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employment of everyone who happens to be in the service of an air carrier.  Only those employees whose work directly affects the safety of operations can be included in any maximum hours regulation.
  
This brief review of the Act as it affects maintenance will show that there are no radical changes from the Air Commerce Act of 1926 and the present Civil Air Regulations. The new Act expressly provides that existing regulations, licenses, and certificates will continue in effect, subject to the power of the Authority to amend or repeal them. See Sec. 1108(a).  Hence, we may expect a transition from the old to the new regime that will cause a minimum of confusion.  Congress has wisely made it possible for the new Authority to go ahead under much the same forms of procedure.
  
However, with greater clarity in the law and with administration lodged in an independent agency on a basis--at last--of permanence, there will be every opportunity to improve the execution of safety regulation.
  
Before leaving the subject of the relation between the new Act and air carrier maintenance, I should invite attention to the provision for an Air Safety Board.  See Sec. 701, 702.  It will be recalled that under the Air Commerce Act the Secretary of Commerce was directed to investigate accidents. To this end he was authorized to hold public hearings, to issue subpoenas, and so forth, and it was provided that, if in the public interest, he should make public a statement of the probable cause of the accident and when an accident resulted in serious or fatal injury, he was required to make public such a statement.
Therefore, the provision for an Air Safety Board in the new Act is to a certain extent merely a continuance of an existing provision of law.
However, the new Act is so different in its terms that, if administered with intelligence and foresight, it should amount to an entirely new provision.
   
The new Act sets up a permanent Board of three members. The Board may appoint assistants and employees. It may likewise engage for temporary service in the investigation of an accident anyone either within or outside the Government service. It is directed to make rules regarding the report of aircraft accidents. But its duty of investigation is placed upon an entirely different basis from the duty of the Secretary of Commerce under the Air Commerce Act.  Whereas the Secretary of Commerce was directed to investigate for those sole purpose of ascertaining the cause of an accident, the new Safety Board is directed to investigate all the circumstances relating to an accident and to the probable cause, in order to make recommendations which will prevent similar accidents in the future, and is directed to exercise the much broader power of conducting studies and investi-  

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