Legislative Acts — The 1926 Commerce Act

In 1926 the second major act of aviation legislation, the 1926 Air Commerce Act, was passed by the U.S congress. The Commerce Act created new regulations on aircraft registration, airmen health, navigational facilities used by pilots, and the creation of the air traffic regulations. The Commerce Act created infrastructure for the aviation industry to grow and become safer. It was the federal governments’ responsibility to create new airports. This was not only making It safer to transport mail but also created efficiency.

Before this bill was introduced pilots had a very difficult time navigating at night along with below average weather conditions. The bill addressed this by creating more advanced navigational ground equipment to aid the pilot. The bill also made pilots go through a medical screening before they could get certified. This also made the industry safer by allowing only heathy and competent pilots fly.

I think the biggest impact this bill had was on aircraft needing to be maintained along with needing to be inspected after a specified amount of time. If you ask any pilot to rate how important their preflight walkthrough is on a scale of 1–5 nearly everyone would probably say 5. The reason why is because in order to ensure the safety of flight is possible the pilot must check to see if the aircraft is airworthy. Without this bill being proposed we might never would have seen a regulation requiring the pilots to check to see if the aircraft is airworthy before flight.

References —

S. (2006, February 22). airmail in America https://postalmuseum.si.edu/exhibits/current/airmail in-america/index.html

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