Americans have been dismantling and weakening their regulatory bodies for quite a while now. The idea is that this will unshackle big corporations and allow them to innovate faster. This sounds like a great idea, until you realize that this “innovation” is most often about increasing profits. And the quality of the product is often sacrificed to increase profits. Just look at what is happening to telecommunication services, with big corporations growing their profits while Americans get stuck with slow and expensive service that becomes relatively worse comparing to other western countries.
Lack of proper regulation (or enforcement) might lead to short-term gains in some economic indicators, but in the long term will lead to worse quality, relative decline of America comparing to other countries, and sometimes -like in this case- avoidable deaths of hundreds of innocent people.
> Just look at what is happening to telecommunication services, with big corporations growing their profits while Americans get stuck with slow and expensive service that becomes relatively worse comparing to other western countries.
I get 1 gig internet service for $80 a month in a mid-sized American city in the midwest. No complaints here. The offerings just keep getting better and cheaper.
This is a common misunderstanding I see repeated a lot. The idea isn't unshackling big corporations, it's about unshackling small to medium sized businesses and entrepreneurs. Big corps actually love regulations for the barriers to entry they create, and most of them already have a whole host of regulatory compliance teams armed and ready to dissect the next big regulation that comes.
> Americans get stuck with slow and expensive service that becomes relatively worse comparing to other western countries.
Internet speeds in most suburban, and urban locations in the US have dramatically increased as of late due to increased threat of competition (namely Google Fiber, which prompted AT&T to start heavily developing Fiber, which prompted the Spectrums of the world to increase speeds) and could be further accelerated by deregulation. Regulations are actually the primary reason that keeps cable companies in their monopolistic/oligarlistic positions.
As far as I am aware, the only western countries that have surpassed the US in internet speeds and stability for the majority of its populace are actually east, in countries like S.Korea and Japan.
Interestingly enough, Japan is mostly voluntarily self regulated.
It’s important to understand that the main threat to both agency from this issue is very different.
The threat to the FAA is external, they risk losing their worldwide stamp “if we validate it then the rest of the world do”. That means the long term damage they risk is much bigger, but the short term and political one is non existent, they just need to convince everyone that nothing happened and they’re back at their game. For the FAA either nothing change or they lose some standing and power, there is no path where they come out better than before.
The EASA complaints are internal, each country and the remnants of their own agency blaming them for accepting the plane validation from the FAA when it’s clear they shouldn’t have. Short term they look stupid, but either they go back to the old position like nothing happened, or they make themselves more powerful and independent compared to the FAA on such issue, possibly getting other countries outside EU/USA to listen to them as much if not more than to the FAA.
Up until now the word of the FAA may as well have been the word of god in that field, they risk losing it, and the EASA is in a good place to get a good piece of it.
So the FAA needs to downplay it as much as possible, and the EASA needs to instead make it into as much of a big deal as possible. Of course the EASA is very much helped by the fact that it was indeed a totally avoidable yet complete failure and disaster that, from a regulatory perspective, can be entirely pinned down on the FAA.
All they need to do is point at the fact unaltered, and say “the only way we can stop that from happening again is if you agree to give us authority to check all the plane ourselves without automatically accepting the FAA approval”.
I just hope it will give us better oversight, Boeing, Airbus, newcomers from China etc ... We can’t afford so many death for such stupid reasons. The max fiasco is really an insult to the entire industry, and I’m sure many “older” people in Boeing feel ashamed of how far their company has fallen.
Trump attempted to nominate his personal pilot to run FAA. When it did not go trough, FAA was run by acting director until this July.
Trump government seems to sell influence in government organizations to companies they are supposed to oversee, so I don't know if Stephen Dickson is step for better or worse.
I think this isn't just a test of Boeing, it's a test of the FAA. If the EASA finds issues that the FAA didn't (either because they were missed, or not brought up), that'll hurt the FAA's reputation even more.
If the EASA finds real major issue that the FAA didn’t find then the FAA being the world validation office for Boeing planes is over.
But I don’t think this will happen, the FAA seem to have realized how angry the rest of the world agencies are. 350 dead because they screwed up, and their first reaction was to say it was the dead pilots fault...
This is excellent news. The FAA has lots its credibility by rubber-stamping whatever Boeing said in recent years. This will both mean an independent review (and re-certification of what is a effectively different airplane) and additional pressure on the FAA to actually do its job.
Good. The FAA should have realized their insistence that the 737 Max was safe to fly despite evidence otherwise was likely to shake both confidence and respect for them as a regulatory body. It shouldn't have taken the intervention of the President for them to do their job.
> It shouldn't have taken the intervention of the President for them to do their job.
That's your takeaway of what happened?
