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This chapter traces the roots of safety-related problems in the U.S. airline industry. It provides a historical background on air traffic control and highlights the power struggle between pilot influence and airplane controllability within airlines and manufacturers over the issue of aircraft design. It also analyzes the financial crisis of 2008 in order to look for trends that may prove helpful in identifying problems in the aviation industry, with particular emphasis on signs of gamesmanship and short-term profit seeking that have become so pervasive in post-9/11 aviation. Finally, it looks at a number of airline accidents to highlight some of the imperfections in air traffic regulations. It argues that regulators often did not pay enough attention to airline safety, reacting only and conducting investigations after several accidents and numerous fatalities.

This chapter examines the secret deals behind the airline industry's financial wins and losses in the post-9/11 period. It considers the radical changes that occurred in the aviation industry after 9/11 and argues that the already struggling airlines used the event as an excuse to slash jobs while eliciting sympathy and government support as one of the most visible images of America's struggle against terrorism. It contends that airlines became fixated on maximizing short-term profits at the expense of long-term company sustainability and passenger safety. It suggests that there aren't enough safeguards to address concerns about escalating risk and diminishing safety. The chapter also discusses the findings of a study called the National Aviation Operations Monitoring System (NAOMS), an inquiry into airline safety issues based on interviews with more than 24,000 pilots between 2001 and 2004.

This book examines what happened within America's airline industry after the terrorist attacks of September 2001. Written more than a decade after 9/11, the book seeks to reconceptualize the idea of risk and safety by comparing aviation with other risk management professions, particularly finance. It argues that the commercial airline industry has prioritized profit seeking at the expense of safety. More specifically, it contends that airline safety has not often been the main concern in aviation industry decision making and that airline executives, industry regulators, politicians, watchdog groups, or even the flying public have not paid enough attention to the issue of safety. With no government intervention or regulatory supervision on the horizon, the book asks whether the airline industry can also crash the way Wall Street did in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008.

Through an examination of ‘arte meccanica’ and the ‘spiritual’ machine, this chapter marks the transition to a later development: aerofuturismo. In concert with Fascist postwar investment in the aviation industry, aerofuturism further aimed to transcend the materiality of machines, leading to disembodied, ‘spiritual’ devices. This chapter discusses Enrico Prampolini and Fillia, their transnational cultural promotions and pursuit of cosmic and mystical machines, tapping into the symbolic value of a machine designed to elevate humankind to mystical heavens.

In 2017 panel and Appellate Body reports were adopted in nine disputes. The disputes concerned alleged violations under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade of 1994 (GATT 1994), the Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS Agreement), the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (SCM Agreement), the Anti-Dumping Agreement, and the Agreement on Agriculture. Four of the disputes concerned restrictions placed on the importation of animal products (mainly poultry and pigs), such as licensing requirements and import restrictions, tariff rate quotas established following re-negotiations with principal suppliers, and SPS measures. The dispute over a ban on importation of pigs featured an important issue relating to the “regionalization” of SPS measures. Two disputes provided clarification as to the relationship between WTO agreements, in particular, the relationship between GATT 1994 and the Agreement on Agriculture. The year 2017 also saw another case in the “series” of the Airbus/Boeing subsidies disputes, with the United States scoring a victory over the European Union.