The most important trend in aviation law over the past 20 years has been whether state products liability standards can apply in an aviation products liability cases. Aviation defendants have succeeded in convincing a number of courts that Congress “impliedly” preempted the entire field of aviation when it passed the Federal Aviation Act in 1958. In a recent decision a state court found that plaintiffs’ state law products liability claims could not survive summary judgment because they conflicted with the certification of the aviation product at issue by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

Plaintiffs argue that the federal standards are not comprehensive and that an aircraft can be both unsafe and compliant with the federal standards. A tragic example is that the FAA issued a certificate signifying that the Boeing 737 MAX complied with every federal airworthiness standard, but was forced to rescind the certificate after the Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 disasters demonstrated that the MAX was not safe. The MAX tragedies demonstrate that the focus of manufacturers should be on designing safe airplanes rather than on airplanes that merely comply with the federal standards. See David Gelles and Natalie Kitroeff, Boeing and F.A.A. Faulted in Damning Report on 737 Max Certification, New York Times (Oct. 11, 2019).