The Federal Aviation Administration oversees more than 44,000 flights per day. Carefully orchestrating all those planes and keeping the roughly 3 million people aboard them safe are air traffic controllers.
But air traffic wasn’t always the purview of the federal government. The first scheduled commercial flight took off in 1914, and for the next several decades, individual airports were responsible for their own air traffic control, which was limited to the use of towers. This meant pilots had to maintain separation, leading to near misses, crashes and growing calls for broader air traffic control.
When did the federal government first begin working on air traffic?
In response to the aviation industry’s calls for safety regulations (to help spur more passengers), the Air Commerce Act passed in 1926. It tasked the Secretary of Commerce with establishing and enforcing basic safety measures. This included licensing pilots, certifying the safety of planes, designating airways and investigating accidents.
In the mid-1930s, airport traffic in cities like Chicago and Newark surged. After a series of studies, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Air Commerce began managing en-route traffic on July 6, 1936. The bureau set key rules and requirements, including instrument ratings, the use of federally licensed aircraft with approved equipment and the filing of flight plans.
What was air safety like in the mid-20th century?
In 1938, the Civil Aeronautics Act, signed by President Franklin Roosevelt, established the Civil Aeronautics Authority that had the power to assign routes and regulate fares. By that year, modernized airway traffic control centers had been established across the country, according to the National Air and Space Museum. Over the next two decades, flight advances included precision landing systems and radar-improved air traffic control and safety. Still, these technologies did not end delays or fully ensure safety.
As the number of air travel passengers grew, so did accidents. An FAA report on midair collisions in the U.S. between 1938 and 1960 noted 410 civil aircraft crashes. Commercial air carriers were only involved in a small portion of these accidents, but when they were, the results were usually deadly. Of the 32 collisions involving at least one passenger plane, 22 resulted in fatalities and a combined 456 people died.
What led to the formation of the FAA?
One of those commercial crashes was a particularly devastating tragedy. On June 30, 1956, United Airlines Flight 718 and Trans World Airlines Flight 2 collided in midair over the Grand Canyon. All 128 people aboard both planes—a Douglas DC-7 and a Lockheed Super Constellation—died in the nation’s deadliest plane crash at the time.
According to the Arizona Republic, both flights departed from Los Angeles at the same time and were en route to Chicago and Kansas City, respectively, following different flight paths. The TWA captain requested an altitude change when the plane hit turbulence. Initially denied due to the proximity of the United flight plan, he followed with a standard request to fly 1,000 feet above weather. That option was approved with the notice that the United flight would be nearby. The United captain, however, was not made aware of the change in altitude, the newspaper reported. The crash happened soon after, at 10:31 a.m.
“The collision occurred while the aircraft were flying under visual flight rules in uncongested airspace,” according to the FAA. “The accident dramatized the fact that even though U.S. air traffic had more than doubled since the end of World War II, little had been done to mitigate the risk of midair collisions.”
Public outcry, media coverage and the ensuing investigation led Congress to pass the Federal Aviation Act of 1958, which created the Federal Aviation Agency (renamed the Federal Aviation Administration and placed under the new Department of Transportation in 1967). It worked with the newly established National Transportation Safety Board to update air traffic control systems, regulate and manage U.S. airspace, expand radar coverage, standardize flight rules and separate civilian and military traffic.
Today, the FAA uses a nationwide network of control towers, radar centers and communication systems to guide planes, standardize procedures and coordinate emergencies.
