The ValuJet and TWA crashes are just two of a litany of incidents that have earned the FAA its nickname "The Graveyard Agency," an organization that acts only after people have been killed. The details and circumstances surrounding each airline disaster change, depending on whether the cause was mechanical or terrorist related, but the actors and script remain the same. FAA staff and high-level officials, the Department of Transportation's inspector general, congressional oversight committees, White House commissions, task forces, and the GAO identify, investigate, document, and suggest solutions to a known aviation security or mechanical problem. Occasionally Congress or the president asks the FAA to promulgate a new regulation, mandating the airlines to remedy such problems. The airlines react by dispatching lobbyists to Capitol Hill and the White House. Their goal: to block any proposed regulation that threatens the industry's short-term pecuniary interests.

Lobbying occurs in the dark; in the absence of an airline disaster, the public is not much interested in the politics of aviation safety and security. And even when popular attention is sparked, it wanes quickly. Easily fooled by the appearance of immediate action--senators, FAA administrators, and airline CEOs sharing a lectern at postcrash press conference and promising to "get to the bottom of this"; President George W. Bush vowing to commit as much money as is needed to keep terrorists off American planes--the nation stops short of asking, "Why do our elected officials seem to be such good pals with the airlines' top brass?" or, "How long am I willing to wait in an airport checkpoint line to have my body searched?" It takes years to pass legislation and promulgate rules that improve safety in a meaningful way, too long to sustain Americans' interest. The lobbyists, tenacious and single-minded in their purpose, stick with the program long after the public has changed the channel.

For decades, the FAA, the Department of Transportation, and Congress knew that the U.S. aviation system was an easy target for terrorists. In the years between the 1988 attack on a Pan Am jetliner over Scotland attributed to Libyan agents and September 11, 2001, the GAO issued more than forty reports warning Congress what every frequent flyer knew: a motivated terrorist would have little problem slipping past airport security and onto a plane. The Office of the Inspector General in the Transportation Department issued dozens more reports, all saying essentially the same thing. Two presidents, the elder Bush and Clinton, convened blue-ribbon commissions to study the problem. Both groups seconded the opinions of the GAO and the inspector general, concluding that aviation security was lax. The reports culminated with interminable congressional hearings, widespread finger-pointing, much passing of the buck, and few meaningful security enhancements.

Shortly after the September 11 attacks the airlines scored their most significant post-deregulation victory, when President Bush signed the Aviation and Transportation Security Act (ATSA), federalizing airport security. The airlines had finally gotten their wish. Under a new agency, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), aviation security and all its associated hassles and costs--the hiring and training of a security workforce, the purchasing of expensive bomb-detecting technology, the screening of cargo containers--would became the responsibility of the federal government.

The new agency got off to a rocky start. Its first leader, John Magaw, was fired after six months on the job, amid complaints from all of his stakeholders (the airlines, airport operators, frequent fliers, and Congress) for having taken the new security regime too far. His replacement, former Coast Guard admiral James Loy, had a longer run of success, about ten months, before he ran into trouble. Loy got credit for implementing Phase I of TSA's plan, meeting Congress's deadlines to federalize the screener workforce and deploying explosives detection machines to airports by the end of 2002. But by spring of 2003 a series of abuses uncovered by Transportation Department auditors and tenacious journalists indicated that the new federal screeners, for which TSA had grossly overpaid, were not as stringently selected, well trained, and honest as Admiral Loy had painted them to be.

As TSA scrambles to rectify its Phase I mistakes and implement Phase II of its plan, measures to improve the security of air cargo and general aviation (private) planes, it is business as usual in Congress. Oversight committee members open their doors and wallets to industry lobbyists, order the GAO and inspector general to investigate, develop strong opinions about what should be done, allocate money to solve a problem, and, in the end, back off.

Setting the Foundation

The Wright brothers made aviation history twice in the early twentieth century. The initial breakthrough occurred in 1903, when the brothers' invention, the first engine-driven airplane, flew for twelve seconds at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The second event is less well known but nonetheless has had an equally profound effect on modern life: the Wrights were the first Americans to profit from aviation, when the U.S. Army awarded the brothers a contract to build military planes.2 The U.S. government and the aviation industry have been enjoying a mutually beneficial relationship ever since.

During World War I the U.S. military built hundreds of airplanes, laying the foundation for the new industry. After the war the U.S. Postal Department became the first federal agency to initiate aviation safety regulations, in tandem with the promotion of its nascent airmail service.3 The regulations covered aircraft maintenance and inspection and established experience and proficiency testing for pilots who carried the mail.

The Air Mail Act of 1925 was passed with the express purpose of stimulating the growth of the fledgling aviation industry. The legislation allowed the Postal Department to award contracts to private businesses to carry the nation's mail. Many of the companies ushered into the system under the new law became the ancestors of modern aviation giants: United, American, Trans World (TWA), and Pan American airlines. William Boeing of Seattle, awarded the Chicago-Oakland mail route, went one step further than simply delivering the mail, deciding to integrate vertically and build his own airplanes. The Commerce Department was entrusted to carry out the Air Mail Act, leaving no doubt that the federal government was now in the business of promoting commercial aviation.

