Too Big to Fly? How an Airline Oligarchy Derailed the U.S. Airline Industry
The United States Airline industry was once a testament to American innovation. 2025 marks the year that this dream has ended. Buckling under the weight of increased profit margins, the reality is dire. Safety is at an all time low, regulators no longer satisfy their most basic duties and accountability is nowhere to be found.
Ronald Reagan International Airport in Washington D.C. recorded reported 15,214 “near miss” events between 2021 and 2024. Nothing was done to improve this metric until a CRJ collided with a military helicopter killing every passenger of both in early 2025.
Over decades of mergers, deregulation, and cost-cutting, the airline industry has transformed into a Darwinian marketplace where the bottom line trumps nearly everything else—even the safety of the people who strap themselves into these aluminum tubes daily. Now, manufacturers self-certify critical software, carriers that push maintenance checks to the brink, and an overwhelmed regulatory agency lurching from crisis to crisis. Add to that a steady stream of settlements, deferred prosecutions, near misses, indicted executives, and hush-hush deals, and it becomes painfully clear that the sector’s beloved “best safety record in history” isn’t exactly built on an unshakable foundation. That foundation is crumbling.
Aviation didn’t always function under the banner of “anything goes, as long as we’re turning a profit.” In the post-World War II era, airlines operated under strict federal oversight. Route allocations, fare ceilings, and labor regulations kept things stable—though not exactly flexible. Many hail the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 as a consumer victory that brought cheaper fares, expanded service, and allowed competition to flourish. That’s the official story, anyway.
Fast-forward a few decades. The top four U.S. carriers—American, Delta, Southwest, and United—now control the lion’s share of domestic flights. Service might be cheaper on some routes, but the oligarchic nature of the business stifles real competition. The same carriers that once battled tooth and nail for market share have consolidated power to the point where passengers in certain regions have no alternatives. Ticket prices creep upward; baggage fees multiply; seats shrink. Shareholders, many of whom enjoy seats in congress, applaud the profits.
Capitalism, in its purest sense, prizes profits and efficiency. But there’s a razor-thin line between driving innovation and driving an airframe straight into the ground. When left to regulate themselves, airlines begin to see safety features as yet another overhead cost, pilot training as a burden, and thorough maintenance checks as optional line items that reduce quarterly earnings. Regulators tasked with overseeing them—chiefly the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)—are left to pick up the pieces, often after something has gone catastrophically wrong.
The Boeing 737 Max Disaster
For decades, Boeing stood as a gleaming symbol of American engineering prowess. But after a merger with McDonald Douglass in 1997 this engineer’s company began to receive the same dose of shareholder pressure that crippled McDonald Douglass. Some say McDonald Douglass ate boeing from the inside out.
Its 737 line was a global bestseller, ferrying hundreds of millions of passengers each year. But Airbus, its largest competitor, began to creep in on market share ultimately pulling ahead in 2019. When Airbus launched the A321 airlines flooded Airbus with calls abandoning prior Boeing contracts. Its range and fuel efficiency would directly improve the bottom line of any airline that purchased an A321 over the old and stale 737.
Feeling this pressure, Boeing had to move quickly and launch the 737 MAX. This new slightly improved airframe was supposed to leap forward in fuel efficiency and performance. Boeing pitched it as a plane so similar to previous 737 iterations that pilots would need no additional training. Airlines worldwide salivated at the savings. Shareholders expected bigger profits. The FAA, drowning in cost constraints and reliant on Boeing’s internal teams for certifications, rubber-stamped the design. What could possibly go wrong?
MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System) was Boeing’s band-aid solution to accommodate larger, heavier engines placed further forward on the wing. The new engine positioning altered the plane’s aerodynamics, causing a tendency for the nose to pitch up during certain maneuvers. MCAS was designed to push the nose down automatically if the Angle of Attack (AoA) sensor detected an excessive climb. In theory, this was brilliant: keep the same pilot training regimen, sell more planes fast, and keep Airbus’s competing A320neo at bay.
In practice, Boeing hinged MCAS on a single AoA sensor. If that one sensor malfunctioned, the system could repeatedly shove the plane’s nose down, leaving pilots confused, wrestling with controls they never fully understood. After the 2018 Lion Air Flight 610 crash and the 2019 Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crash, the link to MCAS emerged with brutal clarity. Both tragedies killed a combined 346 people, igniting global outrage. A pillar of American manufacturing went from revered to reviled in record time.
