Why should it cost the industry millions? The customers aren't interested in safety, they just want to pay a hundred and fifty bucks to fly from New York to Sydney with a 48 inch seat pitch, VOD entertainment and free booze all the way. Something's got to give and if the travelling public are to be protected from every minute risk at tremendous cost, then its the travelling public that ought to pay. And so they did until something called "De-Regulation" reared its head.
De-Regulation was a political gimmick, supposedly meant to remove the restrictive practices that kept fare prices high and open up free competition to the benefit of the public. Many of those allegedly restrictive practices were the industry's way of paying for meeting tightly controlled airworthiness standards. But if we are to be regulated tightly enough to eliminate every possible cause of an accident then we need those so-called artificially inflated fare prices to pay for meeting the regulations. Joe Public will never pay for his own safety unless he is obliged to and as long as he wants cheap travel he should be prepared to accept the increased risk.