Money talks. The head of the FAA are chosen by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Usually the heads are people who use to work for the Airline Industry or Manufactures of Airlines. So, major conflict of interest here.
The current head under Biden is Billy Nolen, a former pilot who flew the Boeing 757 and 767 and worked as an airline executive for years before joining the FAA [2].
By credentials, these two are definitely qualified.
1- https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/pr...
2- https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/30600-safety-professional...
My follow-up point was that experience in regulating airlines is more important than experience running an airline when it comes to leading the FAA. However, those who regulate airlines as a career are unlikely to be big political donors, so they're unlikely to be chosen to lead the FAA.
Career fed employees are always, lacking the real world knowledge to make sound decisions.
It implies that education isn't real and therefore of no value
When planes are not flying, people don't travel, so airlines don't make money, so they can't buy new planes, so manufacturers don't sell planes, so engineers don't get paid, so they leave, so they don't make better, safer planes.
It is a difficult balance to find, and sometimes the FAA gets it wrong, and sometimes people die. It is tragic when it happens, but if you want to be able to travel by plane, the industry has to keep going. Overall, the FAA has done a rather good job despite the conflicts of interest: accidents go down and air travel goes up. When they mess up, they usually take corrective action, as it was the case here.
Not being an industry expert shouldn't necessarily be a disqualifier. For example we don't insist that the secretary of health should be a doctor, or that the defence ministry should be run by generals. The main qualities needed is being a good manager and able to listen to alternative views and being a good politician (yes, it's important to have good politicians). If anything being an outsider actually helps the organisation more because it avoids conflicts of interest like op and it keeps the head humble.
I'll definitely want my country's Secretary of Health to be a doctor who understands public health and its related policies, not a politician whose primarily skill is being popular and getting elected.
>The main qualities needed is being a good manager and able to listen to alternative views and being a good politician.
A Health Secretary who's not a doctor would find it difficult to judge if they're being fed the right information by their advisers.
Remember that Boeing's woes began when the company ceased to be run by the engineers and aviation experts, but instead by the arrogant MBA counters who likely pitched themselves as good managers. It turns out they mostly cared about management and printing cash, but lacked engineering expertise, leading to screwups like the 737 Max.
Why not? The head of the WHO is not a medical doctor, he's a doctor in the sense that he has a PhD.
There is probably no organization more trusted than the WHO.
That's the point of being a good manager. Being able to forge personal relationships and to trust your underlings. Having experience in an industry isn't that helpful when dealing with policy that lies outside a heads direct field of expertise.
Being a doctor doesn't automatically provide a greater insight into what would make policies more successful. Yes he might have first hand knowledge of conditions on the ground, but the longer he's been out of doctoring the less up to date he will be and he will just be stuck with old notions of what things were like years ago.
Your point about boeing is irrelevant, because the managment these had motives beyond engineering excellence, i.e making money.
If by “doctor” you mean, as people usually do in general conversation, an MD (or DO), why? Public health is an entirely different discipline from medicine, with its own series of professional degrees. As is public administration. As is public policy. Why would a top-level public administrator and public policy professional in the field of public health need to have a professional degree in medicine more than one in public health, public administration, or public policy?
OTOH, your Surgeon-General or equivalent should definitely be a medical doctor.
> or that the defence ministry should be run by generals.
This is a weird exception to the rule. It's a case where there is a strong argument to be made for sacrificing competence in exchange for minimizing the risk of a coup by bringing in an outsider without close relationships with the people below him.
There is no other department where we have to worry in quite the same way that they might just choose to start ignoring the rule of law, courts, and congress, and that if they do there is nothing that could really be done about it.
You don't have to look very far to find examples of militaries seizing power. Meanwhile I'm reasonably confident in saying that no aircraft regulation agency has ever seized power in the history of the planet.
Nominated to work in the govt ? Elected public official ? Great! Every penny beyond your average high income (best 5-10 income avg?) is taxed at 99% for life.
Working in the government should not be a way to enrich yourself and friends... or make a "career".
Its called public service for a reason. Its not private enterprise. Its not arbitrage. Its not patronage. Not to enrich yourself and your buddies.
Adding on a permanent pecuniary pay element for life is most likely to result in people finding various wheezes to get around that pay cap (I suspect in the form of undeclared gifts, not unlike the recent revelations of a certain Supreme Court justice). And it would tend to increase corruption, since now the incomes of these people are more heavily reliant on under-the-table payments from patrons who now need to be kept happy.
The engineer example doesn't follow. Its also not a pay cut.
Take for example 300k comp for your avg. eng 300k avg last 5 years avg comp. Goes to Gov. High cap is set at 300k. Gets a salary of 120k while with govt. He can leave govt, and go back to earn 300k. No problem.
He can even earn the gap between 120 and 300 also during his govt job. So he can maintain his QoL
This is really not a problem at all.
It doesnt punish success before govt.
It punishes sucess after govt. (Speaker fees anyone?)
The problem currently is that govt attracts people that want to make a career (and profit) out of it. I posit, thats exactly the people you dont want in govt.
You want highly competent people in government. If generally they can make significantly (e.g. even 10x or more, I'm talking about upper management/CEP level position of course) in the private sector more often than not they will do that. The public sector will be left with the leftovers.
I'd any day pick somebody whose highly qualified, experienced and generally 'intelligent' but somewhat corrupt over someone who "chose" to serve the country because he couldn't get a job in the private sector or is strongly motivated by his ideological beliefs but has no clue what he's doing.
This is probably the root of the reason for the problem in the first place - Boeing can ship bad planes and they won't get stopped until they fall out of the sky multiple times - and even then nothing real will change.
Let's put the names out in the public.
Recently they wanted to hire a guy who knew nothing about aviation
It's not that he knew nothing about aviation (he ran Denver International Airport), he didn't have first-hand experience as a pilot. But here's the thing - that's okay. FAA is a mess right now, and Phil Washington has experience cleaning up messy organizations. That works perfectly find for a Federal administrative position where you're generally only on the job for a few years and move on. You can argue that it's even fine in the long term - how much software or hardware engineering experience does Tim Cook have again?
Sometimes the only way to escape regulatory capture is to hire an outsider, at least temporarily.
Unfortunately the administration did Washington dirty by not properly preparing him for his confirmation hearing.
Running an airport is running a business. An airport parks airplanes and collects rent from airlines and concessionaires. It wouldn’t teach you what you need to know to regulate airlines or air safety.
It's not if you want competency