My takeaway is that the president 'intervened' only after it was clear that the combined Boeing/FAA/US position became untenable after other regions local air authorities and airlines declared the plane unfit to fly.
Trump threw the FAA under the bus to make himself look good, but the weeks before he was pressuring them to keep the planes flying on behalf of Boeing.
This is the long term cost of the defunding of the FAA and delegation of certifying a company's aircraft to that company. As we move forward fewer and fewer other countries will feel that deferring to US agencies is the wrong call and will move to (in this case) EASA.
I wouldn't be surprised if more and more other countries start looking into approvals from US agencies, and investigating how independent those agencies actually are :-/
It is more that this was the cost of failing to operate the FAA as an independent entity, but to get it to rubberstamp Boeing's airworthyness on behalf of Trump after it was clear that there were issues.
I wonder how much Boeing's strategy to reduce regulatory oversight as much as possible is going to cost Boeing shareholders going forward.
Share price may have benefited for a few decades, but Boeing's image will be tarred with this for quite a few decades with far higher certification costs worldwide in numerous jurisdictions. There are many potential jurisdictions [1] looking out for their own interests, and may choose to defensively force a certification on Boeing instead of trusting the FAA.
That will cost Boeing a lot of money. If the 737 line is continued at all, every single 737 variant that comes out after this will have a really steep hill of sales objections to climb, and they'll be handing out steeper discounts and lower profits to counter those objections. It may turn out that accepting an adversarial relationship with the FAA instead of lobbying to co-opt it was the optimal profit strategy in the long-term.
If it pans out this way, then the optimal profit strategy is to encourage the most stringent regulatory regime in the corporation's home country that all others hold up as the gold standard and follow without question. This avoids the multiple costs individual certification efforts rack up because no one can trust each others' certification results because they all recognize they're too weakened by industrial lobbying efforts.
A strong, quasi-centralized regulatory body then acts as the company's buffer to buy the benefit of the doubt, an insurance policy against a prolonged period when the company's culture is called into question.
It should operate how the judicial systems operate in Anglo-related countries. The US SCOTUS has used legal rulings from the UK and vice versa as "guidance" to their own legal rulings, but not as authoritative. The FAA/EASA/ATSB/* should refer to each other.
People may not realise that Boeing was depending on a October return to service for the 737. If that doesn't happen it has to shut down it's production line and that's going to be expensive. They had put a lot of pressure on the FAA to quickly approve their latest changes.
Having to satisfy EASA as well as the FAA is big enough a threat that it might actually be the stick to get Boeing to back off on its regulation-busting behavior.
On the other hand, can we expect US trade sanctions against the EU in response to this move?
This is a matter of public trust. As an American I might trust the EASA’s certification more than the FAA, and that’s a really bad spot for the FAA to be in. International drama about who accepts who is just a side effect of lack of trust in the FAA.
The FAA and EASA have very different operating models, so budgets are not comparable. FAA certification efforts are tax-payer funded, whereas EASA’s efforts are funded by industry in a pay-for-service model.
[+] [-] cadence-|6 years ago|reply
Lack of proper regulation (or enforcement) might lead to short-term gains in some economic indicators, but in the long term will lead to worse quality, relative decline of America comparing to other countries, and sometimes -like in this case- avoidable deaths of hundreds of innocent people.
[+] [-] dahart|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] w1nst0nsm1th|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] StreamBright|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jayess|6 years ago|reply
I get 1 gig internet service for $80 a month in a mid-sized American city in the midwest. No complaints here. The offerings just keep getting better and cheaper.
[+] [-] tyri_kai_psomi|6 years ago|reply
> Americans get stuck with slow and expensive service that becomes relatively worse comparing to other western countries.
Internet speeds in most suburban, and urban locations in the US have dramatically increased as of late due to increased threat of competition (namely Google Fiber, which prompted AT&T to start heavily developing Fiber, which prompted the Spectrums of the world to increase speeds) and could be further accelerated by deregulation. Regulations are actually the primary reason that keeps cable companies in their monopolistic/oligarlistic positions.
As far as I am aware, the only western countries that have surpassed the US in internet speeds and stability for the majority of its populace are actually east, in countries like S.Korea and Japan.
Interestingly enough, Japan is mostly voluntarily self regulated.
[+] [-] nolok|6 years ago|reply
The threat to the FAA is external, they risk losing their worldwide stamp “if we validate it then the rest of the world do”. That means the long term damage they risk is much bigger, but the short term and political one is non existent, they just need to convince everyone that nothing happened and they’re back at their game. For the FAA either nothing change or they lose some standing and power, there is no path where they come out better than before.