Dennis Muilenburg, then Boeing’s CEO, apologized publicly and testified before Congress. But he did so with a $58 million check in his back pocket. Following the Boeing Max diasaster and after his complete failure to manage Boeing and indictable conduct - he walked away with $80 Million in stock and benefits. Despite admitting that he has a “keen responsibility” for the crashes - he escaped indictment when Boeing elected to payoff the Department of Justice instead of actually facing justice.
Boeing eventually struck a $2.5 billion settlement with the Department of Justice, avoiding a criminal conviction. Families of the crash victims filed lawsuits, airlines requested compensation for grounded fleets, and the FAA found itself defending a system in which Boeing had been basically self-certifying. Yet Boeing’s long-term fortunes have remained surprisingly robust.
After all, commercial aviation is an oligarchy, and airlines desperately need more jets to meet demand. Few other manufacturers can fill that void as quickly. Stock values dipped, then rebounded. Executives parted ways with respectable golden parachutes. And it became painfully obvious that no single scandal—even one that killed hundreds—was enough to deter the unshakable inertia of profit-driven progress.
America’s vast regulatory machine has a peculiar kink in its design. Under the Organization Designation Authorization (ODA) system, the FAA delegates large chunks of the certification process to the manufacturers themselves. That means Boeing is allowed to choose employees who act on behalf of the FAA to review and approve Boeing’s own designs. It’s the same logic as trusting a casino to handle its own gambling audits.
Supporters of the ODA model argue that it reduces bureaucracy and speeds up development cycles, especially for complex aircraft. Critics counter that it essentially puts the fox in charge of the henhouse. When major players like Boeing have to meet production deadlines and compete with Airbus, letting them self-police is a recipe for corner-cutting—and in the case of the 737 MAX, it resulted in two catastrophic crashes. The aftermath revealed FAA officials often had only surface-level insight into the development of MCAS, trusting Boeing’s word that everything was fine.
The FAA, of course, insists it maintains oversight. But recurring budget cuts, political pressure to prop up America’s top exporter, and lobbying from industry giants paint a different picture. The regulator that’s meant to protect passengers from corporate negligence is, in many respects, underfunded and outmaneuvered. Congressional hearings on the 737 MAX fiasco revealed how the lines between corporate and federal power had blurred into one cozy feedback loop. Boeing employees wrote the certification reports, and the FAA approved them. Everyone saved time and money—until the planes started dropping from the sky.
While Boeing’s 737 MAX saga may be the poster child for corporate misfeasance, it isn’t the only example. Alaska Airlines Flight 261, which crashed off the California coast in January 2000, is another cornerstone of how cost-cutting can directly erode safety. The MD-83 aircraft lost control when its jackscrew assembly—a critical piece governing the horizontal stabilizer—failed. Post-crash analysis by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) found that inadequate lubrication and extended maintenance intervals contributed to the catastrophic failure.
At the time, Alaska Airlines was under internal pressure to reduce costs, even in maintenance. Lubricating the jackscrew might seem trivial, but in aviation, every piece is vital. If an airline is desperate to minimize downtime, deferring or compressing scheduled maintenance is an attractive option to keep planes in the air (and money rolling in). Passengers rarely know about these battles fought in back rooms, but the stakes couldn’t be higher.
In the wake of Flight 261, lawsuits abounded, and families of the victims demanded accountability. Alaska Airlines paid settlements, the FAA imposed fines, and a flurry of press coverage lasted a few weeks. Then it settled into the background. The airline survived and even expanded over time—the pattern: a deadly event might jar the public for a moment, but the financial structure of the industry remains stubbornly intact.
Unlike a high-profile crash, a near miss often escapes the media spotlight or quickly fizzles after a day’s coverage. Yet these close calls can be harbingers of a system under strain. After a slew of near-miss incidents involving helicopters and aircraft at Washington-Reagan International Airport, he Federal Aviation Administration promised to investigate.
The National Transportation Safety Board issued a standard summary pointing to “miscommunication of flight paths” and “congested radio channels.” Insiders claimed understaffing at the airport’s tower contributed to the chaos, and some pointed to outdated collision-avoidance tech that had been on the replacement schedule for years. These factors might sound dry, but in the moment, they nearly caused a mid-air tragedy.