As the government awarded more routes to private fliers, there was growing concern over the problem of in-air near misses and collisions. One crash, in particular, caught the nation's attention. On March 5, 1935, a TWA airplane took off from Los Angeles heading for Newark, with scheduled stops in Albuquerque and Kansas City.4 A mechanic checking the plane in Albuquerque noticed that the radio was not working properly. After checking the weather in Kansas City and learning that it was predicted to be clear, the pilot decided to continue the journey without waiting for the repair. But the weather forecast was wrong, and by the time the plane reached Kansas City the airport was covered in dense fog. Smashing into a barn, the plane flipped, killing the pilot and four of his nine passengers. This crash, like many others, would have been likely to go largely unnoticed had not one of the dead passengers been Senator Bronson Cutting (R.-NH).

Now that a high-profile crash had touched the public's consciousness, members of Congress turned their attention to the issue of airplane safety. In what was to become a familiar pattern, the head of the Senate Commerce Committee, Royal Copeland (D.-NY), initiated a series of hearings and investigations into the Kansas City crash. Three years later Congress passed the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938, pulling the responsibility for aviation safety away from the Commerce Department and putting it under a new executive branch agency, the Civil Aeronautics Authority.5 The 1938 legislation laid the foundation for federal aviation policy for forty years. The act mandated the Civil Aeronautics Authority to take these steps:

• Encourage and help develop a domestic air transportation system;
• Foster "adequate, economical, and efficient service by air carriers at reasonable charges";
• Promote air safety.

These goals could not be maximized simultaneously; it was up to CAA regulators to figure out how to balance the scales between boosting commerce and ensuring safety.

In 1940 Congress reorganized the Civil Aeronautics Authority's responsibility, giving jurisdiction over safety and economic regulation to yet another new agency, the Civil Aeronautics Board. The CAB decided how much airlines could charge for a ticket and which cities each could serve. Authority over airport and airway development was transferred to the Department of Commerce.

The airlines flourished during World War II. Military operations improved the airlines' productivity considerably; 80-90 percent "load factors" were common. Profits were so high, in fact, that the CAB ordered the eleven largest carriers to demonstrate why they should not decrease fares by 10 percent. Six airlines decreased prices (by less than the suggested 10 percent), but the others refused to follow suit. The CAB took no further action, preferring instead to let the matter drop. The airlines' excess profits came in handy after the war, when load factors plummeted, and the market was flooded with an oversupply of aircraft and pilots who had been released from the military.

In the decade after the Second World War neither the CAB nor Congress showed much interest in the issue of airline safety. Most airports did not yet use radar; pilots kept track of air traffic by looking through the windshield of the plane. During the first four months of 1956, 452 near misses were recorded. But crashes made the news, not near misses, so Congress felt no great need to get involved. Then, in June 1956, a United and a TWA passenger plane collided over the Grand Canyon, killing all 128 people on board both aircraft, thrusting the issue of air safety into the public spotlight. Congress responded, allocating money for airports to install radar systems and appointing a commission to study the issue of air traffic control. It would take another high-profile airline disaster, two years later, for Congress to pass omnibus legislation that addressed all aspects of aviation safety.

In May 1958, the day after a commercial plane collided with an Air Force jet over Maryland, Senator Mike Monroney (D.-OK) introduced legislation creating a new federal regulatory agency to oversee airline safety, the Federal Aviation Agency. President Eisenhower, a former general both committed to aviation safety and cognizant of the importance of aviation to national defense, signed the Federal Aviation Act into law three months later. The new agency was to carry out a dual mission: to ensure airline safety and promote the aviation industry. Few questions were asked about the ability of a single agency to carry out two missions that could easily collide. The airline industry supported the legislation.

When Congress created the Department of Transportation in 1966, the Federal Aviation Agency was moved into this new, far-reaching administrative body and its name changed to what it is today, the Federal Aviation Administration. Aviation accident investigation became the responsibility of another new agency within the department, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). The FAA was given an enormous amount of responsibility, including control over the air traffic control system; the promulgation and enforcement of airline safety regulations; the assessment of aircraft airworthiness; the establishment of design and performance standards for airplanes, engines, and related equipment; and the certification of pilots, airports, aircraft, airlines, mechanics, and flight schools. Not to mention the promotion of the airline industry.

Following a spate of commercial airplane hijackings in the early 1970s, Congress amended the Federal Aviation Act in 1974, saddling the FAA with yet a another job, civil aviation security. The amendment required passengers and their carry-on luggage to pass through security screening before boarding a plane. The legislation fell short of stipulating what it would mean for an airplane or airport to be "secure enough," leaving the airlines to interpret the law on their own.

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