With the comprehensive FAA aviation reauthorization package completed, the U.S. Congress is turning its attention to the implementation of the nearly 1,200 directives that spanned the more than 1,000-page bill signed into law last month.
“With any piece of legislation, the devil's in the details,” House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Sam Graves (R-Missouri) told AIN. “We tried to write the majority of our issues as tight as we can. But you still have bureaucratic interpretation, and you want to make sure that the intent of the law is followed by the bureaucrats.”
This means the committees in both chambers will conduct “some pretty rigorous oversight” of the FAA and other affected parties. “That will take some time, and we’ll work through the process.”
The bill culminated a multi-year process that began with hearings and stakeholder meetings that began even before the current, 118th, Congress convened in January 2023. While it took four short-term extensions of the FAA’s operating authority before the House and Senate concluded work on it, that was relatively short and painless compared with the process in recent decades, which was often contentious—pitting one aviation sector against another—and required dozens of extensions.
In terms of efforts to progress the bill in a bipartisan way, the Senate was a bit bumpier on that front than the House, with the Commerce Committee holding off its vote for eight months until it had come into agreement on issues such as raising the airline pilot mandatory retirement age (omitted from the bill) and adding slots to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (kept in the bill).
But on the House side, during the vote in the T&I committee, the ranking Democrat Congressman, Rick Larsen (Washington), made it clear that the House bill did not address all he wanted but that the leadership was in lockstep on the reauthorization package to move forward.
Compromise Wins the Day
Pointing to the unanimous vote out of committee and the overwhelming final vote on the House floor (387-26), Graves agreed. “It was bipartisan from the beginning.” He called Larsen “a very good partner in this process” and told AIN they are both old-school. “We believe in compromise…which means that you don’t get everything that you want but you get most of what you want. And so, the whole thing worked out. That’s why we were able to see it to the end,” he commented.
Graves explained the sorting through the hundreds of asks and issues. “We kicked it off pretty hard once we got into this Congress,” Graves said. “The best way to do it is just to get everyone in a room and start working through it. What can you accept? What can you not accept?”
This includes setting aside what they couldn’t agree on. “You have to be willing to give some things up. Sometimes that’s hard to swallow, but I was willing to do it,” he said. But once the bill made it through—and there were last-minute compromises made before the House initially voted on it, such as changing the 1,500-hour rule for airline pilots—it was then up to the Senate to iron out its end. Despite hard pushes in the Senate for the 1,500-hour rule and age 65 retirement changes, both were ultimately dropped to get the deal done.
The initial House bill topped 800 pages, while the Senate counterpart was closer to 500. Graves described the differences between the two. “The Senate bill was much more of a consumer-related bill when it came to the flying public and the airlines. The House bill was much more technical in terms of getting down in the weeds on a lot of issues, particularly when it came to the general aviation community and when it came to a lot of safety issues that we worked on,” he said. “The Senate accepted the majority of that right from the start, and that obviously helped out a lot.”
The final FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024 (H.R.3935) establishes funding levels for both the FAA and NTSB through Fiscal Year 2028. In all, the bill is a nearly $106 billion measure spanning both agencies. H.R.3935 incorporates 12 titles, including the first-ever dedicated solely to general aviation—a key priority for Graves.
Graves explained why the general aviation title was such a priority to him: “It doesn't matter where you're in the process—whether you're a commercial pilot or a corporate pilot or a mechanic or a technician—you probably started in general aviation," he said. "That's how it begins. Basically, general aviation is the building block, the foundation for the entire aviation sector, and I thought that it deserved its own title rather than having stuff sprinkled throughout the bill.”
The Congressman cited as an example in the title a provision to guard pilots from the use of safety enhancement technologies for enforcement against them. “When we started implementing ADS-B in our aircraft, the FAA at the time said they would not use that in enforcement action and then they started doing it,” he said. “It was wrong, and we codified that they can no longer use that when it comes to enforcement action.”
Airport funding is an area in the bill where Graves said he was particularly proud. The bill made the first significant jump in airport funding in years, to $4 billion annually. “We make sure that the majority of that money is going to small- and medium-sized airports,” he said. “That’s going to be a huge boost to general aviation and to those smaller airports throughout the country.”
Graves also pointed to safety efforts, including addressing the recent near misses/ground incursions and embracing safety-enhancing technology. He also noted measures to boost the workforce.
“The workforce title is something that's very important,” Graves said. “We're seeing a shortage in all areas of aviation. What we do is try to break down those barriers when it comes to entry. Unfortunately, when it comes to aviation, it can be very expensive. We’re just trying to break down those barriers, get more access to more people, and get them excited about the industry overall.”
As far as what didn’t make the bill, Graves said he plans to continue to work on increasing the retirement age for pilots and hours involving the use of full-motion simulators for training. “There's just a couple of things that I would like to continue to work on and find some common ground to see if we can make some advancements.”