4 ms·

Your unspoken premise is that the FAA 1) Cares about safety (more than they care about appearing to care), and 2) That they know what they're doing.

Volscio 16y ago
If you want to be cynical about it, then the FAA also wants to stay out of the public eye any way possible, so it has less paperwork, less scrutiny, and less overhead to deal with.
borism 16y ago
If you don't feel safe enough flying in US under FAA you can try some more liberal on safety places like Africa or Indonesia. Your survival chances decline can be calculated quite precisely though.
- illumin8 16y ago
  Exactly. There have been several years in the last decade where there were absolutely zero fatalities on US airlines. Say what you want about idiotic security rules, but strict safety measures seem to be working pretty well for us.
mipnix 16y ago
FWIW. I never met someone, who worked for the FAA, who couldn't end my career because they were having a bad day. Pilots feel about FAA officials the way they feel about doctors. That said, the FAA is the best and safest organization in the world, when it comes to doing what they do. It is bureaucratic, bloated and byzantine and I would take them over any other institution on this side of the Milky Way, any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Part of the problem is, everyone wants cheap tickets AND the best service. One of my advisors had a sign outside his door. It read: Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick any two.
- byrneseyeview 16y ago
  Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick any two. That's a big part of it. The other part is the picking. How can I, or the average person, judge the efficacy of safety protocols? I'm sure there are plenty of well-meaning people who invest enormous effort into precautions that are completely invisible to me. But I also know that the cheapest form of employment insurance is being visibly indispensable, which would tend to subsidize highly visible actions regardless of efficacy. Then you can factor in moral hazard; people take more risks if they feel more safe. This means that if something increases safety, but less than you'd imagine, mandating it can increase danger. e.g. if drivers thought that seatblets made them 99% less likely to die, when the real number was 10%, you'd naturally expect more fatal accidents with more people driving as if their risk of death had dropped by two orders of magnitude.
  - mipnix 16y ago
    The beauty of it, as far as the FAA goes, lies in the fact the public is not involved in the safety standards. There is plenty of window dressing in what the travel industry does. A large part of it is because people want to see something being done. It makes them feel better. No matter how small or inconvenient. The real safety measures are what we don't see or hear about. Every accident that doesn't happen is not JUST luck. It is the end result of a well thought out and executed process. Is there room for improvement? Of course. But it beats anything else out there by open lengths.

Volscio 16y ago

If you want to be cynical about it, then the FAA also wants to stay out of the public eye any way possible, so it has less paperwork, less scrutiny, and less overhead to deal with.

borism 16y ago

If you don't feel safe enough flying in US under FAA you can try some more liberal on safety places like Africa or Indonesia. Your survival chances decline can be calculated quite precisely though.

illumin8 16y ago
Exactly. There have been several years in the last decade where there were absolutely zero fatalities on US airlines. Say what you want about idiotic security rules, but strict safety measures seem to be working pretty well for us.

mipnix 16y ago

FWIW. I never met someone, who worked for the FAA, who couldn't end my career because they were having a bad day. Pilots feel about FAA officials the way they feel about doctors. That said, the FAA is the best and safest organization in the world, when it comes to doing what they do. It is bureaucratic, bloated and byzantine and I would take them over any other institution on this side of the Milky Way, any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Part of the problem is, everyone wants cheap tickets AND the best service. One of my advisors had a sign outside his door. It read: Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick any two.

byrneseyeview 16y ago
Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick any two. That's a big part of it. The other part is the picking. How can I, or the average person, judge the efficacy of safety protocols? I'm sure there are plenty of well-meaning people who invest enormous effort into precautions that are completely invisible to me. But I also know that the cheapest form of employment insurance is being visibly indispensable, which would tend to subsidize highly visible actions regardless of efficacy. Then you can factor in moral hazard; people take more risks if they feel more safe. This means that if something increases safety, but less than you'd imagine, mandating it can increase danger. e.g. if drivers thought that seatblets made them 99% less likely to die, when the real number was 10%, you'd naturally expect more fatal accidents with more people driving as if their risk of death had dropped by two orders of magnitude.
- mipnix 16y ago
  The beauty of it, as far as the FAA goes, lies in the fact the public is not involved in the safety standards. There is plenty of window dressing in what the travel industry does. A large part of it is because people want to see something being done. It makes them feel better. No matter how small or inconvenient. The real safety measures are what we don't see or hear about. Every accident that doesn't happen is not JUST luck. It is the end result of a well thought out and executed process. Is there room for improvement? Of course. But it beats anything else out there by open lengths.