The frustrating economics of aviation

James Robinson wrote
Not really. The aircraft manufacturers seem to get sued almost
automatically, no matter what the cause of the accident was

Not really. In fact, the lawsuits are not all that common. The last
one I remember was the governor who crashed. When Kennedy crashed,
nobody sued.

General Motors doesn't have anywhere near the same number of lawsuits
filed against it.

Actually, GM has lots of lawsuits filed against it. It simply has the
money to fight it out.

The FAA doesn't force pilots to fly a perfectly good airplane into the
ground, which is the cause of a good proportion of accidents. How are
they to blame?

Well, in fact it does. It keeps the national airspace system complex
and quirky, it keeps the airplanes obsolete and under-equipped, and
basically makes flying far more difficult than it needs to be. Then
some pilots are not up to it.

More to the point, can you imagine if private boats were regulated the
way private planes were? In other words, if there was an FAA for
private boats?

While private boats are coming under increasing scrutiny, they don't yet
have the fatality rate of general aviation. Alcohol seems to be the
biggest problem with boating.

Actually, private boats (and cars) NO LONGER have the fatality rate of
GA. They've improved a lot. Planes haven't improved much.

Michael