Demonstrating competency.(Dear Reader)

Recently, the importance of "certification" was made abundantly clear to me. I was in Anchorage, Alaska, representing MTNA at the annual meeting of the Trust for Insuring Educators.

One of the events, sponsored by The Anchorage Convention and Visitors Bureau, was a "flight seeing" tour of the glaciers surrounding Anchorage.

For over an hour, we soared among the peaks and valleys, gazing upon some of the most spectacular sights in nature. The pilot guided the airplane expertly above these glaciers, often within a few feet of the outcropping, snow-covered summits.

As we made our way back to Anchorage, I thought about the obvious skill of the pilot. Well, to be more precise, I was more than grateful that the pilot was not only skillful, but that he had demonstrated his competencies to pilot an aircraft to an impartial adjudicator, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Knowing that he had to have a pilot "certificate" conferred by the FAA upon his demonstration of his flying competency, gave me the confidence to buckle myself in that aircraft and enjoy the experience.

This was not the case before 1926. Prior to that year, anyone could "hang up a shingle" and say he was a pilot. With no regulations or licensing of pilots or aircraft, a passenger literally risked his life when accepting the claim of competence of some of these "pilots."

Fortunately, the Federal government stepped in. The Air Commerce Act of May 20, 1926, was the cornerstone of the Federal government's regulation of civil aviation. This legislation was passed at the urging of the aviation industry, whose leaders believed the airplane could not reach its full commercial potential without improving ...