There's nothing going on right now that hasn't been going on all along. It's just a little more public and the center of the news entertainment industry, presently.
Airlines have always tried to shortcut maintenance and put off or manage inspections to meet their own convenience. In this case SWA just got caught publically, and the FAA responded by covering themselves in a crackdown across the board. What turned up was what existed all along; deferred inspections and AD's that should have been done but weren't...and it's been made public. Nothing new under the sun, nothing has changed, no lessons were ever learned. This has always gone on, and will continue to go on.