What constitutes major airline crash?

Bloomberg has a Crazy Story which I found out via Best of the Web.

The title of the story, and I am not joking here, is Airline Crash Deaths Too Few to Make New Safety Rules Pay.

See, not enough people are dying in crashes to be able to justify new safety rules in terms of simple cost-benefit analysis where benefits of a regulation in terms of statistical lives saved. A rational regulatory body ought to target maximizing statistical lives saved per dollar spent, or minimize dollars spent per statistical life saved.

It makes no sense making people spend, say $100 million, so, on average, one fewer person might die every ten years of a specific cause, when there are other ways people can die or get hurt.

If regulations in one particular area are very effective, additional regulations may not provide large enough increases in lives saved to justify the cost.

So, that's what's got Bloomberg reporters worried: We may not get additional, costly regulations that provide no benefit larger than their costs.

But, the report opens with a sentence that is interesting on its own:

More than a decade has passed since the last major-airline accident on U.S. soil. That's great news for aviation companies and their passengers — and a complication for rule makers trying to improve flight safety.

The Colgan Air Flight 3407 crash that took the lives of 50 people is not considered major enough by the reporter (although it is mentioned).

I am not sure how a passenger plane falling out of the sky on top of a bunch of houses and killing 50 people is not major. Is it because it happened far away from where Andrew Zajac lives? Would he have thought differently about this crash had he or someone he loved been in one of those houses?

Also, I don't know about you, but I do consider the Miracle on the Hudson to be a major accident as well.

No, it's not that major events are not occurring that upsets these guys.

They are seriously disappointed that too few people are dying in them, which makes it harder for them to justify imposing more costs on airline passengers.

Please, we are still having to deal with flights canceled at the slightest sign of trouble because the regulatory cost of delayed flights is too high. If air travel in the U.S. has become so safe (i.e. if the current regulations are working), please leave them alone so we can get where we want to go.

Thank you!