Firstly, existing safety regulations should have averted the disaster. Secondly, government regulators tasked with ensuring air safety have become hesitant to enforce these rules, particularly when it conflicts with industry demands for increased flights and reduced costs.

Rather than addressing this institutional reluctance within the regulatory framework, the Trump administration is working to further weaken it. The aviation safety crisis has reached a critical point precisely when the wrong individuals are leading the charge.

There’s an age-old saying in aviation: regulations are often written after tragic events. Historically, there was a significant number of fatalities. Between 1960 and 1990, over a thousand people globally perished in commercial aviation accidents each year, despite flight volumes being less than a tenth of current levels. Pilots were overworked, cabin safety was neglected, and manufacturers lacked understanding of basic materials science—innocent passengers bore the brunt.

Since then, the implementation of new safety standards and a culture of ongoing improvement have lowered the fatal accident rate by 90 percent. Seat belt regulations saved lives when a fuselage section blew out mid-air on Alaska Airlines 1282 last year. Well-prepared flight attendants evacuated passengers from burning aircraft twice this year without fatalities (despite passengers pausing to retrieve luggage). Pilots have averted several potential collisions in the air and on the ground since the start of the year.

Success in safety lacks spectacle: it depends less on personal heroism than it does on following the rules. But it works.

Yet when rules are disregarded, catastrophe ensues. The NTSB’s investigation into the crash at Reagan National revealed numerous issues that were ignored. Critical safety equipment was nonfunctional. Pilots were uncertain about procedures. Air traffic control was understaffed and overwhelmed by traffic volume and complexity. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) permitted helicopter traffic beneath landing planes at Reagan National, despite this traffic system causing thousands of near-misses annually. Excuses were abundant, but solutions were scarce.

“Sixty-seven people are dead,” NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy shouted during the hearings. “Fix it. Do better.”

Her words perfectly encapsulate the state of aviation safety today. There are plenty of critics, but few problem-solvers. And being one would require the courage to oppose the post-Reaganite virtues of shareholder value and corporate freedom.

Take the new head of the FAA, Bryan Bedford, the former CEO of Frontier Airlines and Republic Airways (and a onetime reality TV star like his new boss Sean Duffy, and his boss Donald Trump). In spite of falling public confidence in aviation, he’s already initiated an RFK Jr.-style attack on foundational safety regulations just to make airlines more profitable.

During his confirmation, Bedford signaled that he was open to repealing two specific rules. The first requires airline pilots to accumulate 1,500 flight-hours of experience before they can earn their Air Transport Pilot (ATP) license. It was passed following the crash of Colgan Air 3407 in 2009, which was attributed to pilot error due to insufficient training. The second is the mandatory retirement age of 65 for pilots. This was set in 2007 to match international safety standards.

Under the guise of “just asking questions,” he called the standards “arbitrary” and unsupported by data. He also said that they contributed to pilot shortages, a claim he has repeated for almost a decade.

He’s wrong on the merits: multiple studies by academics and regulators have affirmed that the “protective effect of flight experience” increases with time, and that the majority of accidents occur before pilots reach 1,100 flight-hours of experience. Conversely, pilot performance starts to measurably degrade beyond age 63, and pilots above age 65 are at higher risk of “incapacitating events” that make an accident 10,000 times more likely.

But he’s less concerned about the facts than he is about disrupting the labor market in ways he never could as a corporate CEO.

Under Bedford, Republic was notorious for its “highly inferior” pay structure. In 2016, a year in which the FAA licensed a record number of new airline pilots, Republic had so much trouble recruiting and retaining pilots that it declared bankruptcy. In a competitive market, Bedford’s strategy didn’t work.

But as FAA Administrator, Bedford can bend the market to his will. Removing the hours requirement would flood the market with new pilots who would earn entry-level wages. Paradoxically, raising the retirement age would create artificially cheap labor, too. Because other countries still have mandatory age limits, pilots over 65 would not be able to fly international routes. Instead, they could only accept low-paying domestic routes on smaller airplanes. Both moves would effectively create industry-wide wage cuts via regulation — a favorite trick of the Trump administration.

Unsurprisingly, pilots themselves are overwhelmingly against both proposals. Less than five percent of pilots support raising the age limit past 65, or removing it altogether. Chelsey “Sully” Sullenberger, the pilot of the “Miracle on the Hudson” flight, blasted Bedford for his stance on the 1,500 hour rule for its impact on safety.

“The nomination of Bryan Bedford for FAA Administrator puts the integrity of our aviation safety system at extreme risk,” he wrote in an Instagram post. “Bedford has indicated that he would reduce regulations and let the airlines regulate themselves. That’s insane.”

Despite these objections, Bedford was confirmed by a 53-43 vote. This was the narrowest margin for any FAA Administrator in history; most Administrators, including his immediate predecessor Michael Whitaker, have been confirmed unanimously.

Airlines have taken his divisive appointment as a signal that “minimum” safety regulations can now be minimized even more.

This June, American Airlines received approval to lower its flight attendant staffing levels on some of its new 787-9 airplanes. Typically, US-based airlines assign enough flight attendants so that each one can cover a single emergency exit in case of an evacuation. In this reduced scheme, a single flight attendant would be responsible for both emergency exits at the back of Economy class — a section of the airplane that seats up to 124 passengers.

Sara Nelson, who represents 55,000 flight attendants at 20 airlines as the International President of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, said that staffing guidelines were set half a century ago and haven’t been touched since then.

“We’ve got a regulatory agency that hasn’t kept up with the realities of the cabin,” she told The Verge. “Seats closer together, more people on the plane than ever before, more complications in the cabin.”

Flight attendants must also perform a wide variety of emergency duties, from using defibrillators to monitoring for possible security threats. As aviation’s first responders, they are stretched to capacity as-is. Reducing their levels below the minimum will make it nearly impossible to do their jobs.

Ultimately, Nelson’s concern isn’t just about a single airplane type. It’s about the precedent it sets. Historically, as soon as one major airline reduces staffing, Wall Street demands that the others quickly follow suit in order to reduce costs. If the whole industry follows American’s lead, it will be the clearest signal yet that those in power care more about fatter profit margins than they do about passenger safety.

To be clear, a regulatory rollback probably won’t cause significantly more airplanes to fall out of the sky. But it will create real risks.

Those risks might look like Aeroflot 1492 in 2019, where a slower-than-expected evacuation led to 41 fatalities. Or they might look like the disorganized and delayed reaction to the Air India 171 crash from India’s severely understaffed aviation regulator, which allowed misinformation and conspiracy theories to spread. Or they might look like higher burnout rates among pilots, flight attendants, and air traffic controllers who must substitute individual effort for the hollowed-out institutions that no longer support them.

In short, the attack on regulations will reduce the margin of safety everywhere, and erode trust in air travel — all for the sake of letting the industry pad its margins.

This willingness to abandon safety standards in the name of profits is wrong for aviation, says Nelson.

“It’s a continued pressure and downward spiral. It’s shocking, but not surprising.”