4 ms·

> The FAA only cared about minimizing the chance of any accidents. I think this is a good thing.

• rlpb 4y ago
  No flying guarantees no accidents. This creates incentives in the wrong direction. See for example the safety achieved by modern technologies in modern light aircraft designs, and the lack of certification of most of these because of the expense of complying with FAA certification requirements. So the certified fleet has to use existing certified designs from the 60s which have not progressed as much in safety.
  • themaninthedark 4y ago
    That appears to be the stance of the NRC(Nuclear Regulatory Commission) as well.
  • mannykannot 4y ago
    You have a point about the FAA's handling of potentially safety-enhancing new technology, but that is not the issue here. Its safety concerns were verified by events after the compromise was put into effect (and the absence of any accidents as a consequence is not a counter-argument.) The root cause of this problem is, to an extent, a problem of agency silos. The FCC exercised its responsibility for controlling radio interference almost entirely by regulating what equipment can transmit, but radar altimeters are now giving false readings because they are overly sensitive to signals they receive outside of their allotted bands. While this may formally be part of the FCC's responsibility, it is clearly something the FAA could have been more concerned about.