But I don’t think this will happen, the FAA seem to have realized how angry the rest of the world agencies are. 350 dead because they screwed up, and their first reaction was to say it was the dead pilots fault...
The fact Ethiopa insisted on sending the flight records for their MAX 737 crash to Europe and not to the US shows some serious loss of trust in the FAA had occurred.
And that was not helped when the USA was the last country to ground the aircraft.
I don't blame them, given how Boeing had previously tampered with crash evidence[0].
From the article on the investigation of the crash of Flight 585:
>Walz, of Parker Bertea, was assigned to hand-carry the servo valve to Irvine. John Calvin, the quality-control engineer from Boeing, instructed an assistant to pack up the parts. According to court records, the assistant left the room and returned with a taped package, which he handed to Walz, who carried it on a flight to Southern California.
>When Walz opened the package that afternoon at the Parker Bertea plant, he discovered that three servo-valve parts were missing: a spring, spring guide and end cap.
>Boeing, citing ongoing litigation, has never explained why those three parts were left out of the package forwarded to Irvine.
This is strange wording to me. There's nothing inherently wrong with blaming "dead people" for something, because many accidents caused by user error result in death of the user. However, in this situation, it certainly seems rather hasty and inappropriate.
The purpose of accident investigation is not to fuel Americans' apparently insatiable appetite for revenge, you already have plenty of means for that, the purpose is the Prevention of Future Harm. Why Future Harm? Because we don't have time travel.
You clearly won't prevent any future harm by blaming anybody, whether alive or dead. To prevent future harm you will need to change what is done or how.
Almost invariably‡ the Right Thing™ will be some mix of procedural changes and engineering changes. For example ensuring that the right staff are empowered to stop something that's a bad idea being done even if senior management are short-sighted enough to demand it.
So the result is never "Bob is to blame because Bob did X" but rather e.g. "Bob did X. The Foozle should be modified to prevent doing X" or "Bob did X. Company policy did not say that doing X was forbidden. Change policy to forbid X".
‡ I've written about this before on HN. The one investigation report I've seen that did _not_ have any actionable recommendations was into an accident where two people died when their fishing boat sank. The cause? They'd taken so much heroin they couldn't operate the boat safely. Why no recommendation? Using heroin is already illegal. Using any intoxicating substance while in charge of a boat is already illegal. This was already obviously a terrible idea.
The problem is to put out an accident incident report blaming the "dead people" to only then find out the report was 100% wrong.
When the wall came down in Eastern Germany, we tuned into Knight Rider and MacGyver. The A-Team and the Power Rangers were on and life seemed to change for the better as the German East experienced American liberalism after decades of authoritarianist socialism.
I glorified America growing up and as a 11 year old. In 2000, I was more excited to see the Statue of Liberty the first time than for any Christmas before. Nothing came close to seeing the city of my childhood heroes (the Ghostbusters) and seeing WTC/Empire State when driving in from JFK.
But 9/11 happened and somehow America sold its soul. Not that Gulf War or Vietnam didn't happen, but it changed everything about the tiny bits of the amazing USA that I had always imagined. Post-9/11 I ended up living for nearly 6 years in the US and all the problems became apparent to me as a growing teenager. America was not nearly as great as propaganda made it out to be.
Back home in Europe, I never once worried about health. Going to the doc was normal and expected. Emergency procedures were performed without a second thought to cost. In the US, I was billed $800 for 3 stitches when I cut my thumb (deeply) and I got lucky because university ambulance transported me.
In Europe, in my hometown of around 1 million people, I got into problems with bullies and ran into thieves/thugs and it definitely sucked.
But in the US, I experienced muggings at gun point, one mass shooting (~13 dead), one fatal stabbing on campus, one robbery in my SO's home, arson in the house across my street and one meth lab explosion... it felt absolutely surreal (happened all in Binghamton, NY - not really a prime example of a blossoming economy, I know).
In classes, people were overtly concerned with political correctness and yelled at Middle Eastern history professors for using specific "offending" terms. Also, excluding God from the evolutions lecture was a highlight. Every single international student felt cringe and embarrassment when that Midwestern girl yelled at 300 people that evolution is just a theory and intelligent design ought to be taught with as much dedication and she feels offended.
Personally, America often felt like it was run by corrupt cronies who torpedoed education where ever possible. College is a for-profit business rather than an investment into the next generation of citizens. It felt so weird and I think the social cracks that were apparent 15 years ago are now leading to structural failure in society.
There are many smart and capable people in the US. Whether they did amazing stuff for their local hospital, took part in the Apollo program or engineered comms for Lockheed Martin. I met so many amazing folks. I hope that their rational influence can be stronger again.
Now I will go back and concern myself with Europe's own massive problems. I carry the US in my heart, as I lived there for half a decade. I hope that the country is in a local minimum right now and that the path out is already in view.
When I was younger I thought I really needed to go and see the USA. Then 9/11 happened and it started to go down. These days I feel sorry for probably not being able to see the US and the landscape and whatnot that is great about it, but I really can't stand the political "atmosphere" and how this influences the whole world in a negative way.
In case anyone is curious, this appears to refer to the following event: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binghamton_shootings
I was billed about that much, also in "Europe", when an ambulance was called, no treatment was performed on me, and I wasn't even transported by the ambulance. This was in Switzerland despite having health insurance. There's no general European health insurance system.
This is like traveling to Belize and complaining that they don't speak Spanish.
EDIT: Also, for the record Switzerland does observe the EHIC system so health insurances from EU/EEA countries are valid here and vice versa, so your example of Belize isn't even accurate. Switzerland isn't in the EU/EEA but has a series of bilateral treaties which harmonize many things such as this, research funding for EU projects, freedom of movement of people, etc.