Originally Posted by
MikeB525
With the talk of the ATP rule and safety, I came to this realization recently and I'm going to throw it in here. This is probably my first time doing anything that could be considered "flame bait".
Libertarians like John Stossel often argue that government regulations can wind up making the public less safe, for various reasons. Using the same logical process, it's possible that the ATP rule will actually result in more transportation-related deaths and casualties. Here's how:
1- The ATP rule makes it substantially more difficult to become an airline pilot, which could maybe potentially cause difficulty for the airlines (regionals) to staff their flights.
2-This will cause the product (air travel) to become more expensive or limited in supply (airlines may have to cut service).
3- People will still want to go to Disney World and visit grandma, so those people who can no longer fly will drive or take busses, which are fundamentally more dangerous and result in more highway casualties, which will probably outweigh the reduction in casualties from more experienced pilots.
That's possible. If they had to pay pilots a lot more, then small planes would be the first to go, since the revenue capacity (number of seats X fare per seat) might not be able to increase to match overhead (pilot pay). Some of these would be feeder service, and would result in loss of service.
But there are many other components of airline cost, and fuel, not labor, is now the largest. Also there have only been a few brief periods where pilots with less than 1500 hours could easily get an airline job.
Much of this coincided with the RJ boom, and it's worth noting that low labor costs enabled mainline to shift some narrowbody flying to RJ's (also side-benefit of increased frequency). If higher labor costs forced majors to undo the RJ's, they would simply shift much RJ flying back to mainline. Net loss of some of those pilot jobs, but they would be good, sustainable jobs.
But we in aviation are not responsible for the safety of other modes of transportation, so I won't lose any sleep about that. If folks are too cheap to pay the piper, the are welcome to blow half their vacation driving on I-10 and exposure their families to significant road risk in the process. That sounds like a problem for big government...REALLY big government
