Here in rec.travel.air, Mxsmanic spake unto us, saying:

These days, you never know, however. If there weren't any government
regulations forcing airlines to do maintenance and observe safety issues,
aircraft would be raining out of the sky.

Strangely enough, some of the labor unions actually help to enforce
safety on aircraft as well.

Most flight crews aren't going to be willing to fly on something which
is unsafe, for example, since their butt is on the line, and a pilot's
union gives them the power to say "I won't fly unless this is fixed" as
a group even if management wants them to cut corners.

I was never in a union when I worked for the airlines (programmers are
not unionized -- if they were, I'd still be there), but I know enough
people who were and who took their jobs seriously to believe that the
major airlines would be relatively safe even without the morass of
federal regs they have to comply with.

--
-Rich Steiner --- http://www.visi.com/~rsteiner --- Mableton, GA USA
Mainframe/Unix bit twiddler by day, OS/2+Linux+DOS hobbyist by night.
WARNING: I've seen FIELDATA FORTRAN V and I know how to use it!
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.