411A:
No, silly, of course I don't mean that it serves the FAA right.
But today's tragedy shows up the puffery of the recent "fatality free 2002" announcement quite spectacularly. Accidents aren't seasonal, so talking about getting through a year without fatalities is nonsense.
This is about air safety. It's a continuous process. We don't clean the slate at Jan 1, and we don't ship off the old year like it's a batch of newly-produced flawless goods.
A run of 365 days without killing someone seems, at least to me, to look a little artificial when 21 die on day 373.