If anything, the DCA incident encapsulates the silent erosion within U.S. aviation: aging infrastructure, insufficient training, and a bureaucracy often forced to run on a budget that doesn’t keep pace with escalating flight volumes. Too many flights, too few controllers—this is a formula that relies on hope to maintain a razor-thin margin of safety. It’s like driving down the freeway at 100 miles per hour, trusting a decades-old steering system and a half-awake co-driver to keep the vehicle in its lane.
Corporations spend millions to shape Washington’s agenda, the aviation industry is no exception. Boeing alone has spent tens of millions on lobbying in recent years, with major airlines not far behind. The money flows into campaign contributions and think-tank partnerships, all geared toward ensuring that the regulatory climate remains “friendly.”
Consider the so-called “Passenger Safety Bill” that floated around Congress in 2022. Ostensibly, it aimed to tighten requirements for pilot training and strengthen the FAA’s enforcement power. But after lobbying groups labeled it “harmful to economic growth,” the final legislation was watered down to the point of irrelevance. It offered symbolic gestures—some new reporting requirements and a half-hearted push for additional funding—yet avoided any meaningful shift in how airlines are held accountable for safety lapses.
The cozy relationship between industry and government extends to the halls of local airports, too. From awarding ground-handling contracts to approving new routes, the entire system is awash in deals that might look suspect if they weren’t so commonplace. Lobbyists spin these maneuvers as essential to keeping airlines profitable and ensuring American aviation remains globally competitive. Critics retort that the balance has tipped dangerously away from the traveling public, who assume they’re boarding well-regulated jets but are in fact stepping onto planes certified by a “partnership” that’s as close to captive as a watchdog can be.
Criminal charges in aviation might sound like a sensational headline, but they’re more common than one might expect—especially involving individuals or smaller companies in the global supply chain. Unfortunately, they never result in systemic change. Federal investigations into airplane maintenance shops and parts suppliers revealed that a startling number of aircraft parts come from third party suppliers that cheat manufacturing and safety standards.
Certain Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO) facilities have faced criminal accusations for forging safety documents. When it comes to planes, a single counterfeit or subpar component can spell disaster. Yet the paper trail often disintegrates in a labyrinth of subcontractors. If legal challenges arise, the usual outcome is a settlement or fine, and sometimes a scapegoat ends up charged while the larger entity rebrands and continues operating.
Then there’s Boeing’s $2.5 billion Deferred Prosecution Agreement tied to the 737 MAX debacle. The Department of Justice made headlines proclaiming it a “significant penalty,” but for a multinational aerospace behemoth whose annual revenues routinely top tens of billions, $2.5 billion is an easily absorbed cost of doing business-passed on to the passengers. In many ways, this settlement only reaffirmed that large-scale corporate players can operate with near impunity, paying what amounts to a convenience fee when their “cost-savings measures” cross a line.
Connecting the Dots: Whistleblowers, Deaths, and Silence
The Disintegrating National Air Traffic Control System
Airlines and aircraft manufacturers often grab the headlines, but there’s another critical pillar: the national air traffic control (ATC) system. Over 14,000 controllers in the United States handle millions of flights each year, working shifts that push mental endurance to the limit. Despite widespread respect for controllers’ skills, many ATC facilities struggle with understaffing and archaic equipment. Some consoles are older than the controllers themselves, patched by short-term fixes that never seem to yield a lasting solution.
NTSB data from 2020 to 2023 shows a modest uptick in near-midair collisions, runway incursions, and pilot deviation incidents. Controllers have shared stories of pulling six-day weeks and logging mandatory overtime, all while juggling an ever-increasing volume of air traffic. That’s a precarious scenario: even the best-trained professional can’t sustain hyper-focus indefinitely.
Budget discussions often circle back to the same refrain: modernization is expensive, and Congress would rather funnel money elsewhere. Meanwhile, the FAA is left in a constant scramble to patch old systems while pushing out mandated updates that never quite arrive on schedule. No single politician wants to oversee a meltdown of air traffic control, but none seem eager to foot the substantial bill to fix it properly. The result is an uneasy stalemate where controllers heroically keep planes separated—until the day the margin for error runs out.
