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Nor can FAA point to lack of opportunity as an excuse for its failure, to date, to deal effectively with this serious matter.  In the decade since its creation, several such opportunities have been available.  For example, proposals to upgrade Part 135 operating standards and small aircraft type certification standards, in the form of Notices of Proposed Rulemaking, were floated gently out of FAA like trial balloons early in 1967 (FAA Dockets 80941 and 8083, respectively), but, following a predictable reaction from the users, these proposals remain just proposals, gathering dust.

Nor, finally, can FAA claim that it has not been made aware of the potential hazard.  Apart from the incidence of midair collisions and near misses in which general aviation has been involved, even a cursory review of official records shows the repeated occurrence in general aviation of situations which pose a deadly threat to even the most exemplary airline operation.

It seems obvious that FAA, in its preoccupation with the regulation of airline pilots and airline operations, has failed to recognize and guard against an obvious potential source of most serious hazard to airline passenger operations----a source over which the airline captain and his crew have absolutely no control, but over which the FAA has full, but as yet largely unasserted control-----the users of adjacent airspace.  It is high time that FAA recognized--and indeed acted upon-- the unassailable proposition that the safety of every airspace user is directly affected by the performance of all others aloft.