Gotta love deregulation. How many institutions are left? Any? CFPB, EPA, HUD, Interior are all run by people that don’t believe in their missions. It’s all about undermining from inside. Who protects the public when private rights of collective action are forbidden by arbitration agreements and the government has been captured by private interests?
I dunno, I see it as the opposite: regulation (apparently) made it impossible to just train pilots on this one new feature, instead requiring a full recertification of both the airframe and the pilots, which is incredibly expensive and unnecessary relative to what was actually required to save lives.
So one way of looking at is is: regulation caused perverse incentives that ultimately got people killed.
You should always consider incentives when thinking about regulations. Especially roundabout, second and third order consequences. Those are the ones that get you.
Having safety in mind doesn't make something unambiguously good, fit for purpose, or free of net-negative consequences. The specific content of rule determines that.
I would think it would justify additional regulations to allow for something like "upgrades" to existing certifications instead of the binary (full recertification|pretend plane is identical) standard we appear to have today that resulted in the 737 Max tragedy.
Is that less regulation? More regulation? I don't know, and I doubt it matters if it's "less" or "more" since the goal is fewer dead people, not passing an ideological Turing test.
You are suggesting stronger regulation of some aircraft ('upgrades', as you rightly say), without weakening regulation for any other aircraft. So it's certainly 'more regulation'.
> I doubt it matters if it's "less" or "more" since the goal is fewer dead people, not passing an ideological Turing test.
It's a political question, so there's at least some question of ideology. Full-bore libertarians would doubtless find some way to oppose your suggestion.
You said regulation caused perverse incentives that ultimately got people killed. It would be more fair to say that a loophole in the regulations, caused the perverse incentive.
Colgan Air 2407 was in 2009. Comair 5191 was 2006. Both, like most airplane crashes, were substantially pilot error. (Both of these were primarily pilot error.)
Weather forecasting has gotten much better in the years since deregulation. We’ve also been operating a mostly-jet fleet, which has larger inherent performance margins than the turboprops (and, worse, pistons) before them. And we have decades of experience about how pilots kill airplanes to inform operations and regulations.
It’s not clear that airfare deregulation either hurt nor helped airline safety in the US. US-flag air carrier ops are extraordinarily safe and I believe the FAA makes a positive contribution to that outcome.
A good counterexample: in the Lion Air case, at least one planeload of passengers came within a hair's-breadth of disaster prior to the fatal crash. The pilots figured out what to do in time, in part because a third pilot was available to RTFM while the other two flew the airplane. However, that crew not only didn't take any action to remove the aircraft from service, they apparently didn't even bother to leave a Post-It note on the dashboard.
The regulations we have in place here in the US -- to say nothing of our airlines' own policies -- would have kept that aircraft grounded until the problem was diagnosed and addressed.
He didn't RTFM actually. They performed Crew Resource Management, and he was able to focus his attention on controls the other two pilots didn't have time to manage. Hence noticing the trim wheels running amok.
Good point, I was just echoing some of the earliest news accounts there. Those stories came out before it became apparent that the flight manuals didn't actually have much useful information on the subject.
