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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   7442 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 10, 2026

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It's not that flying is particularly difficult or dangerous but rather that as the old quote goes "to an even greater degree than the sea, it is unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect."

A barrel roll is a simple 1g maneuver if executed correctly but that "if" is load-bearing.

As much as modern aircraft may effecively fly themselves it is still in the interests of everyone both in the air and on the ground that those who are less diligent be kept out of the cockpit. You may not like it, but there is a clear rationale to the FAA's rules.

It's not that flying is particularly difficult or dangerous but rather that as the old quote goes "to an even greater degree than the sea, it is unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect."

Even that isn't credible. The pilot can die and an airplane can fly for hours before it crashes. The existence of Aeroflot and various third-world airlines demonstrates while you can certainly get yourself killed in the air, it's not nearly so unforgiving as that statement would indicate.

You may not like it, but there is a clear rationale to the FAA's rules.

Yes, to keep the sky an exclusive club. And to reduce the number of people the FAA has to ride herd on, and the amount of air traffic.

The pilot can die and an airplane can fly for hours before it crashes.

Conversly you can accidentally kill yourself and 66 others by entering an incorrect barometer setting.

And a single wrong turn (off a cliff) can lead to the death of an entire busload, too. That doesn't make driving a bus particularly unforgiving.

I'm pretty sure that if you took a random sample of 20 car accidents and compared it to a random sample of 20 aviation accidents the fatality rate of the latter would would be substantially higher than the former regardless of whether former are more common.

The FAA is a good example of regulatory capture. How is it that, in the land where healthcare is private, ATC is socialized and easily shut downs when the government does? They literally only have one ATC training academy in Oklahoma, there are no other options if you want to be an ATC. Predictably, this regulatory gatekeeping contributes to a shortage of ATC and pilots.

ATC and pilots are two different things. ATC was definitely held back by DEI considerations. Pilots are mostly not government employees. But the FAA's mandate is to keep the flying buses -- airliners -- safe. And they do, and part of that is discouraging use of the sky by anyone else. This suits commercial pilots fine; they hold private pilots in disdain. And it mostly suits private pilots who are "in the club" fine.

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