The bigger issue for the FAA is culture. Flight is so safe because all of those safty measures are taken seriously. Whenever exceptions are made, there is a ris

The bigger issue for the FAA is culture. Flight is so safe because all of those safty measures are taken seriously. Whenever exceptions are made, there is a risk of normalizing devience, and standards will slowly erode until a disaster shakes us back (and even a disaster is no guarantee to a return to anything near our current level of standards.) Building a safety culture as strong as aviation is hard, and the FAA doesn't like risking it.