Flying Blind

Then came 'Heck of a Job' George W. Bush.
Ideology trumped reality and competence, once again.

Fred Hiatt's Pravda on the Potomac editorially wrings its hands today over this week's FAA-enforced grounding of all MD-80 airplanes, operated by American Airlines, "resulting in more than 3,000 flight cancellations and more than 250,000 stranded passengers by Friday." Then, there's this:

[L]ast month... an FAA inspector let Southwest Airlines fly its Boeing 737 jets despite reports of a crack in a fuselage. At hearings before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on April 3, the Transportation Department's inspector general, Calvin L. Scovel III, bemoaned the "overly collaborative relationship" between the FAA and Southwest. According to an FAA safety inspector, this was the result of the agency treating the airlines like "customers." Meanwhile, the real customers -- the ones crammed onto crowded and late planes who are nickel-and-dimed for everything from checking an extra bag to securing an onboard meal -- are treated with disdain.

This inspires WaPo to reach the brilliant, hard-hitting conclusion that passengers "shouldn't... have to worry that the plane they're sitting on might be a disaster waiting to happen." Really? Every time we board an airplane we assumed it was our job to worry.

The trouble with the Post's editorial is that there's no hint of how, when, or why our civil air transportation industry was allowed to fall into such a disgraceful state of disrepair. For that, you have to turn to today's New York Times.

In "Behind Air Chaos, an F.A.A. Pendulum Swing" by reporters Matthew Wald and Michelle Maynard, we learn that under the Clinton administration FAA inspection reforms led to enhanced safety. "Over the next decade, the accident rate fell 65 percent, and [the] new approach is widely seen as having played a role in the drop."

Then came 'Heck of a Job' George W. Bush. Ideology trumped reality and competence, once again.

[T]he F.A.A., under the Bush administration, took on a role after the Sept. 11 attacks to help the industry recover — “through technology, through greater efficiencies, through sensible and non-burdensome regulatory schemes,” Marion C. Blakey, the F.A.A. administrator in 2002, said at the time. She declined to be interviewed for this article.

This more collaborative approach was reflected in a “customer service initiative” announced by the F.A.A. in April 2003.

The customers in this case were not passengers; they were the airlines the F.A.A. regulates. The core principles of the new initiative, which inspectors could print up on pocket-size cards, included creating for the airlines “an environment without fear of retribution if you challenge our decisions” and “clear guidance on how you can elevate your concerns to the next higher level of authority.”

The F.A.A.’s watchdog role, to many Democrats in Congress who now oversee airline regulators, grew toothless.

One notorious example is the fresh example of Southwest Airlines:

In January 2007, the airline discovered cracks on some of its Boeing 737s. Less than two months later, an unidentified whistle-blower in the F.A.A.’s Chicago office noticed a crack in a Southwest jet that had been flown the day before.

Earlier this year, Southwest told the F.A.A. that it had flown 46 planes without the required inspections of fuselage panels, operating the defective planes for up to nine months on more than 61,000 flights.

It took the persistence of brave whistle-blowing inspectors deep down in the agency to expose safety concerns which the Bush's FAA administration has been actively suppressing. The whistle-blowers, we're told, "have become 'rock stars' within aviation safety circles."

Predictably, the Bush administration hit back hard at the whistle-blowers instead of the FAA administrators who consciously endangered public safety. But when an independent inspector-general's report about the controversy began circulating on Capitol Hill, the FAA was forced to act by re-inspecting all civil airplane fleets.

By one informed estimate, some 568 unsafe aircraft have been grounded so far. And, we're told, "more groundings of other planes throughout the industry are likely to occur in coming weeks."

We're thinking we should cancel our airline reservations for a business meeting next week. In fact, we just might cancel everything, go to bed, and pull the covers pulled over our head until Bush leaves office.