Modern jets are engineering marvels, capable of hauling hundreds of passengers and many tons of cargo across continents with shocking reliability. Yet it’s the mundane components—the jackscrew, the fan blade, the cargo latch—that can cause a fatal crash if neglected. Federal guidelines set intervals for these inspections, but airlines (facing tight schedules and profit pressures) frequently push to extend them. It’s a routine dance: airlines propose new intervals, the FAA reviews them, and with sufficient data (often provided by the airline itself), they get rubber-stamped.
Smaller regional carriers often operate on razor-thin margins, they’re especially vulnerable to the temptation to stretch intervals or outsource maintenance to facilities that might cut corners. The FAA can step in after an incident, imposing fines or revoking certificates, but these punishments often arrive too late. By the time a case draws headlines, the damage—sometimes fatal—has already been done.
Airlines aren’t the only link in the chain. The parts market is a multi-billion-dollar global enterprise in which each component—down to the smallest screw—may pass through numerous hands. An unscrupulous supplier can offload substandard or forged parts, forging certifications or using counterfeit stamps to impersonate legitimate manufacturers.
Criminal indictments against parts dealers do happen, but prosecutions typically target lower-level operators rather than the big fish. Given the diversity of players in this market, a hush-money settlement or a quick corporate name change is enough to bury the issue. This patchwork approach leaves the aviation supply line susceptible to infiltration by shady operators who know precisely how to navigate the system’s blind spots.
At times, used parts from retired or crash-damaged planes even find their way into active fleets, provided they can be “recertified.” Done right, this can be a safe, cost-effective strategy. Done wrong, it’s a breeding ground for questionable paperwork, lethal shortcuts, and minimal oversight. It’s a grim reflection of the industry’s priorities: if there’s a way to eke out extra profit, someone will do it, and the FAA rarely has the resources to chase every lead.
Civil lawsuits are the standard recourse for families affected by airline crashes or serious incidents. Settlements are often substantial, but along with the payout comes a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) that can muzzle further public discussion. This practice keeps many damning details of safety oversights out of the headlines. Though court documents might reveal broad strokes of what went wrong, the gritty details stay locked behind confidentiality clauses, protecting airline reputations and share prices.
In some instances, airlines will quietly settle even minor incidents—a near miss at a regional airport, for example—just to avoid bad press. The settlement might be small, but the key benefit for corporations is the ability to keep the story off the nightly news. By the time revelations about systemic problems see daylight, the company’s legal team has had ample time to craft a sanitized narrative. That’s how capitalism’s machinery keeps churning: settle, seal, move on, repeat.
Why has the System Not Collapsed Yet?
Given all these red flags, why isn’t the airline industry buried under the weight of its own negligence? Simply put, modern aircraft are sophisticated enough that even with corners cut, failures don’t happen every day. Plus, there’s a certain “statistical resilience” at play: even if near misses are on the rise, the overall number of flights remains staggering, and the percentage of actual crashes remains low.
The industry’s emphasis on redundancy means single-part failures don’t always turn deadly. Pilots, mechanics, and air traffic controllers at the ground level often prove heroically competent, compensating for systemic failings in real time. In that sense, the grim fate of a few high-profile crashes or collisions might reflect the tip of an iceberg whose submerged mass includes many more close calls, flawed parts, or incomplete repairs that never quite converge into a cataclysm.
Every so often, a major tragedy or a near miss so chilling that even mainstream outlets can’t ignore it emerges. Legislators hold hearings, vow reform, then get distracted by the next political cycle. Families of victims demand justice, occasionally securing large settlements that rarely spark structural changes. With each news cycle, the outraged public eventually moves on, pacified by the knowledge that flying is, in aggregate, still “safer than driving.” Meanwhile, corporate boards breathe a sigh of relief and revert to business as usual.
Critics often ask why the Federal Aviation Administration isn’t more aggressive. The short answer: the FAA is stuck in a no-win scenario. It faces enormous pressure from the airline and manufacturing lobby, which brandish economic arguments like swords—jobs, exports, and the need to keep air travel competitive. On the other hand, every time a plane goes down, the FAA is left holding the bag for lacking oversight.
