How Aviation Professionals Can Maintain Public Engagement When Executive Agencies Disengage

Congress continues to recognize the value of collaboration in aviation rulemaking, while the current administration has been pulling back on its public engagement in this area.

The most recent FAA reauthorization law contains multiple directives to the agency to maximize permissible communications with other authorities and stakeholders.

However, the administration has chosen a path that reduces agency communications with industry stakeholders and authorities—for example, terminating all Aviation Rulemaking Advisory Committee (ARAC) appointments, including that of ARSA Executive Director Sarah MacLeod.

When executive agencies choose a path of action that impacts the aviation sector, aviation professionals must choose a path of response. This includes decisions by executive agencies to change:

• Focus
• Resource allocation
• Avenues for public engagement

Why is public engagement crucial for rulemaking in aviation?

Public participation is a cornerstone of the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) (5 U.S.C. Ch. 5), the law that establishes federal agency rulemaking and adjudication procedures.

In the 1940s, policymakers enacted the APA to address concerns like:

• Lack of transparency
• Absence of accountability
• Inconsistency in agency operations

The APA requires agencies to provide:

• Public notice of rulemaking activities
• Meaningful opportunity for the public to comment on the content of the proposed rule
• Consideration to all comments

Taking public participation a step further, Congress established a framework in the APA for negotiated rulemaking, which brings interested parties together in a rulemaking committee. Congress states:

Agencies currently use rulemaking procedures that may discourage the affected parties from meeting and communicating with each other and may cause parties with different interests to assume conflicting and antagonistic positions and to engage in expensive and time-consuming litigation over agency rules…

Negotiated rulemaking, in which the parties who will be significantly affected by a rule participate in the development of the rule, can provide significant advantages over adversarial rulemaking…

Negotiated rulemaking can increase the acceptability and improve the substance of rules, making it less likely that the affected parties will resist enforcement or challenge such rules in court. It may also shorten the amount of time needed to issue final rules.

The only APA limit on public engagement is ex parte communication, defined as, “an oral or written communication not on the public record with respect to which reasonable prior notice to all parties is not given, but it shall not include requests for status reports on any matter or proceeding covered by this subchapter.”

The law imposes no restriction on such communication in informal rulemaking. It only requires documentation for public record.

How are aviation organizations maintaining public engagement for rulemaking?

When it was operating as it should, the ARAC was a valuable forum for diverse industry stakeholders to collaborate in ways like:

• Discussing problems
• Developing solutions
• Engaging with agency personnel

The fact that the agency doesn’t want to be involved in that conversation anymore doesn’t mean it will end.

ARSA maintains strong relationships with other aviation sector groups and has success partnering with them to achieve common goals, often doing the agency’s work for it.

In October 2024, ARSA and ten other industry organizations published a call for then Administrator Michael Whitaker to improve agency support for stakeholder committees.

Earlier in 2025, ARSA and the Aircraft Electronics Association (AEA) submitted a draft revision of FAA Order 8130.21J.

In November 2025, ARSA released a statement supporting an industry coalition that previously began pushing the FAA to amend 14 CFR part 120’s foreign repair station drug and alcohol testing requirements.

When the FAA chooses the road of disengagement, its regulated public must chase it down. The agency’s core mission is to establish minimum safety standards and to hold industry accountable for meeting those standards.

Given that safety regulations are simply best practices with the force and effect of law, ongoing public engagement by agency personnel is essential to understand the challenges and solutions facing certificate holders in the rapidly evolving aviation sector.

Whatever the government does, aviation professionals and organizations have the choice to continue pushing for common sense oversight while standing up for the rights of certificate holders.