Fearless Tower
Touchdown! Greaser!
True, the failures of the merchant marine could very well be used against the aviation industry in the cabotage argument. Which is sad, because with the exception of a few bad apples (Allegiant comes to mind along with some bottom feeder regionals) I don't see the same issues in the US 121 world. I feel much safer flying a US Major than I do on many foreign carriers in the Middle East and Asia.
In the airline world, the Captain is still the ultimate authority. I don't see airlines questioning (and disciplining) PICs for their decisions like we are seeing in the US maritime world and I think the key difference is in the union representation.
Back when I started sailing, there were two main deck officer unions: Masters Mates and Pilots (MM&P) and American Maritime Officers (AMO). MM&P had the high paying contracts (like Sea-Land). They were known for fighting to maintain pay and benefits. Downside, was they didn't have as many jobs. AMO (the union representing the TOTE officers) on the other hand took a different approach. During the big Clinton military down-sizing, a huge amount of maritime defense capability was essentially outsourced from the Navy and Military Sealift Command to contract operators. AMO took the approach of accepting low pay and benefits in order to snag all of those jobs. From a job standpoint, it worked really well: I reported to my first ship as a third mate two weeks after graduating - a huge shift from the market 5 years prior.
The downside is that the AMO approach was to appease the shipping companies in order to get and keep jobs rather than fight for their members. Where a 121 pilot union would fight to get a pilot his job back, AMO's approach to a master being fired or demoted for diverting due to weather was simply to find another job with another company. That approach has significantly castrated the authority of the master in my opinion.