You are giving the FAA way too much credit. They do not have the expertise to decide or design anything on the factory floor, or the management of a large aircraft manufacturer.
I never said they did that. I said they insist on
supervising this stuff--approving procedures, being notified of any/all changes, etc.
For example:
21.135 says you have to provide the FAA a document describing how your production organization will be set up.
21.137 lays out a whole laundry list of what your quality manual must contain.
21.138 states that the FAA must approve your quality manual.
21.139(c) states "The production certificate holder must immediately notify the FAA, in writing, of any change to the manufacturing facilities that may affect the inspection, conformity, or airworthiness of its product or article." The FAA's interpretation of this is very broad.
21.150 says the FAA gets to review any changes to your quality system and basically restates 21.139(c).
and so on. And that's just one little snippet out of Part 21.
And remember: behind every regulation is a stack of Orders, ACs, Policy, Guidance, and unwritten procedure.
They do not have the expertise to regulate or oversee a large manufacturer, or even a major airline. They designate "experts" at those companies to be their reps to regulate the very company they work for. It is the regulatory equivalent of being paid to sleep with your sister.
They don't have the
manpower, and they don't have the funding to get it. How much do you think you'd have to pay to get senior engineers with very deep technical knowledge to relocate, work for the government, and then spend a whole bunch of time on the road, bouncing around while supporting programs at different manufacturers? And then what do you do with them in between major programs to keep them sharp and trained and not bored out of their minds?
The FAA has been "delegating" for a
long, long time (even longer than I'd thought).
The thought of trying to get anything through the certification process for the first time - I wouldn't touch it. The big boys get away with it because of the aforementioned inbreeding.
The "big boys"--that is, established manufacturers--"get away with it" because they've been doing it a long time, know how the FAA works, and know how to do things "the FAA way". Look at the troubles new players have getting into the certified game; quite often, it's much more a matter of figuring out how to deal with "the system" than anything technical. It's like when I built my shop and had to deal with the city planning/zoning/permitting office--they had no issues with my plans or my eventual build, but there were some communication issues during the process of applying for the permit, scheduling and conducting inspections, etc. because I was just some guy doing it for the first time, not a general contractor or developer who does it all day long and knows the process and the people and "the way it's done".
The FAA rubber stamps the decision their "designees" make.
Umm, yeah. Sure they do.
The FAA--or its designees--can't approve (or reject) data that isn't presented to them. If engineering presents false or misleading data to the designee (or makes a change without presenting it to them at all), how is that any different from doing the same thing to an FAA employee working in the same capacity? They can only work to the data that's presented to them. If anything, the designated company employee is more likely to be able to tell if something smells fishy and is more likely to be aware of things outside what's presented than the visiting guy on the outside getting a paycheck from Uncle Sam.
I'm not saying that did (or didn't) happen at Boeing; I didn't and don't work there and I'm not super familiar with the ongoing MAX drama. But working somewhere with an ODA and seeing some part of how these work inside, I really don't think the popular knee-jerk reaction of "but if they'd worked for the
government they would have caught this and stopped it!" holds much water.
I think the FAA understands the certified rules written many decades ago aren't regulating light aviation, they are strangling it.
Parts of the FAA understand that. Again, read the
Part 23 Reorganization ARC final report. But from my time on the ASTM panel for new "means of compliance", the FAA is still well-stocked with people to whom "that's how we've always done it" might has well have been on Moses's tablets. But it's been ingrained in them for a long, long time that "an airplane is an airplane". Back in the 50s there wasn't a whole lot of difference in terms of technology or construction, but there definitely is a difference today, and the one-size-fits-all approach to certification and regulation hasn't worked for a long time. They keep ratcheting the bar higher to meet the safety needs of airliners and other commercial aircraft, and light private aircraft get dragged along with them.
I think the rumors of relaxing LSA rules are their attempt to revive light general aviation.
I think large parts of the FAA don't much care about light aircraft one way or another, and would be fine with them just going away (one less headache to deal with). But we aren't going away, and they don't the manpower to deal with the large aircraft, let alone the little ones. I think this move is essentially deregulation for the sake of conserving manpower, not an attempt to revive GA or make it better for us (even if that's the end result).