ABSTRACT
This chapter contributes to an understanding of the socioanalytic aspects of finance in contemporary society by examining the complicated interrelatedness of money and safety within the US commercial aviation industry. Its thesis is that the airline industry's fixation on financial bottom lines and increasing profit has diminished safety priorities, causing a shift in pilot demographics from a stable, high-skilled, homogeneous work group to a less experienced, undisciplined, liminal group. This shift has led airlines to rely increasingly on individuals' professionalism and personal discipline to ensure safe flight operations, compensating for containment shortfalls in the system. Yet a series of accidents provides evidence that aviation industry leaders' lack of attention to this demographic shift and failure to contain the emerging liminal state has contributed to the development of a perverse culture, with troubling ramifications for air safety.
