When the Weakest Link Breaks: The Cost of Declining Quality

It was 3 a.m. when I started writing this. I woke up in the middle of the night—as I tend to do now in my 50s—and made the mistake of checking my phone before trying to fall back asleep. That never ends well. I tell myself I’ll just glance at it quick, and next thing I know I get sucked into a rabbit hole chasing stories about ranking favorite all-time TV sitcoms.

This time, I got sucked in by a breaking news story.

A crash at LaGuardia Airport

At first, it didn’t fully register. I automatically question everything I see on social media at 3 a.m. Fool me once–shame on me? Fool me twice, shame on...? Whatever. You know the saying.

It was a picture of a plane sitting on a runway at nighttime with the tip of the plane pointing upward, but the cockpit was totally gone.

The caption said something about a crash at LaGuardia Airport in New York City. Then I heard the air traffic control transmission and I knew it was real.

Well, maybe I wasn't sure it was 100% real, but I was pretty sure.

The details are still developing, but here’s what I've seen reported so far. An Air Canada Express flight was arriving into LaGuardia around 11:40 p.m. At the same time, a fire truck had been cleared to cross Runway 4, responding to a separate issue involving another aircraft—something about an odor in the cabin and crew members getting sick.

Listening to the audio of the transmission shook me. At first, the controller sounds calm—in my opinion, too calm—giving instructions to the truck driver.

ATC audio captures moment Air Canada Express flight AC8646 collided with the truck. pic.twitter.com/WsoAUT4P4j

— Breaking Aviation News & Videos (@aviationbrk) March 23, 2026

Then his tone shifts. “Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Truck One, stop.” You hear his anxiety heighten, and the urgency creeps into his voice.

"Stop, Truck One! Stop!"

Then you hear beeping sounds and sirens.

The controller tries to regain control--redirecting the next planes that were scheduled to land on Runway 4.

Then you hear another firetruck driver ask if Runway 4 was officially shut down so it would be safe for him to race to the crash site.

Then, in a moment of reflection, you hear another voice--which I assume to be a young pilot either sitting on the tarmac or in the air--say, “That wasn’t good to watch.”

The controller responds quietly: “Yeah… I know. I was here. I tried to reach out to stop him. We were dealing with an emergency earlier… I messed up.”

That line repeats itself in my mind. We've all been there--"I messed up." Except when you or I mess up, hopefully, it doesn't cost anyone their life.

As I am writing this, the pilot and the co-pilot of the plane have been confirmed dead. The plane carried 72 passengers and 4 crew. Dozens of them were taken to the hospital. The people in the truck, amazingly, are expected to survive, but they are dealing with broken bones and limbs.

This mishap is not happening in a vacuum. In 2025, there was a helicopter tragedy in Washington, D.C. There have been others, too--a clipped wing on the runway, near misses in the air.

Do Politics Play a Factor?

No one can convince me otherwise, but politics has played a factor in this, but that won't be the focus of this article.

All I'll say here is Donald Trump– at the behest of Elon Musk--attacked and made cuts at the Federal Aviation Administration on the very first day of his second term as president.

As of today, the United States is entering the sixth week of a partial government shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security which has resulted in 50,000 airport screeners working without a check during this time, has resulted in 300 resignations, and has seen call out rates of 30% at some airports in recent days.

But my bigger point is that it is not only airports where we are seeing standards lowered, dramatically.

Quality Of Everything Is Going In The Toilet

I’ve been saying to my partner, Erin, for years now—probably since COVID--that the quality of everything in this country has gone downhill, significantly. Often, I use more colorful language than that.

You see it everywhere you turn.

Start with something simple. You go to take your medication one morning and realize the bottle is empty. No refills left. Now you have to call your doctor’s office, and you already know what’s coming. “Press 1 for this. Press 2 for that."

Like a mouse looking for a piece of cheese, you need to navigate a maze of options only to be told to either leave a voice mail or contact your pharmacy so they can contact your doctor. Are you not good enough to talk to any of these people? You--the actual patient?

Or take restaurants. I spent most of my career as a McDonald’s general manager. I remember when I started in 1990, burgers were 99 cents and fries were buy two small fries for a dollar.

