Re:Boeing 737 Max Aircraft: Preliminary Investigative Findin...
by salawat on Sunday March 08, 2020 @01:14PM
(#22519174)
The FAA does have skin in the game; you're just discounting it.
The FAA's track record led to a situation where for a good portion of the world, the FAA's word was considered good, and bidirectional approvals between the local and American aviation regulatory agencies were common. This allowed the capability to run a much tighter and cheaper ship industry-wide, because companies could rest assured that their FAA papers were de-facto gold standard everywhere else.
It remains to be seen whether that will remain the case, and the reputation of the agency has been heavily damaged by the MAX disasters, especially given how the FAA were the last regulatory agency to ground the plane, provably through political machinations.
As long as the FAA continues to function as a vestigial appendage of the American Aerospace industry instead of as the last word by the most competent the system can muster, there will be a magnification of the costs of getting new aircraft approved as local regulators crack down.
The FAA's track record led to a situation where for a good portion of the world, the FAA's word was considered good, and bidirectional approvals between the local and American aviation regulatory agencies were common. This allowed the capability to run a much tighter and cheaper ship industry-wide, because companies could rest assured that their FAA papers were de-facto gold standard everywhere else.
It remains to be seen whether that will remain the case, and the reputation of the agency has been heavily damaged by the MAX disasters, especially given how the FAA were the last regulatory agency to ground the plane, provably through political machinations.
As long as the FAA continues to function as a vestigial appendage of the American Aerospace industry instead of as the last word by the most competent the system can muster, there will be a magnification of the costs of getting new aircraft approved as local regulators crack down.