NBAA Urges FAA to Assert Uniform Federal Authority Over Flight Crew Duty and Rest Rules

NBAA and several aviation stakeholder groups have submitted comments to the FAA urging the agency to formally reaffirm that aviation is an inherently interstate activity requiring a uniform federal safety framework. The comments respond to an FAA notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) that reinforces the agency's national authority over aviation safety, including regulations governing flight and duty time, rest requirements, and meal breaks.

The NPRM as proposed focuses on Part 121 carriers, but NBAA and its partners are encouraging the FAA to expand it to also cover Part 91 fractional management companies and Part 125 and 135 operators. Brian Koester, NBAA's senior director of government affairs, said the associations are "trying to prevent a patchwork of state aviation-related requirements," adding that "the recent proposed rule reinforces that the FAA has all authority over aviation safety including regulations governing flight time, meal and rest breaks on flights within the U.S."

Alongside NBAA, the Association of Value Airlines (AVA), NATA, and VAI also submitted comments. The associations argued that a consolidated and express statement of federal preemption would benefit the industry by clearly reiterating that FAA regulations override state or local ordinances for flight operations within the United States, without creating additional regulatory burden. They warned that a lack of clarity on preemption could create operational conflicts, interfere with emergency authority, increase costs and litigation exposure, and undermine the safety and efficiency of the National Airspace System.

This filing sits inside a broader recurring tension in U.S. transportation regulation, where state legislatures periodically attempt to layer local labor or safety rules onto operations that already cross state lines within a single flight. Aviation has long operated under the premise that a single national rulebook applies regardless of which states a flight touches, precisely because crew duty and rest schedules are built around routes, not jurisdictions.

Extending an explicit preemption statement beyond Part 121 to Part 91 fractional, Part 125, and Part 135 operators would matter most to charter and fractional providers, whose aircraft frequently cross state lines within a single duty period and whose crews would otherwise need to track differing local meal-break or rest requirements depending on where they land.

What happens next depends on how the FAA responds to the comment period and whether the final rule's preemption language is written broadly enough to cover the non-121 segments NBAA, AVA, NATA, and VAI requested, or whether it remains limited to Part 121 as originally proposed.