Aviation legislation and regulatory frameworks

Aviation Legislation

Lake, Katie M. (2011, May). "A Critical Analysis of the Airline Safety and Federal Aviation Administration Extension Act of 2010." Retrieved from: http://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/

Lake's main argument focuses upon aviation legislation implemented after an airline accident that resulted in public pressure to improve and tighten the educational and technical requirements for persons to qualify as pilots. The legislation to be implemented is the Airline Safety and Federal Aviation Administration Extension Act of 2010. The author argues that the requirements of this legislation are too stringent and that it would severely affect the supply of suitably qualified pilots to the industry. Furthermore the author appears to indicate that the nature of the requirements are not in line with the level of qualification that might otherwise be expected from graduates and that suitably qualified graduates would be pushed out of the job market by the new legislation.

While I can certainly understand the need for the most stringent of rules when it comes to placing the lives of passengers and crew into the hands of a pilot, I can also understand the point the author makes. I am inclined to agree that the new legislation is unlikely to have the intended effect, while also creating more problems than it solves. This also seems to be the basic assumption the author makes.

The author bases here claims and statements on a thorough literature review, which includes documents from the Federal Register, House of Representatives, and the Senate. She also investigates FAA data, scholarly journals, documents from the UAA, and studies by the Aviation Accreditation Board International, among other relevant documents and entities, for input into the relevance and validity of her study and her conclusions.

The most significant result of the review is that only one out of the 59 accidents relating to the one that sparked the controversy involved human error and a pilot with less than the 1,500 flight hours that would be required by the new legislation. This fact alone provides for the emotional and faulty judgment of a public that sought retribution for an accident that they could not otherwise explain. Hence, the implication appears to be that giving in to public demand without a thorough investigation into the causes of the accidents involved would not mitigate the accident rate by more than a few percentage points. The effect that it would have, however, would involve far fewer benefits than costs in terms of pilot supply to businesses and ultimately the economy of the country.