I've never heard anyone criticizing the size of the FAA or calls for airplane manufacturers to be deregulated. Do you have examples of this? Or are you just making a general politicized point about deregulation?
On the other hand I've seen many people complain about "regulatory capture" between FAA + Boeing repeatedly. That's even on the Wikipedia for FAA.
> The FAA has been cited as an example of regulatory capture, "in which the airline industry openly dictates to its regulators its governing rules, arranging for not only beneficial regulation, but placing key people to head these regulators."
Which is an entirely different problem than a culture of "pulling up your bootstraps".
Yes, I have an example. The parent comment was about regulation in general, and mine was in response to that. However, there was the massive deregulation of the FAA in 1978 due to this sort of pressure. It had one effect of creating more competition in the industry, but it arguably went too far and has had an impact on safety as well. [0]
I am not sure if you know what you are talking about. The FAA can’t be “deregulated” as it is the regulatory body. And the airline deregulation that happened in ‘78 was deregulation of airline routes, not airline safety requirements. Furthermore, that 1996 Brookings opinion; that hasn’t held up very well considering that US aviation has an extraordinary safety record since that time and an even better record than during the regulated days. More people are killed by trains every year than die in commercial airliners, but are we suggesting that train regulation is deficient? About 16 people a week are killed by trains in the US, yet with commercial airliners in the US, we’ve had a just single fatality since 2009.
By any measure, the FAA and industry have done an exceptional job of keeping the American flying public safe.
I think you're cherry picking and looking for reasons for me to be wrong because you don't like my conclusion. The Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) and FAA were closely affiliated agencies until the '78 deregulation, and in the wake of it the FAA picked up some of the CAB's former duties. The CAB was deregulated out of existence.
And simply saying the Brooking's opinion isn't relevant isn't actually a supporting argument. Neither is stating that trains have more deaths: so do cars, but neither point is relevant to whether or not airplane safety was damaged by deregulation. Besides which, I think your estimate misses the much higher casualty rates among private aircraft, which do in fact rival cars [0]
The question has little to do with whether the FAA has done a good job, it's about what happened after the deregulation, and whether it would be even better without it.
> I've never heard anyone criticizing the size of the FAA or calls for airplane manufacturers to be deregulated. Do you have examples of this?
Numerous aspects of the FAA have been politicized for decades (going back to at least the ATC strike under Reagan). The FAA also has a number of complex and lengthy programs (https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/ etc) that are have drawn extensive criticism from Congress, industry, and airport operators due to the cost, delays, and scope of proposed regulation etc. Even FAA reauthorization is a politically contentious issue.
Projects tend to be fair game to criticism for failing to meet goals after funding. My question was about examples of airline manufacturers getting "deregulated"? Particularly top-down pressure from congress related to aircraft safety at the manufacturer level (rather than the aircraft manufacturers getting special treatment from the FAA or freely gaming the system - by bypassing protocols of "new" plane models without any pressure from the regulatory body).
Great, lets hope congress now has the incentivize to properly analyze the incident and determine if a lack of adequate resources was the source of the problem and then acts on it.
Regulation for regulations sake (as in telling the public it's "regulated" by pointing to current scale and existing policymaking, while in reality it is not having the intended effect) is even worse than having no regulation at all.
The current congressional majority is hardly composed on the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" types being blamed by the GP. At least in terms of rhetoric and campaign platitudes they are known. Even among a significant percentage of the republicans camp is far from fitting into the anti-government oversight camp.
The article mentions of a lack of "funding" but I haven't been able to find any evidence where funding for aircraft safety has been reduced in the last few decades. If there was a crisis of funding, where new planes aren't getting sufficient oversight or controls, then this regulatory body have either failed to make it a public issue, shutdown whistleblowers, or (more likely) it's a failure of regulatory capture and/or the monopoly-esque companies have learned how to navigate the political system (checking the right checkboxes) without any disincentives for doing so.
On the other hand I've seen many people complain about "regulatory capture" between FAA + Boeing repeatedly. That's even on the Wikipedia for FAA.
> The FAA has been cited as an example of regulatory capture, "in which the airline industry openly dictates to its regulators its governing rules, arranging for not only beneficial regulation, but placing key people to head these regulators."
Which is an entirely different problem than a culture of "pulling up your bootstraps".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Aviation_Administratio...