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Comment by ekianjo | Hacker News Reader

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I (person who blamed the pilots union above) actually like unions. I could probably even say good things about pilot unions; I would say that part of the reason US airlines have fewer accidents than some other wealthy countries is the effect the unions have had on resisting attempts to work pilots through dangerous levels of fatigue, and on ensuring pilots can report dangerous situations and have them comprehensively fixed without retaliation.

I don't have faith in "market forces" to do those things, and consider the state of aviation in some other countries to be a living experiment showing why.

The opposition to cockpit recording is bonkers, though.

It's not bonkers. Notably, the pilot's union is not trying to turn back the current status quo of 2 hours recorded, they are blocking a significantly longer recording system. Such a system would inevitably record a few (probably) irrelevant flights worth of pilot chit chat and banter.

Has anyone tried, oh IDK, compromising? Maybe instead of 24 hours, we do 6? Or up to 24 hours but only of the "current" flight that matters to the current event? It's a negotiation. The Pilot's union doesn't have veto authority on safety. Sure they can threaten to unanimously strike if it's passed and that might be a big threat to airlines since they have basically stopped investing in the funnel of new pilots, preferring instead to pay everyone food stamp wages and drag themselves through the obvious """Pilot Shortage""" that results when a job that costs $40k to get only pays $25k a year.

HN isn't a monolith, and it certainly has better representation of anti-union sentiment (ie. they don't all get downvoted to oblivion) compared to other discussion forums (eg. reddit).

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