Recent congressional testimonies revealed just how stretched the agency’s resources can be. Staff cuts, hiring freezes, and outdated digital systems hobble the FAA’s mission. In a landscape where even advanced radar upgrades can stagnate for years, expecting robust oversight on every plane component or every new software tweak is borderline naïve. Moreover, certain states rely heavily on aerospace jobs, giving local politicians a strong incentive to champion Boeing or major carriers above all else.
The 737 MAX grounding became a test case. Under intense international scrutiny, the FAA took its time recertifying the model, even resisting pressure from Boeing. But that was an anomaly triggered by worldwide condemnation. Absent the global spotlight and families marching on Capitol Hill, the tendency is to revert to a more lenient stance. As soon as public attention wanes, the juggernaut of commerce asserts itself once more.
The Cold Comfort of Proposed Reforms
Occasionally, experts propose reforms: restore the FAA’s direct oversight, end self-certification, break up airline monopolies, require third-party audits of manufacturer data, and so on. Yet these ideas rarely move beyond committee rooms. The airline lobby raises the specter of slashed flights, job cuts, or higher ticket prices, and politicians recoil. Passengers, eager for cheap fares, rarely rally for major policy upheavals unless a tragedy is fresh on the news ticker.
The reality is that truly effective change would demand a realignment of political and corporate priorities. Regulators would need far greater funding and independence. Politicians would need to endure the heat of temporarily higher fares or corporate job cuts. Shareholders would need to accept that safety improvements require genuine investment. In other words, the entire structure of how airlines and airplane manufacturers do business in the U.S. would have to shift.
Some argue that the world has already witnessed enough catastrophes to trigger reform. Yet the incremental approach—issuing patches after each major crash—seems to suffice from a corporate perspective. Over time, the memory of specific disasters fades, and with it, the impetus to fix root causes. The industry’s public-relations machine is skilled at highlighting each day’s safe landings while minimizing the significance of near misses and data that suggest a slow erosion of safety margins.
Air traffic continues to grow. More flights, more passengers, more demand on a system already strained. In the next decade, some analysts predict a doubled flight volume, which means exponential stress on everything from pilot availability to runway space. Automated systems may fill part of the gap—think advanced collision-avoidance tech or AI-assisted air traffic control—but these same systems are only as reliable as the budgets and safeguards behind them.
Meanwhile, the impetus for change continues to rely on high-profile incidents. A single near miss might fade quickly if no one gets hurt. But a major crash involving hundreds of fatalities can prompt public outcry—briefly. Whether that outcry transforms into real legislative or corporate accountability is another matter. The Boeing 737 MAX fiasco demonstrated that even the most damning evidence of corporate wrongdoing might simply result in a settlement and an extended recertification period.
The specter of potential black swan events—where multiple oversights and cost-saving measures align at once—haunts the industry. Experts warn about cascading failures: an overworked controller missing a crucial call, combined with a poorly maintained sensor on a plane that’s been pushed beyond its recommended service intervals. The difference between a headline-making disaster and an overlooked close call can be a matter of seconds or a few feet of altitude.
This cycle—build, fly, partially fail, litigate, discard—plays out largely behind the scenes. Passengers rarely connect the smooth wheels-up moment at their hometown airport to the labyrinthine negotiations, regulatory gaps, and profit-driven shortcuts that made the flight possible. The system runs, for the most part, on the simple gamble that components won’t fail simultaneously and that the public’s appetite for convenience will outlast its outrage over corporate malfeasance.
That gamble, while often successful, is perilous. At some point, repeated near misses, indicted executives, or major crashes might converge into a political tipping point. Perhaps the next big congressional hearing will have enough momentum to push genuine reforms through. Or maybe not. If the industry’s track record is any indication, it’ll take more than a few near collisions and scattered indictments to derail the money-making machine.
If the past is any guide, the future of American aviation will continue riding this uneasy current: planes flying with advanced technology yet vulnerable to the same old budget constraints, regulators hamstrung by politics, and corporate executives keen to spin the scoreboard in their favor.
Passengers looking for a silver lining may note that actual crashes remain rare. But for those paying closer attention, the real question is whether the relentless drumbeat of commerce will keep overshadowing the warnings laid bare in the boneyard. Until a profound shift occurs, the skies above remain a stage where capitalism’s best and worst instincts play out at 35,000 feet—and sometimes slam back into the ground with devastating force.