ABSTRACT
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is an agency within the United States Department of Transportation. It is responsible for regulating all US civil aviation activities, including the management of air traffic in US airspace. The FAA continued its focus on flights originating from abroad by posting civil aviation security liaison officers overseas and starting, in 1991, to require foreign carriers entering or leaving US airports to provide a similar level of security as that provided in US airports. The 9/11 Commission Report faulted the FAA for failure to quickly relay critical information regarding the hijackings to airlines and to provide sufficiently timely information to the North American Aerospace Defense Command. The FAA is stepping into the fairly new realms of unmanned aerial vehicles and commercial space craft, both of which it must regulate for safety and security without smothering their potential commercial and operational applications.
