As the United States marks its 250th anniversary, WTOP presents “250 Years of America,” a multipart series examining the innovations, breakthroughs and pivotal moments that have shaped the nation since 1776.
AAR is proud to partner with WTOP to bring you this series.
A catastrophic midair collision over the Grand Canyon in 1956 that killed 128 people aboard two commercial airliners transformed aviation safety in America and helped lead to the creation of today’s Federal Aviation Administration.
The collision, between a United Airlines DC-7 and a TWA Lockheed Super Constellation, shocked the nation, and underscored the need for greater federal oversight as commercial aviation entered the jet age.
“The American public is shocked by this terrible tragedy,” Arkansas Rep. Oren Harris said in a Movietone News interview following the disaster.
Two years later, Congress passed the Federal Aviation Act, signed by President Dwight Eisenhower, creating a stronger federal role in aviation oversight and safety.
DePaul University transportation expert Joseph Schwieterman said the changes came as commercial aviation entered the jet age and passenger traffic expanded rapidly.
“You look at our tolerance for accidents a century ago, even 80 years ago, and unfortunately there were risks,” Schwieterman said. “It was viewed as a fact of life.”
While the federal government already played a limited role in aviation through the Civil Aeronautics Authority, airlines largely managed safety on their own.
The CAA had begun building air traffic control infrastructure as the U.S. entered World War II, but the nation lacked a comprehensive radar-based system to manage the rapidly growing number of commercial flights.
The FAA’s first administrator was retired Air Force Gen. Elwood “Pete” Quesada, a close adviser to Eisenhower who pushed to modernize the nation’s air traffic control network.
During his four years leading the agency, Quesada accelerated development of a nationwide radar system and strengthened coordination between civilian aviation and the military.
An FAA film from the era highlighted the transformation.
“The plane, with the assistance of radar, is guided to a point where the plane is passed en route to an air traffic en route center,” a narrator explained.
Today, an estimated 14,000 certified air traffic controllers and trainees separate planes safely through more than 20 air route traffic control centers and hundreds of airport towers nationwide.
But aviation safety challenges persisted.
During the Kennedy administration, the FAA had no centralized headquarters in Washington, D.C., and employees worked in temporary buildings scattered across the capital.
On Nov. 22, 1963, as President John F. Kennedy rode in a motorcade in Dallas, FAA employees were moving into their new headquarters at 800 Independence Ave. SW. Excitement over the state-of-the-art building quickly turned to shock as word spread that the president had been assassinated.
The FAA underwent another major transformation in 1967 when President Lyndon Johnson signed legislation creating the Department of Transportation. The Federal Aviation Agency became the Federal Aviation Administration, while Congress also established the National Transportation Safety Board as an independent agency dedicated to investigating accidents and improving safety.
By the 1970s and early 1980s, labor tensions involving air traffic controllers emerged as a major issue.
In 1981, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, or PATCO, clashed with President Ronald Reagan during a bitter labor dispute. Reagan ordered striking controllers back to work, calling the walkout a “peril to national safety.”
When most refused to return within 48 hours, Reagan fired more than 11,000 controllers, straining the nation’s aviation system.
Airlines cut flights, military controllers were brought in to help manage traffic, and it took nearly a decade to rebuild the workforce.
Ironically, some of the reforms PATCO had advocated — including improvements to controller working conditions and modernization efforts — were later adopted.
In 1987, a new union, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, or NATCA, was formed. Yet many of the staffing and structural concerns raised decades ago remain unresolved.
After the Jan. 29, 2025, midair collision near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport that killed 67 people, the National Transportation Safety Board again identified controller staffing and airspace concerns as contributing issues.
Today, even as the air traffic control system undergoes a much needed multibillion-dollar modernization effort, aviation experts say the system is dramatically safer than it was nearly 70 years ago, when fatal airline crashes occurred with troubling frequency.
“Aviation can be unforgiving, but we’ve learned so much since the 1950s and even before that,” Schwieterman said. “Flying is safer because of the vision of President Eisenhower, Elwood Quesada, the work of the FAA, the NTSB and the commitment of airlines to make it that way.”
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