The EASA complaints are internal, each country and the remnants of their own agency blaming them for accepting the plane validation from the FAA when it’s clear they shouldn’t have. Short term they look stupid, but either they go back to the old position like nothing happened, or they make themselves more powerful and independent compared to the FAA on such issue, possibly getting other countries outside EU/USA to listen to them as much if not more than to the FAA.
Up until now the word of the FAA may as well have been the word of god in that field, they risk losing it, and the EASA is in a good place to get a good piece of it.
So the FAA needs to downplay it as much as possible, and the EASA needs to instead make it into as much of a big deal as possible. Of course the EASA is very much helped by the fact that it was indeed a totally avoidable yet complete failure and disaster that, from a regulatory perspective, can be entirely pinned down on the FAA.
All they need to do is point at the fact unaltered, and say “the only way we can stop that from happening again is if you agree to give us authority to check all the plane ourselves without automatically accepting the FAA approval”.
I just hope it will give us better oversight, Boeing, Airbus, newcomers from China etc ... We can’t afford so many death for such stupid reasons. The max fiasco is really an insult to the entire industry, and I’m sure many “older” people in Boeing feel ashamed of how far their company has fallen.
[+] [-] Nokinside|6 years ago|reply
Trump government seems to sell influence in government organizations to companies they are supposed to oversee, so I don't know if Stephen Dickson is step for better or worse.
[+] [-] CaliforniaKarl|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nolok|6 years ago|reply
But I don’t think this will happen, the FAA seem to have realized how angry the rest of the world agencies are. 350 dead because they screwed up, and their first reaction was to say it was the dead pilots fault...
[+] [-] jwr|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AmVess|6 years ago|reply
The world ignoring anything the FAA has to say about anything is a stance that's long overdue.
[+] [-] broahmed|6 years ago|reply
Time for them to reap what they've sown.
[+] [-] jacquesm|6 years ago|reply
That's your takeaway of what happened?
My takeaway is that the president 'intervened' only after it was clear that the combined Boeing/FAA/US position became untenable after other regions local air authorities and airlines declared the plane unfit to fly.
Trump threw the FAA under the bus to make himself look good, but the weeks before he was pressuring them to keep the planes flying on behalf of Boeing.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/03/surprise-trump-kept-...
[+] [-] generatorguy|6 years ago|reply
I can’t believe they haven’t got a plan yet!
[+] [-] fmajid|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dvdbloc|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] olliej|6 years ago|reply
I wouldn't be surprised if more and more other countries start looking into approvals from US agencies, and investigating how independent those agencies actually are :-/
[+] [-] jacquesm|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jbverschoor|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yourapostasy|6 years ago|reply
Share price may have benefited for a few decades, but Boeing's image will be tarred with this for quite a few decades with far higher certification costs worldwide in numerous jurisdictions. There are many potential jurisdictions [1] looking out for their own interests, and may choose to defensively force a certification on Boeing instead of trusting the FAA.
That will cost Boeing a lot of money. If the 737 line is continued at all, every single 737 variant that comes out after this will have a really steep hill of sales objections to climb, and they'll be handing out steeper discounts and lower profits to counter those objections. It may turn out that accepting an adversarial relationship with the FAA instead of lobbying to co-opt it was the optimal profit strategy in the long-term.
If it pans out this way, then the optimal profit strategy is to encourage the most stringent regulatory regime in the corporation's home country that all others hold up as the gold standard and follow without question. This avoids the multiple costs individual certification efforts rack up because no one can trust each others' certification results because they all recognize they're too weakened by industrial lobbying efforts.
A strong, quasi-centralized regulatory body then acts as the company's buffer to buy the benefit of the doubt, an insurance policy against a prolonged period when the company's culture is called into question.
[1] http://www.dgca.nic.in/Global_Links.pdf
[+] [-] xxpor|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rurounijones|6 years ago|reply
Do you think it should be the other way around in tit-for-tat political reasons? Or because "Many eyes makes all bugs shallow" or some other reason?
[+] [-] rswail|6 years ago|reply
To quote Ronald Reagan, "Trust but Verify".
[+] [-] CaptainZapp|6 years ago|reply
As this pustule of a scandal more and more pops out it turns out that Boeing essentially rubber stamped its own certificates.
I'm not sure about the level Airbus is allowed to do that.
[+] [-] paggle|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PedroBatista|6 years ago|reply
And has been for more or less 20 years.
[+] [-] lefty2|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mannykannot|6 years ago|reply
On the other hand, can we expect US trade sanctions against the EU in response to this move?
[+] [-] Angostura|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notimetorelax|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] landryraccoon|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Havoc|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Haga|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] everybodyknows|6 years ago|reply
https://www.easa.europa.eu/the-agency/the-agency
OP offers no hint just how such great additional effort is to be paid for.
[+] [-] arcturus17|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theYipster|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oaiey|6 years ago|reply