was to head the committee and was charged with looking into the potential of both military and civilian aviation (Lawrence, 2014, p.106). The Board heard from 99 witnesses to include Herbert Hoover, who was the Secretary of Commerce at the time, and according to Lawrence (2014) “Hoover pointed out that the government had for a century maintained aids to navigation in the coastal waters of the country, provided education and competency standards for ships’ officers, required federal inspections of ships, and funded improvements in and about the navigable waters, including ports” …show more content…
This lead to the creation of the Aeronautic Branch assigned to the United States Department of Commerce. The federal government was now officially involved in creating and maintaining a national system of navigation as well as rules and regulations. As with any new system in place, budget cuts and distracting quarrels hampered the new Aeronautics branch as to what public works agencies would receive funding (federal aid to airports run by different states). The branch would get a structure revision in 1934 and would be renamed the Bureau of Air Commerce. Overall, the federal government playing a major role in civil commerce was what was needed to propel the industry forward. Civil Air Regulations (CAR), now called Federal Aviation Regulations (FAR), were put into place, the nation was being structured and funded for air navigation by the government, aviation industry was being regulated, and safety of flight was being