Aviation Regulation in The United States: A Look Back At 2016

Although airline passenger rights are perennial regulatory and media attention-grabbers, 2016 saw especially significant aviation regulatory activity and change. In an effort to bolster its legacy, the Obama administration in late October announced several new airline consumer rights rulemaking actions. Moreover, the US Department of Transportation (DOT) earlier this year abandoned its standard "notice and comment" rulemaking procedures and engaged in a regulatory negotiation (reg-neg) in an effort to break the impasse between airlines and advocates on key disability rights proposals. This piece highlights each of these noteworthy initiatives. At the time of writing, however, Donald J Trump has just been elected as the 45th president of the United States. Given his anti-regulatory sentiments, the future status of the regulatory proposals that are provisional and or exploratory are very much open to question. We would expect the regulations that have been issued in final form to remain in force.

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