4 ms·

I think the reasoning would be to disincentivize airlines from potentially flying a plane that is unsafe to avoid paying out.

• Zuiii 4y ago
  Then have a panel from canada's regulatory body review every case and fine those who misclassify their cancellation, then have an independent audit of those panels to avoid regulatory capture.
  • akira2501 4y ago
    That's labor intensive. You could always set a threshold.. where if more than X% of your flights are canceled due to safety issues in any month, your maintenance operation gets fully audited.
  • jonahx 4y ago
    All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection, except for the problem of too many layers of indirection.
    • Zuiii 4y ago
      The idea of having multiple layers is to make foul play more difficult to cover up; i.e the chances of someone screwing up grows exponentially with every person you add.
      • pixelfarmer 4y ago
        That assumes that every person you add has the ability to understand all the details plus is actually willing to do their best to find any remaining issues. Somehow this doesn't match up with my real world experience. It also assumes that convoluted rules will hinder larger companies from exploiting the rules, which is actually the other way around: The larger they are, the better they get at finding loopholes and using them for their own gains. Plus you make it increasingly more difficult to see where your regulatory body has been compromised. Humans don't work like tech, so adding more and more layers doesn't help really, and I haven't found any organizational form which can inherently prevent humans from being human, it just doesn't exist. For example, all the "paperwork" around safety only works if humans are actually interested in maximizing safety and not just filling out papers.
  • pixelfarmer 4y ago
    No, I would remove the exception and put up even heftier fines (i.e. costs more than the (partial) refunding) for safety violations. There should be structures and procedures for that in place already and you avoid creating even more bureacraziness with all the problems that brings.
    • skfingngihg 4y ago
      Good point. disincentivize Lax maintenance even more, airlines should want their planes to be in good condition
    • TylerE 4y ago
      That just incentivizes better lying, not better safety. These rules have been written in blood many times over.
      • pixelfarmer 4y ago
        You mean better lying than they already do by reclassifying everything as a "safety issue" to avoid paying out customers because they skipped on a lot of things already to increase "shareholder value" or other such garbage? I just hope they don't drain additional time & people to check into each of these "safety issues" now, thinning out the crowd who will also check into actual incidents ...
  • remote_phone 4y ago
    Who is on the regulatory body that reviews these cases? Probably friends of the airline industry.
• chii 4y ago
  > flying a plane that is unsafe which is already illegal, and has consequences. The airline will probably lose reputation and business if the public catches wind of it. The exception for cancellation should not have been in place, except as a way for airlines to get out of the obligations but also allow law makers to be seen to be doing something. Basically theater.
• rendaw 4y ago
  If they suddenly have way more safety issues, the logical next step would be to prevent them from operating an airline, right? All this says to me is that the government does nothing to prevent hugely unsafe airlines from operating. The cancellation loophole seems fine to me, it's the followthrough that's concerning. What am I missing here?
  • concordDance 4y ago
    > If they suddenly have way more safety issues, the logical next step would be to prevent them from operating an airline, right? Thing is, you, as an external observer, can't tell. There are a zillion things that slightly increase risk. If a manager ignores a couple to avoid having a black mark due to costing the company money its very unlikely to bite him in any way that can be pinned on him. But the combination of a very large number of these little decisions will eventually result in a crash. And before you ask, no, saying "well you just tell everyone they must take no risks at all or its prison time" is not the answer as that will basically kill the airlines as a form of mass transit, leading to everyone taking the more dangerous car trips. There's always something more that can be done to reduce risk.
    • makapuf 4y ago
      Or reduce passenger travelling, which in the current days of possible zoom meetings and climate disruption would be a net positive.
• sandworm101 4y ago
  The safety issues have nothing to do with the planes. They are to do with lack of crew to fly the planes. The airlines are not maintaining a sufficient reserve of backup crews because doing so costs money. The is profiteering under the guises of "safety".