Airline Regulation

John Stossel has written an intelligent opinion editorial on regulation of the airlines by the FAA. The title is The Conceit of the Regulators. He points out that airline travel has never been safer. Despite this, many in the media and in Congress assume that airlines would be willing to crash their $50 million planes in the interest of saving some maintenance money. There are several very strong reasons why they would not do this:

• $50 million losses really hurt the bottom line. Of course the planes are insured, but the insurance companies insuring them would raise the airlines insurance costs greatly if they started to have a higher accident occurrence rate. Therefore, crashing airplanes is a big money loser.
• If the airline were lax in its maintenance, then the families of those killed in accidents would sue and win very large awards.
  
• The public would not care to fly on an airline that has a bad safety record.
• Many people would think it terribly unethical to be haphazard with maintenance and other safety procedures. This would make them angry at the airline and cause them to stop flying on it or to stop working for it.

But, the media love sensational stories and Congressmen are always looking for ways to be noticed and to prove that they care and are needed.