My brother summed up the beauty of McDonald's back then:

"I liked going into a McDonald's, look at what they had ready in the holding bin, pick something, order some fries, and be in and out in two minutes."

He didn't care if the burger had been sitting in the holding bin for twenty minutes. He wanted cheap and he wanted fast.

As a manager back then, I bought into my brother's philosophy, too. I focused on getting orders out as fast as I could. I didn't care too much about quality. You want to complain to me about your 99 cent burger or your 50 cent small fry?

But as prices skyrocketed, my mindset changed.

My career ended in 2021. By that time, Quarter Pounders cost $8 and a "value" meal cost almost $15.

The average order back in 1990 was under $2. When I left in 2021, it was close to $12. At nighttime, the average checks would be close to $20.

In my final years, I focused more on the quality than the speed of service (sorry, you can't have both!).

I would pull my managers and crew aside if I saw them half-ass making a sandwich or serving old fries or nuggets.

"Look, McDonald's isn't cheap anymore. People are spending a lot of their hard-earned money on this food. Would you spend $8 on a sandwich that looks like this? Or how about $5 on a box of fries that tastes like this?"

That was five years ago. Prices are even higher now, but quality is as bad as I've ever seen it. I'm not just talking Micky D's. I am talking everything!

You want to watch all your favorite NFL games nowadays. You better have Netflix, Amazon Prime, Paramount, Peacock, and a regular channel provider installed on your TV.

You want to read your favorite newspapers online? You still need to buy a subscription to get past their paywalls. After that, you may have to pay more to get access to their top writers.

Recently I've been hooked on tracing Erin's family tree on Ancestry.com. It is so addictive. But if you want to maintain the work you've done, you need to buy a membership. Ah, but if a record that is linked to one of your family members is a newspaper article, you need to buy a subscription to newspapers.com (not exactly sure if that is the name of it). And if then if you want to look at records that are stored in another country, you need to give up your firstborn child to the international ancestry.com. (That was a weak attempt at an ancestry.com joke)

And don't get me started on the subscriptions that automatically renew without warning you. Even worse are the ones that make it almost impossible to cancel.

I once had an app so I could listen to my radio sports stations anywhere. The app is/was called TuneIn, which took me close to six months to cancel.

Good luck if you have to dispute something with a bank or a merchant. Erin has been dealing with her credit card company to void a $70 sweatshirt transaction. It was for a Patriots' sweatshirt which came two months late--it was supposed to be a Christmas gift--and looked nothing like what was advertised on the website.

Upon further research, it is very obvious based on user comments online that the website (floridajacket.com– stay away!) is a scam. All the victims' stories are similar to ours.

You would think this should be an open-and-shut case. Erin has been a cardmember with that bank for over twenty years and not once disputed any charge.

But noooooooo.

It’s turned into a three-month back-and-forth with the credit card company. Every couple of weeks it is "we need more documentation" or "we need more pictures." I now see how scammers win.

And when you do walk into a retail or grocery store, there are fewer and fewer workers because of the self-checkout registers.

I once went with my brother to Home Depot and he bought about five items--each costing under a dollar. I noticed he intentionally didn't scan one of the items. When we got outside, I mentioned it to him and he replied, "It's my employee discount."

Makes sense. These companies are expecting us to do their work. We should get paid, right?

These stores even have employees stationed at these self-checkout registers just in case we need further training on the registers.

So why are things getting worse instead of better?

I blame a lot of it on COVID, but there is plenty of blame to go around--technology advancement, workers "quiet-quitting," and, essentially, just fewer people taking pride in their work, or caring.

But COVID forced a lot of people (not me, unfortunately--I couldn't, unless you wanted to come by my house and I'd hand you a Big Mac and fries through my kitchen window) to work from home.

By the way, I had that dream about my kitchen window serving as a McDonald's drive-thru more times than I care to remember.

A lot of those remote workers from 2021 and 2022 didn't go back to their offices in 2023. Some took advantage of their time at home to search for other careers, or to become Tik Tok influencers.

The result has been that some of the best people at their trades left those trades. The replacements just aren't as good. The result is--say it with me--"the quality of everything in the world has gone in the shitter."

