The bipartisan vote to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration also greenlit measures to strengthen consumer protections and address safety and work force issues plaguing the skies.
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The measure provides more than $105 billion to the Federal Aviation Administration and another $738 million to the National Transportation Safety Board.
The House on Wednesday passed legislation to reauthorize federal aviation programs and improve air travel at a time of intense passenger woes and dysfunction in the system, sending the bill to President Biden, who was expected to sign it into law.
The House approved the bill 387 to 26, days after the Senate passed it on a vote of 88 to 4.
The measure provides more than $105 billion to the Federal Aviation Administration and another $738 million to the National Transportation Safety Board for safety programs, airport modernization and infrastructure projects, technology upgrades and next-generation aviation systems. It also supports the hiring and training of air traffic controllers, codifies airlines’ refund obligations to passengers, restricts seating fees for families with children, strengthens protections for passengers with disabilities, bolsters aviation work force development programs and protects access to air travel at rural airports.
“For over a century, the United States has led the world in aviation safety and innovation, and this bill is critical to ensuring America remains the global leader in aviation,” Representative Sam Graves, Republican of Missouri and chairman of the Transportation Committee, said in a statement after the vote. “It’s vital to our economy, to millions of American jobs and to the millions of passengers that depend on our National Airspace System every single day.”
The final package, which lawmakers heralded as a timely and necessary investment in the nation’s aviation system and a win for consumers, was the product of months of negotiations between the House and Senate committees with jurisdiction over federal aviation programs. It was approved after Congress had repeatedly passed short-term extensions, blowing through several deadlines during a tumultuous period in the skies that included a spate of runway near collisions, plane malfunctions and flight disruptions.
Representative Rick Larsen of Washington, the top Democrat on the Transportation panel, said the legislation “will create a safer, cleaner, greener and more accessible aviation system here in the U.S.”
In a statement, he highlighted the measure’s safety and infrastructure improvements, the addition of well-paying aviation jobs, policies for putting forward new aviation technologies and “robust protections for airline customers.”
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Source: nytimes.com
