The FAA's Troubles Are More Serious Than You Know

I have another perspective on Elon/trumps hate for the FAA.

In my experience as a pilot, sometimes the FAA makes rules that are frustrating, and sets limitations that for one reason or another you might want to circumvent in one specific case or another. Mostly, those are bad ideas, but it does limit your ability to fly to different places sometimes.

As a user/passenger of private luxury aviation, this sometimes makes for considerable frustration and people are always trying to talk their pilots into doing stupid things like overloading their aircraft, not requiring people to stay in the seats where the wieght and balance of the aircraft is safe, flying into airports below weather minimums, things in general that are somewhat likely to get you killed.

Pilots often deflect judgment on this by saying “it’s FAA regulations” so they don’t seem like “the bad guy”. Ultimately, in many cases, the relationship of the pilot to the client is a lot like a waiter in food service.

Consequently, many wealthy private flying people that are used to getting whatever they want in life end up feeling like the FAA is this overbearing, freedom hating bureaucracy that enforces ridiculous rules for specious reasons and makes their lives more difficult for no reason.

This impression may be true in very narrow cases with very specific individual FAA employees, just like with some traffic cops. But by and large, the FAA, when left to its own devices, does an admirable job of keeping people safe and alive despite some very vexing physics, as well as human nature, colluding to make that improbable… while facilitating the safe travels of millions of passengers per day.

Also, the FAA sometimes makes life a little harder for musk because they don’t want metal falling out of the sky on peoples heads around launch sites.

I believe this is behind the hate. It’s spite.

The ruling class in this country considers the FAA and other regulatory agencies to be an impediment to them, so they have started to destroy it. In their minds, they don't really care because they have their own planes, and think that they can use their wealth and prestige to make sure their planes get preferential treatment all the way from taxi, takeoff, to landing. They don't care what happens to the rest of us.

The cold hard truth about the FAA going the “DEI” emphasis route is because middle and upper middle class people won’t do those jobs anymore. The FAA requires drug testing and too many people in those classes smoke weed or take prescription medications that render them ineligible for the roles. That and the whole making people go where they’re told right out of training isn’t appealing compared to alternatives available. Why go into ATC when it’s easier to go into Finance or even Healthcare jobs?

DEI is a boogeyman for the aviation industry, and I remember back before 2010 the CEO of Sabre constantly harping on the neglect in the aviation infrastructure (spending to modernize) that would’ve alleviated the issues we’re facing today. The deregulated US airlines have had zero accountability to pay into a public utility they rely upon. Numerous administrations of both sides have passed the buck…it’s the Baby Boomer way…that and destroying pensions!

DEI didn’t dump airline pensions on the PBGC, get your head out of your asses with that ish.

Source: aviation family and witnessed several decades of this industry getting to where it is today

It’s almost as if Regan illegally firing FAA workers when they strikes for better pay and working conditions in n the 80s created some sort of systematic issues…huh.

> by blaming the disaster on diversity programs, a pronouncement that baffled many in the agency’s workforce

Fascinating, because the FAA has one of the largest scale DEI programs that limited hiring of qualified individuals. I think this criticism is completely valid.