ince Orville and Wilbur Wright’s first flight in 1903, Americans have been looking to the sky as a way to speed travel, increase business, and escape the hustle of their daily lives.

Americans have used aviation as a means to advance the cause of humanity. They’ve used aviation as a tool to enrich peoples’ lives all over the world, leaving a track record of accomplishments largely revealed by the pages of this Web site. And they’ve done so in the face of technological, economic, and political challenges.

Americans’ freedom to fly for business, charity, and pleasure surpasses that of any other nation. What individual Americans have accomplished with their freedom to fly is truly awe inspiring, and yet they’ve done it in such a way as to be largely overlooked, even by their most aware fellow citizens.

Many don’t think about how important the small GA airplanes and airports are to their personal quality of life. Or just how many times a day they summon this great tool to serve their personal needs without realizing that it is the pilots and airplanes of America’s GA fleet that work day and night to meet those needs.

How does this contrast with the rest of the world? Today, virtually all other nations are regulating, taxing, and pricing aviation to the point where it’s beyond the reach of ordinary citizens and small businesses. In most nations, private citizens and entrepreneurs will never have the freedom to fly.

One only has to look at the fact that 50 percent of all General Aviation (GA) flight hours are flown in the United States to realize the damage these artificial constraints have inflicted on General Aviation throughout the rest of the world.

In spite of their efforts to "perfect" aviation through excessive regulation, bureaucracies, and artificial price increases applied through user fees and taxation — it is the free pilots of America who continually achieve the world’s most outstanding safety record and highest level of economic productivity.

Could that individual freedom to fly — a freedom that was first accomplished for Americans by two brothers named Wright — be threatened or forever lost in a storm of fear compounded by "do-good" regulations designed to remove all chance of injury or death?

It’s possible. Without wisdom and forethought, short-term decisions could irreparably harm something that has been a part of the American way of life for this past century.

American’s General Aviation (GA) community is keenly aware that it must steadfastly honor the well-reasoned and informed needs of national security, while simultaneously defending the right of individual citizens to fly for business, charity, or pleasure. It’s a balance they will accomplish every time an aircraft takes to America’s skies.