FAA’s CYA inspections
By now hundreds of thousands of American airline travelers have been inconvenienced, really inconvenienced. Why? Is this airline incompetence or FAA over regulation? Or a political CYA operation?
On one hand, we can trace this down to airline maintenance folk not doing their job according to specific criteria. We can trace this to past lax FAA enforcement and current over enforcement. Once the congressional oversight committee began to shine its light on the cozy relationship between the FAA and the airlines, both were caught with their pants down and both were faced with airworthiness directives that had neither been followed nor enforced. There is plenty of blame to share. And it should be shared.
The directives in question have been in place for one-and-a-half years. The airlines have had that time to comply and make necessary repairs. The FAA had plenty of time to inspect these aircraft (or at least a handful of them). Instead, the directives were ignored.
Now, the FAA, having its feet held to the fire by the House Transportation and Infrastructure committee, has begun to fine airlines for not following the directives. The airlines facing major fines from a once less-than-strict FAA decided to ground flights instead of dealing with the wrath of the FAA and Congress. They chose to face the wrath of their customers, their passengers.
From what I understand of the problems at American Airlines garnered strictly from the open media is that tie-wraps or string-ties were not tied properly around cables and insulation. Then the ties were spaced sometimes 3/4″ rather than 1″, or maybe they were 1 1/8″ rather than 1″. It all seems insignificant and it may be, except for the part about following safety rules.
No matter what kind of grumbling may emerge in the next few weeks, the airlines and the FAA had plenty of time to get the job done. Fault lies both with the FAA for failing to enforce their own directives and the airlines for not following the directives. The only innocent party is the passengers. They are the ones who were blindsided.
Both the FAA and the airlines know that the airline fleets are safe in the United States, perhaps the safest in the world. But both are now being hoisted on the petards of technical rules that they played loose with or ignored.
Once this fiasco is over, it will be a while before any airline maintenance program or the FAA oversight personnel let the problems get out of hand as these re-inspections indicate happened recently.
Unfortunately, no one at the FAA has the cajones to say, “the planes of U.S. Airlines are safe and we will have the inspections and maintenance corrections taken care of in 60 days.” That would save hundreds of thousands of passengers from facing these mass cancellations and allow an orderly solution. It would show leadership and real concern for the traveling public.
You may also be interested in these articles
Comments
2 Responses to “FAA’s CYA inspections”
Please share your thoughts...
There is no imminent danger in flying these planes. Why not just ground as many as can be corrected in a single day, and put them back into service as soon as they are repaired? This mass cease of service is crazy. None of these officials seem to have any concern about the flying public.
[...] Senator confirms blogger’s FAA CYA claim Tripso.com had it right when they said the FAA order that resulted in the grounding of AA’s MD-80 fleet back in April was a CYA operation. [...]