FARE Thanks Congress and Advocates for Making Airlines Safer

May 15, 2024 (McLean, VA) – FARE (Food Allergy Research and Education), the nation’s leading non-profit organization engaged in food allergy advocacy and the largest private funder of food allergy research, today thanked Congress and food allergy advocates for their help in passing H.R.3935, Securing Growth and Robust Leadership in American Aviation Act, also known as the “FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024.”

Earlier today, the U.S. House overwhelmingly passed H.R. 3935, 387-26 following the U.S. Senate’s 88-4 vote on May 9. The bill now heads to the President’s desk where he is expected to sign it into law.

“Today’s vote is a victory for the more than 33 million Americans with potentially life-threatening food allergies,” said Sung Poblete, PhD, RN, CEO of FARE. “We are grateful for advocates like Lianne Mandelbaum, Alexa Jordan, and thousands of others who have pushed Congress and the FAA to take action to improve emergency medical kits and better protect the approximately 10% of Americans with food allergies.”

Once the President signs the bill into law, the FAA Administrator will have two years to develop a proposed new set of rules governing the contents of emergency medical kit equipment, training for flight members, and that the medicine and equipment can be used to address a handful of specific health issues including anaphylaxis. (To read the relevant text, click here and go to page 285).

Said Alexa Jordan, an advocate who suffered a near-fatal episode of anaphylaxis while flying home from college and was trapped in an airline restroom while passing in and out of consciousness, “The passage of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024 has great symbolic value: our elected representatives listened when we asked. We will build on today's accomplishment and ensure that the best treatment for anaphylaxis is stocked on all U.S. aircraft. I want to call on all of the allergy advocates in FARE to grab this momentum and continue to push as the FAA updates their EMKs for the next two years. I was lucky to survive my mid-flight reaction in 2019, I don't want other people to need that luck.”

Currently, many emergency medical kits contain epinephrine in vials and a syringe that require a medical professional on-board the flight to draw the medicine and inject it. Hoping that a medical profession is on your flight and can act at 35,000 feet to prevent a fatality is no way to treat more than 33 million Americans.

Concluded Poblete, “We appreciate the airlines that have already started adding epinephrine auto-injectors to their emergency medical kits, and look forward to working with them, Congress, and the FAA to ensure in the future, easy to use epinephrine delivery devices will be on every plane in America and the horror stories our advocates have experienced and encountered are relegated to the nightmares of the past.”