(Snowbird) wrote
Michael, I sometimes feel like I must live in a parallel universe
to you. In your universe, the FAA is the root of all evil, their
employees are all bureaucrats without technical understanding, all
accident investigations are worthless, WINGS and other safety seminars
are useless, and CFIs are almost uniformly incompetent.

Well, I'm glad you used at least one qualifier - almost uniformly - to
describe my world. You should have used more, because really you came
up with a straw man argument.

In the world I live in, things aren't nearly so black-and-white.

Nor are they in mine. Do I think the FAA is the root of ALL evil?
No, but I think it's the single biggest safety problem in personal
aviation. That's not to say there are not others, but it makes sense
to tackle the biggest problem first. Do I think all FAA employees are
bureaucrats without technical understanding - no, but that's the
majority. Interestingly, there is at least one person I know who has
a lower opinion of FAA engineering competence than I do. He designs
electronic components for GA aircraft for a living. I've bought some
of them, and I'm way more impressed with them than I am with anything
the FAA ever did. Do I think ALL accident investigations are
worthless? No, but given the ones where I have first hand knowledge,
it's clearly more the rule than the exception. Do I believe ALL WINGS
and other safety seminars are useless? Clearly not, since I've
mentioned that there were at least a couple I attended where I learned
useful things. That doesn't change my opinion of the majority of
them. Do I belive CFIs are almost uniformly incompetent? No, I
belive the level of incompetence is highly variable, a minority are
actually competent for the kind of instruction they do, and a tiny
percentage are actually very good.

But just because it's never all black or all white, it's a mistake to
say it's all shades of gray. At some point you have to say it's close
enough to black or white. The FAA's long term contribution to
personal aviation safety has been overwhelmingly negative. Does it
mean the FAA never did anything positive? Of course not. Is it
different for commercial aviation? Maybe. Probably. I don't care.
We're not discussing how we can reduce the accident rate in commercial
operations but private ones, therefore for the purposes of this
discussion only the FAA's impact on private operations matters.

You can't fix the problem unless you correctly identify it. One of
the first rules of fixing problems in large groups is this - if the
problem is widespread, it's a problem with the process, not the
people.

Michael