At the same time, people at the highest levels of companies and government have increasingly shifted their focus to increasing the bottom line. They know consumers aren't going anywhere, so they're not worried about the consumers' boo-hoo needs.

You would think businesses were hurt big-time during COVID. Sure, the mom-and-pop shops and restaurants all closed down, but big businesses flourished.

I know McDonald's was able to get rid of some of their higher food cost items--like salads, parfaits, grilled chicken--during COVID.

McDonald's used the excuse they wanted to make life easier for their employees--many of whom were working twice as hard to make up for the multitude of employees calling out from work because they had the sniffles or a "slight fever," So they removed those items to streamline the menu to put less on the kitchen workers.

Well, the pandemic has been over for over four years now. So why haven't they brought those healthy food choices– which health-conscious customers loved–back?

That is an example that I had a bit of insider knowledge about.

Erin is a teacher and she has given me some insight into how the quality of education has deteriorated–at least at her school.

On the bright side – she is excited that she no longer has to worry about making up snow days at the end of the school year because teachers got so proficient at doing "remote learning" during COVID.

So now, when there is a snow day, students log in for a video conference meeting for 10-15 minutes to meet with their teachers and go over any questions they may have with their homework, and, voilà– that counts as a "school day."

Erin also tells me, on an almost daily basis, about how bad the quality of teachers has gotten at her school.

She constantly complains about her new principal who--based on Erin's stories (and who am I to question her on it?)--is supremely unqualified for the position.

Just as an example, Erin's principal responded to a group text – from 12 hours prior – at 3 o'clock this morning. The text notification woke both of us up... which caused me to check social media... which caused me to stay up the rest of the night to write this article. Thank you, Madam Principal.

ICE and Law Enforcement

We have seen too many instances where unqualified police officers have done bad things. It is a bad reflection on the majority of good cops that are out there, and which we salute.

Unfortunately (and it is kind of scary), I keep seeing a lot of communities desperately recruiting for police officers.

I can certainly see why no one wants to be one.

Police officers aren't paid nearly enough. They put their lives at risk every day. And what thanks do they get? But it makes you wonder when communities are desperate for officers, how much are they willing to lower their standards to fill positions?

We've seen the infuriating examples of unqualified ICE agents in Minnesota breaking completely from protocol--and, quite frankly, the law--in killing two innocent protestors.

The Weakest Link

These professions are the most dangerous when quality is compromised. Lives get lost if these individuals are not competently trained. And that means at every level. As a mentor of mine used to always say,

"You're only as strong as your weakest link."

And that's what circles me back to the tragedy at LaGuardia. We've taken aviation for granted.

Here was this plane full of 76 souls. The pilots had finished the flight. They were just taxiing to the arrival gate. The hardest parts of the flight were over--the takeoff, the flight itself, the landing.

I hate to point fingers, but listen again to the recording of the audio transmission from the tower.

Does the controller sound competent to you? Does he sound mature and experienced? Does he sound like he was fully engaged at the beginning of that clip?

To me, it sounded like he was distracted. Maybe he was tired. Maybe he was overworked.

I think a lot about the driver of the second firetruck and the tone in his voice when he asks for confirmation that Runway 4 is officially closed before he commits to driving on it. It didn't sound like the driver had much confidence in the guy up above making the calls. Who could blame him after what he had just witnessed?

And it makes me think about all the things – big or small – it takes to make a flight a success. It makes me think of how everyone depends on someone else.

The flight attendants trust the pilots to fly the plane. The pilots trust that the mechanics are maintaining their planes properly. The mechanics trust that the parts they use are the best parts. The pilots trust the air traffic controllers to be their eyes and ears and tell them what altitude to fly and which runway to land. The air traffic controller trusts that their equipment is all tech-ready and accurate.

There are so many links intertwined. Apply it to our own mundane, every day lives. Think about driving a car, eating at a restaurant, going to a concert. If one single quality check fails at any point along the line, the consequences can be deadly – if a food isn't prepared correctly, if a wheel isn't put on properly, if security fails to check a bag.

And, unfortunately, that's what happened at LaGuardia.

I pray for the families of those whose lives were lost and for those who were seriously injured – both physically and psychologically. And I pray, as well, for the air traffic controller who will be harshly criticized over the coming days.