At the end of July, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) convened a three-day public hearing to investigate January’s mid-air collision over Washington, DC that killed 67 people. After the hearing, two conclusions were inescapable.
First, the disaster should have been prevented by existing safety rules. And second, the government regulators responsible for air safety have become hesitant to enforce those rules, especially when it means standing up to industry demands for more flights and lower costs.
Instead of fixing the regulatory state’s institutional cowardice, however, the Trump administration is moving to undermine it even further. The crisis in aviation safety has finally come to a head at precisely the moment when the wrong people are in charge of it.
There’s an old truism in aviation: regulations are written in blood.
Success in safety lacks spectacle: it depends less on personal heroism than it does on following the rules. But it works.
When the rules get ignored, however, disaster follows. The NTSB investigation into the crash above Reagan National found a litany of problems that no one bothered to fix. Essential safety equipment didn’t work. Pilots were unclear about proper procedure. Air traffic control was understaffed and overwhelmed by the volume and complexity of traffic. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) allowed helicopter traffic to pass directly below landing airplanes at Reagan National, even though this traffic scheme resulted in thousands of close calls every year. Excuses were plenty, and solutions few.
“Sixty-seven people are dead,” NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy shouted during the hearings. “Fix it. Do better.”
Her words perfectly encapsulate the state of aviation safety today. There are plenty of critics, but few problem-solvers. And being one would require the courage to oppose the post-Reaganite virtues of shareholder value and corporate freedom.
Take the new head of the FAA, Bryan Bedford, the former CEO of Frontier Airlines and Republic Airways (and a onetime reality TV star like his new boss Sean Duffy, and his boss Donald Trump). In spite of falling public confidence in aviation, he’s already initiated an RFK Jr.-style attack on foundational safety regulations just to make airlines more profitable.
During his confirmation, Bedford signaled that he was open to repealing two specific rules. The first requires airline pilots to accumulate 1,500 flight-hours of experience before they can earn their Air Transport Pilot (ATP) license. It was passed following the crash of Colgan Air 3407 in 2009, which was attributed to pilot error due to insufficient training. The second is the mandatory retirement age of 65 for pilots. This was set in 2007 to match international safety standards.
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