A similar process of “soft corruption” and conflict of interest can be seen in the financial industry in various countries across the world, made worse by deregulation. The Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 started a process of removing government controls over the airlines and manufacturers in the USA. This was done to encourage competition and lower the ticket prices, but the end result has been the monopolisation of air travel to the point where four major carriers control 80 percent of US air traffic. Tickets did become cheaper but travelling by plane has generally become a miserable experience worldwide and the workforce – from pilots and cabin crew to dispatchers, baggage handlers and office workers – is more exploited, underpaid and demoralised than ever.
Combine this with the majority of establishment politicians sitting on the boards of private companies and you have a clear recipe for disaster. It is a cosy club where everybody looks after each other: regulators, manufacturers and politicians. Obviously, for any airline or manufacturer, any serious incident or accident is bad publicity and is to be avoided. The general level of safety in aviation since the 1980s has been relatively good, and numerically speaking, flying remains the
safest method of transportation. Under capitalism, however, with profit as the primary goal, there will be a never-ending battle of short-term expense versus long-term safety, where the latter finishes a long way behind.
This short-term thinking ties in with the increasing short-sightedness and sheer incompetence of the political elite worldwide. In the UK we have the Brexit circus, in the USA we have Trump. The Twitter president was quick last week to send yet another bizarre tweet saying that “airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly” and that he doesn’t want “Albert Einstein to be his pilot”. This comes from a man who doesn’t know how to close an umbrella upon entering the presidential 747 and who last year nominated his own pilot, John Dunkin — the man who flew Trump planes, not Air Force One — to head the FAA. As the
Financial Times put it:
“When the Senate laughed him off as unqualified to lead an $18bn agency, Mr Trump failed to come up with a new name. The FAA has been flying without a pilot, so to speak, for more than a year. Little surprise America’s partners have lost trust in its direction.” (March 13, 2019)
Yet, like a broken clock that is right twice a day, Trump in this instance has a point, even if we can’t suspect him of having any real level of comprehension of the matter at hand.