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Follow on Google News | How A Law Student Project Grounded United Airlines Airbus A321It Triggered a Revolution, But the FAA's Laziness Led to a Bizarre Result
In 1969, as part of a public interest project, several law students prepared and submitted a detailed and lengthy legal petition (http://banzhaf.net/ As a result, a federal rule requiring separate smoking and nonsmoking sections aboard commercial passenger flights was adopted in 1973. This first step of requiring no-smoking sections, deemed revolutionary and controversial at the time, started a revolution; one which lead eventually to a total ban on smoking aboard all U.S. aircraft. It also triggered the nonsmokers' rights revolution which has now led to bans on smoking in most work places and indoor public places, as well at to smoking bans in many outdoor areas, and more recently even in private apartments, condos, and homes. But before smoking was finally banned on all U.S. flights, the Federal Aviation Administration [FAA] adopted a rule which required that pilots be able to manually turn the overhead console "no-smoking" But Prof. Banzhaf is happy to report that the FAA has learned a lesson from this fiasco, and has finally taken the first step towards amending the rule to no longer require that the "no-smoking" On Friday it asked for public comment before it makes the change. Assuming that there are no objections - and it's hard to see why anyone would or even could object - the proposed rule will become final on October 22, 2024, and new planes will then need no longer have a switch to turn off the "no smoking" sign. Restrictions and then bans on smoking aboard commercial aircraft, as well as in many other places, were long overdue, and I'm glad that my law students and I were able to trigger that change. The grounding of United's Airbus A321 was an unintended, unintentional, and unnecessary byproduct of the legal petition, but was caused solely by the combined negligence of the FAA and United, Banzhaf reminds us. http://banzhaf.net/ End
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