One of the lessons learned is that the FAA is no longer a credible institution.
Remind me, when's the last time we had a major fatality incident in the US domestic passenger airline business?
And how does that compare with the prevailing state of affairs before "deregulation?"
Difficulty: answer with numbers, please, rather than insults, downvotes, or political attacks.
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.
Doesn't really matter much. Incidents in aviation that can happen on continent X could usually have happened on any continent.
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.
https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/col/new-reactor-ma...
Hopefully, their planes don't need MCAS ;)
Bit separately, I know people in DC who work in this field and they say the same thing.
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’re basically saying that because shitty people don’t want to follow safety regulations we shouldn’t have them.
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.
Even if your assessment is valid, you’d likely be throwing away the baby with the bath water if you’d cut regulation to avoid it.
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.