Federal aviation regulators have allowed the airline industry to have too much power.
A new-model airliner crashes, killing all 189 people aboard. Less than five months later, another airliner of the same new model crashes, killing all 157 aboard. Both seem to have occurred under similar circumstances. The world was understandably terrified, and until Wednesday, the United States Federal Aviation Administration stood alone as the only major aviation safety agency that had not ordered the grounding of this airline model, Boeing’s 737 Max 8.
President Trump’s executive order on Wednesday afternoon to ground all Boeing 737 Max 8s was a necessary step. But it is a step that should have been taken directly by the federal agency responsible for aviation safety. That is came from the White House instead speaks to a profound crisis of public confidence in the F. A. A.
The roots of this crisis can be found in a major change the agency instituted in its regulatory responsibility in 2005. Rather than naming and supervising its own “designated airworthiness representatives,” the agency decided to allow Boeing and other manufacturers who qualified under the revised procedures to select their own employees to certify the safety of their aircraft. In justifying this change, the agency said at the time that it would save the aviation industry about $25 billion from 2006 to 2015. Therefore, the manufacturer is providing safety oversight of itself. This is a worrying move toward industry self-certification.
