As anyone living in America can tell you, there are many parts of our everyday life that are gradually getting worse. The airline industry is one of them. Over the past two or so decades, traveling in the air has become more expensive, more crowded and just generally crappier. It doesn’t matter which party’s in charge of the country, either. Finally, a bipartisan achievement!

This came to a head in the past few years when people realized just how dangerous flying with American jets (and in American airspace) has become. Boeing was shown to have multiple manufacturing issues, and the FAA’s understaffing problems meant that airports were suddenly hit with both significant delays and more close calls.

Now, the Federal Aviation Administration has proposed a new safety rule that would force airlines to address the issues in potentially thousands of Boeing 737 planes. This would involve additional inspections and safety checks. The industry’s response? “Sorry, wallet empty, can’t do.”

In its public comment, the airline lobby stated that the new rule would “[create] unnecessary burdens for all stakeholders… potentially causing aircraft groundings and compliance delays,” as reported by The Lever.

In short, the argument against this regulation is that following it would be expensive and time-consuming. Right, but you know what else is expensive and time consuming? Having a plane blow up. In fact, that kinda consumes *all* of the time its passengers had left!

We don’t know what’s going to happen with this proposed rule, but at least the in-flight Biscoffs are still free (for now).