Good question. The FAA Adminsistrator and Deputy Administrator are political appointees. The rest, from Associate Administrators on down to those "in the trenches," are generally those who have worked their way up from within those trenches.
To be fair, however, a good share of the NTSB staff are hard-working types with varying backgrounds - chosen for their particular jobs because of previous experience in a given field - very similar to the FAA trench-workers.
However, when one of these talented NTSB staffers point to a "probable cause" and make suggestions as to how that probable cause may be averted in the future ... be it additional training or writing a few words into the regulations - there is not a lot of background that goes into the "how" that would go into that specific recommendation. Whereas, when that recommendation gets to the trench-workers at the FAA, there is a huge amount of detail that has to be worked out - as hinted to by lomapaseo.
I am quite sure that the recommendations made by the Board are seriously considered by the FAA - and I would think that at least in some cases, having a recommendation from the Board may be seen as an assistance to getting something done that would otherwise be more difficult to do. However, my experience with bureaucracies tends to set off my "spidey sense" which tends to lead me to believe that at least some of the Board's recommendations are not logical, some, while logical, might be costly and not necessarily productive, and still others might be terribly costly and while perhaps may be nice to have in place IF the same situation were to arise again - but the odds of some things we've seen in aviation happening a second time are distinctly remote - e.g., what IS the likelihood of someone “gloming around” on the rudder pedals of a large transport airplane to the extent that they twist the tail off the airplane - for a second time? - may be so remote that it wouldn't be worth the time and expense involved.
Horses for courses... bureaucracies for bureacrats... and, hopefully, logic for logical people.
Last edited by AirRabbit; 20th Feb 2009 at 19:28.