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Comment by ktallett

11 hours ago

Do we want airlines that only put in fixes for safety issues once they are forced to?

The FAA and its international counterparts were created because airliners were constantly cutting corners or putting pressure on their pilot to do unsafe things.

This is a real problem with the current FAA setup. The limited amount of legal liability seems like a major problem, even switching from 200k euros to 2 million or 10 million euros as the max penalty per soul would add a minor amount of heft to lawsuits against the airlines and manufacturers.

Fixes have to go through the FAA, which can be difficult, bureaucratic and very expensive.

  • Well yes of course they have to be checked by a regulator, but you should still have the thought of, we must do this, no matter the cost as safety matters above everything else in this industry.

    • > no matter the cost

      Means nobody can fly. The FAA does understand this, but the mass media does not.

      A 100% safe airplane won't move an inch, let alone fly at 30,000 feet.

    • > you should still have the thought of, we must do this, no matter the cost as safety matters above everything else in this industry.

      This premise implies that if you could prevent one plane crash for $10 trillion dollars then you should do it, but then ordinary people wouldn't be able to afford air travel. In reality they do have to consider the cost and then do the things that are justified based on the cost and the risk. Which means that high regulatory costs compromise safety because the more it costs to make a change that improves safety, the fewer of those changes can be implemented for an amount of money that can be justified by the risk.