Government Regulation In the Aviation Industry

Multiple sectors of flight are regulated by the United States federal government. The agency which is in charge of virtually all aspects of government regulation is the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Every government regulation on airlines, pilots, and airports flows through them. The  most notable regulation imposed on flights are those related to safety. The government has decided what people are allowed to fly airplanes and receive ratings for their work (allowing them to fly certain planes and so on). These rules are imposed in order to protect consumers of airline tickets, as well as to protect the general aviation community. Before 2009, a captain was required to hold an airline transport pilot rating with a minimum of 1500 flight hours (simulator time included) and the first officer only a commercial rating with 200 flight hours. In 2009 a Colgan Dash 8 Q400  flying a United Connections flight went down in Buffalo. The National Transportation Security Board deemed the crash due to pilot error and inexperience. Due to this, all airline pilots (first officer and captain) were required to gain the airline transport pilot rating. Today, this has effected the industry, as many pilots cannot gain the hours they need through a job as they could in the past. The government has had to make exceptions, allowing pilots of certain flight schools (such as Embry Riddle) to gain their rating with only 1000 hours. This is because there are not enough pilots to meet the demands. These changes made in Washington affect many aspects of aviation economics.

 Pilot maximum flight hours in a day are also regulated by the FAA. Just last year, these hours were decreased, drastically effecting the entire industry as more pilot's must be hired. This increases costs of tickets and may decrease the amount of tickets bought.

Also, the most notable government involvement in the aviation organization is its employment of air traffic controllers. All air traffic control members are government employees. All airspace is created by the FAA and thus anyone who flies is being controlled by laws created by the US government. If a pilot flies into a class Bravo airspace and contacts approach, he is talking to the government, via an air traffic controller and he is following the government's mandates for airspace. This is not an exceptionally surprising regulation, as all rules governing the roads are also government mandated. However, rules and regulations governing the air are not created by state or local governments but specifically the federal government, keeping things universal whether a pilot is flying over California, Colorado, or Maine. This is direct government involvement of a sector of business, far more than might be expected from a free market economy.

Other regulations involve certain amounts of checks that must be done on equipment and planes in certain time intervals. Also, rules based on what is allowed to be on-board of an aircraft (including cell phone usage) is all mandated by the FAA. Recently, the Federal Aviation Administration had meetings discussing the allowance of technology such as laptops being used throughout an entire flight. The government administration chose to allow passengers to keep electronics on during all phases of flight, assuming that their wireless radios were turned off at all times. It is not Lan, British Airways, or United that chooses what you can use on a flight so much as it is your government. The government has a large amount of power in the world of the aircraft.