The most hotly contested aviation law issue in the United States over the past 25 years has been whether and to what extent federal law preempts state law. The aviation defense bar has had considerable success in convincing courts that Congress impliedly intended to preempt at least some state law liability standards when it passed the Federal Aviation Act in 1958, Pub.L. No. 85-2360, (FAAct).

For example, in the 1999 decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals or the Third Circuit, Abdullah v. American Airlines, 181 F.3d 363 (3d Cir. 1999), a case involving injuries caused by turbulence, the court broadly proclaimed that Congress preempted the “entire field” of air safety. Therefore, the court said, state law could not dictate how an airliner should operate in turbulent conditions. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit similarly used broad “field preemption” language in Goodspeed Airport v. East Haddam Inland Wetlands & Watercourses Commission, 634 F.3d 206 (2d Cir. 2011), an airport maintenance dispute, where it declared that Congress intended “to occupy the entire field of air safety” in passing the FAAct.