By 1987, the three largest GA manufacturers claimed their annual costs for product liability ranged from $70,000 to $100,000 per airplane built and shipped that year.

[13] The 1981 labor-relations battle between President Reagan and FAA air traffic controllers, and Reagan's subsequent firing of most U.S. air traffic controllers, resulted in significant reductions of U.S. flight operations—particularly in general aviation, which was subjected to a new system of "flow control" regulating flights from busy airports, undermining the utility of general aviation in the U.S.[28][29][30][31] Also cited by some was an unsustainable surge in student pilots, triggered by the proposed elimination of government-funded private pilot training under the GI Bill for military veterans—with veterans scrambling to get the training while it was still available.

This surge in student (and subsequently licensed private) pilots also triggered a transient surge in orders for light aircraft—for training and personal use—which also quickly consumed the veteran-related aircraft demand that would normally have been spread out more evenly over several years—creating, instead, a sudden, fleeting "peak" in aircraft purchases in the late 1970s, in place of what might otherwise have been a lower, longer, more-even "plateau" in the data.

As a consequence of these changes, and others, the general aviation industry began to suffer from a shortage of new aircraft, particularly for training, rental and charter use.

The three main training planes of the industry in the 1980s, the two-seat Cessna 152, Piper Tomahawk, and Beechcraft Skipper, were all removed from the market in the mid-1980s, and none of them ever returned.

[8] During the 1980s and 1990s, under the leadership of Cessna Chairman Russ Meyer and GAMA President Ed Stimpson, the industry pressured Congress, for several years, to enact limits on aircraft manufacturers' product liability.

Law Review, Kerry Kovarik argues that the exact language of the final draft of the Act exceeded the intent of Congress, as indicated by the generating committees and the Congressional debate record, creating "inequities" and poor judicial interpretations, with unintended negative consequences for crash victims, far beyond what Congress intended, to include any aircraft with less than 20 passenger seats, operated in any activity other than scheduled commercial service, including helicopters and business jets, despite a lack of Congressional discussion of those exemptions.

[3] The General Aviation Revitalization Act was passed by the Congress in 1994, and signed by President Bill Clinton in a White House ceremony August 17, 1994.

[12] The "big three" GA planemakers reacted to the enactment of GARA in differing ways: Cessna, in 1997, resumed very limited propeller aircraft production of its two most popular (and statistically safest) models that had been suspended in 1986; the 172 and 182.

[12] The General Accounting Office of the U.S. Congress estimated, after GARA's passage, that 25,000 new jobs had been created, exactly the quantity predicted at the hearings.

[5][17][42] Since GARA, attorneys have begun pressing other segments of the general aviation industry and community as alternative defendants to the manufacturers, including: (This list includes "FBOs" (fixed-base operators) typically airport-based aviation service businesses providing flight training, charter flying, rental aircraft, aircraft storage, fueling and/or maintenance.

[3] Economists Eric Helland (Claremont McKenna College) and Alexander Tabarrok (George Mason University) have argued that the outcomes of GARA demonstrate that product liability limits motivate safer behavior by consumers.