I don't think this style of regulation is limited to FAA. FDA does not independently test all drugs either. They just review and ensure the drug companies' tests are acceptable.
The general term, I believe, is self-regulatory-organization. The theory, I guess, is that the government sets the laws and says very generally, "no fraud", and "you have to write your own rules and make sure they're good", but offers little technical guidance otherwise. I think this could work well if there were very heavy penalties for failures to self-police, but in practice the revolving door between government and industry incentivizes slap on the wrist style punishment. It's a hard problem and I don't think we're doing well over the last few decades.
While I do study relevant US laws as required in my job (requiring familiarity with how law operates in countries where we operate), I am not an American, but I do understand certain things with regards to the US constitution and relevant case laws.
The Congress originally meets only for a few months' time, usually less than 6 months. This is due to the reality of the time, where travel is slow and representatives only receive a comparable salary to most people. Thus, it is exactly empowered to delegate certain powers to the executive branch. As someone mentioned, the administrative law is a cornerstone law and yet it delegates many powers to the executive branch.
In fact, said law and many, many, many similar (federal) laws have been upheld constitutional in the Supreme Court. There are certain powers that only Congress can do, and cannot be delegated to the executive branch, but it is clearly laid out in the constitution what those are (notably spending). Now I said federal because in certain states, the legislature can only delegate in very narrow situations (usually only in cases where lives would be in danger or in the protection of properties and where a need of immediate response is demonstrated).
So I'm confused why are you saying that is unconstitutional, in fact American history shows a very different answer. If you think that should be not allowed, you're entitled to your own opinion. However unless I read it incorrectly, the constitution, even considering the various amendments, is unfortunately not aligned with your opinion.
Sure it is. Article I of the Constitution says that all legislative power shall be vested in Congress. That means anything that has the force of law--and all Federal regulations created by executive branch agencies under the current US regulatory regime have the force of law; you can be fined or jailed for violating them--has to be passed by Congress using the process described in Article I. So any Federal regulation that has not been passed by that process--i.e., every one of them--is unconstitutional.
The fact that current US jurisprudence disagrees with that statement just illustrates how far current US jurisprudence has diverged from what the Constitution actually says. The status of Federal regulations is by no means the only example: current US jurisprudence says that Congress can regulate farmers growing crops for their own personal use because of the Commerce Clause; and that a city government can use the eminent domain power to evict people from their homes and turn the property over to a private development corporation (that ends up never developing the land anyway), and that counts as a "public use" under the Fifth Amendment.
While I agree with this as a matter of personal opinion, it is not at all the actual fact in our current regulatory regime. Federal regulatory agencies create law all the time. Look at the Federal Register; every regulation in there has the force of law and was written by a regulatory agency.
> you would inevitably end up with some busybody who is not accountable to the people massively over stepping their power and creating tyranny.
Which is exactly the situation now.
When people vote for politicians who say
"government is wasteful",
"there's too much red tape"
Would somebody asserting that about _their_ _own_ _job_ even make it past the interview in the private sector?
Efficiency - or the lack of it - is absolutely not the point.
Here's some more info if it helps: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative_statement
Oh hey look, I'm signing yet another contract with an arbitration clause when signing up for a cell phone service. Must be my fault that all of them require the arbitration clause...
I believe it is foremost a complexity issue, and the MCAS(?) failure is just one of the many things that could go wrong, that actually did. Boing probably have more issues with the plane that is waiting to surface given their culture ...
It's a management function. If someone comes to you and says "We want to rewrite everything so it runs on a Raspberry PI powered by a hamster wheel" you don't need to ask about the engineering spec of the hamster wheel.
The Max MCAS was only marginally more plausible in overview. Details were never going to rescue it.
Letting an external auditors understand all the small technical details and test them independently will basically halt any progress. It might make this specific change safer but for the long run will slow down innovation and development of better and safer products.
This has some similarity to software development- we test much better but prefer to move faster to achieve a better overall quality and be able to fix issues faster and better
The FDA very carefully reviews the submissions, requires validation of tests and safeguards so data can't easily be manipulated. But the system is built on trust. If a company wants to manipulate, fake or exclude negative data they can. They'll likely get caught, but not always.
I don't know much about the FAA, but as someone who works in healthcare, I know the FDA conducts regular audits of medical device manufacturers.
They roll in for a week, request access to everything and everywhere, then pick a handful of areas (randomly) to do a full deep-dive. Generally, if a company is cutting corners, discrepancies will exist in many areas and they'll quickly spot one or more of them. I assume the FAA operates similarly.
Hard to believe that it was so long ago. Man, I'm old :-) https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1999-11-03-991103...
If it is the point that the FAAs job should be easy because the only oversee Boeing and Airbus, well that point is just ignorant.
Textron (Cessna, Beechcraft, hawker), Piper, Carlson, Viking, ... There's dozens of aircraft manufacturers (I have intentionally not listed those who make hit planes, but I think they too fall under FAA checks).
I would not actually be surprised if the small airplane manufacturers puts substantially higher load on FAA than Airbus and Boeing do.
Certifying new commercial models is but a small portion of what they do. By number of employees and budget I would bet that ATC is actually their biggest responsibility. That's not to say that they should just rubber stamp all that...