We had a tough loss in the appellate courts last week, when New York State's pioneering airline passenger bill of rights was struck down under the usual weak judicial analysis: vague preemption precedents trump a state's traditional and well-established police powers to protect its citizens, even when no federal law exists. The New York Times editorial Board Blog has an entry Bad News for Airline Passengers, with 71 comments.

Meanwhile, you may be wondering why all your flights are being canceled for inspections. It's because the inspections weren't done on schedule. Why not? Well, it appears that the FAA let the airlines slack off.

So the FAA came under harsh Congressional scrutiny this week for its apparently cozy relationship with its "customer" airlines as the Congress drilled down at the question: "Why did FAA inspectors let Southwest Airlines fly un-inspected planes then found to have cracks in the skin (and still allowed to fly) and why is United all-of-a-sudden grounding flights?" Chairman James Oberstar (D-MN) of the House Committee on Infrastructure and Transportation led the hearing. From Mathew Wald's story Inspectors Say FAA Inspectors Ignored Violations in the New York Times:

"You’re looking at safety as a system, and the system itself has cracks," he said. The F.A.A. now refers to airlines as its customers, he said. "We can’t have a situation in which the customer calls the F.A.A. to complain about their service person, Mr. Boutris, to get him removed,” said Mr. Oberstar.

The FAA's reliance on airlines to voluntarily disclose safety issues "promotes a pattern of excessive leniency at the expense of effective oversight and appropriate enforcement," Inspector General Calvin L. Scovel told the House Transportation Committee yesterday.