Roosevelt signs the Civil Aeronautics Act; federal hands take the wheel on American skies

Through the early 1930s, high-profile crashes had killed prominent Americans and left the public deeply wary of commercial flight — yet the skies remained largely ungoverned. Airlines themselves, organized through the Air Transport Association of America, lobbied Washington for the structure that would restore public confidence. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Civil Aeronautics Act in 1938, superseding the aging Watres Act and establishing the Civil Aeronautics Authority to manage air traffic control, safety standards, and economic oversight. The agency would be reorganized in 1940 into two bodies — the Civil Aeronautics Administration and the Civil Aeronautics Board — whose combined grip on American aviation would hold for forty years…