In the United States and in most European nations, aviation law is considered a federal or state-level concern and is regulated at that level.
For example, in 2008, The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit struck down New York's Passenger Bill of Rights law because regulation of aviation is traditionally a federal concern.
The first law specifically applicable to aircraft was a local ordinance enacted in Paris in 1784, one year after the first hot air balloon flight by the Montgolfier brothers.
[4] The International Air Transport Association (IATA) was founded in 1919 in a conference at The Hague, to foster cooperation between airlines in various commercial and legal areas.
The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic declared sovereignty over its airspace and enacted basic aviation regulations in 1921, forming a state-owned Civil Air Fleet in 1923 which became known as Aeroflot in 1932.
[5] Japan enacted a legal regime governing civil aviation in 1952, after a brief moratorium during the occupation that followed World War II.
Pressure from the United States, which sought to introduce new U.S. carriers to the transpacific market in the 1980s, led Japan to gradually deregulate its market in the form of cheap packaged-tour fares and an increased international role for ANA in the 1980s and 1990s, followed by the advent of new domestic carriers such as Skymark Airlines and Air Do.