Apr 11 2008
What’s Up With The Airlines? Maybe FAA Payback For Libelous Claims
Before I go on a wild speculation run that would make a liberal conspiracy theorists proud I must say safety in the commercial airlines is critical. I fly all the time, my family flies – we want the safest planes humanly possible and for decades the airlines and the FAA have produced the safest form of travel known to man in all its history. Airlines have a track record of millions of people transported trillions of miles safely. This has not ever been achieved in history.
With that said I want to point out the power of certain groups of people when they have been smeared and wronged by the news media. Right now planes are being pulled off the line and being investigated to the letter of the regulations, causing horrific travel woes:
American airlines begged the feds Thursday to let it keep its fleet aloft, saying the fastenings that need to be checked pose no safety threat.
The answer was no.
The airline has grounded 2,500 flights since Tuesday, causing chaos for passengers nationwide, while it inspects latches and clamps on wiring covers as required by the Federal Aviation Administration.
The FAA yesterday ordered the 300 Boeing MD-80 jets to remain parked while mechanics made sure wire ties were exactly 1 inch apart and clamps faced the right way.
More than 900 flights were scrapped yesterday, and the airport havoc is expected to stretch into the weekend.
“What needed doing was a long, long, long way from causing any safety concern,” an airline spokesman said yesterday.
“That’s why we went to the FAA and said, ‘Folks, can we get the planes in the air while we inspect them, and not cancel any flights?’
“They said no. There is no court of appeals, so we had to do what they said.”
You can’t fly without an engine attached to the wing, but you can fly with a lot of items on the inspection list in an ‘imperfect’ condition. They can be inspected and replaced during the normal maintenance cycle. Most things on planes that are old are replaced and upgraded this way. So why is the FAA all of sudden hard nosed?
Because the news media ran with exaggerated stories about how the inspectors are too cozy with the airlines, basically smearing good people who take their jobs seriously on the word of a few malcontents, so those good people decided to make damns sure no one ever confused their actions with risking human safety. Here is a taste of the libelous stories that were rampant right before this inspection crack down:
Government officials have blocked enforcement of safety rules at major airlines for years because they have a cozy relationship with the companies, according to the testimony of U.S. inspectors who will appear before Congress Thursday.
The testimony alleges for the first time that inspectors have been pressured by Federal Aviation Administration officials to change findings or to soft-pedal enforcement actions for several of the nation’s largest airlines, including Northwest, United and Continental. The controversy over the FAA’s oversight has so far involved only Southwest Airlines.The inspectors claim FAA officials were often more concerned with airline profit margins than safety and made them work under the specter of intimidation, according to the testimony, provided to USA TODAY.
Whether these hyped charges in the news media were from disgruntled employees using the media to get things done they could not win over inside the process of the FAA (and trust me, there are a lot of tin dictator egos in the government who have crazy ideas they demand everyone follow – or else) or if this was another democrat attempt to smear the Bush administration, the fact is what we are experiencing today is a result of those hearings and those charges.
When it comes to human lives the inspectors, for the most part, take their jobs seriously. But you have to work out solutions where foresee aging and wear-and-tear and perform preemptive maintenance to get the replacements into the fleet. You don’t go through what we are going through right now, as some claimed in the smear campaign on The Hill last month.
The fact some of these inspections are probably legitimately not immediate safety concerns (wings are about to fall off, maintenance can handle the replacement) tells me the FAA decided to teach Congress and the News Media a lesson. A lesson about what travel would look like if the nation had to follow the amateur advise debated last week. The FAA are the experts in commercial aerospace. Most individuals have forgotten more about aviation than the media or the pols could ever hope to learn in their lifetimes. aviation is an industry so heavy in math and science it makes medicine look easy.
Why are we going through all these pains and tens of thousands of peoples’ lives disrupted? Because the media and the Democrat Congress maligned one of our premier and safest industries and the people who make it great while safe. And they did it deliberately. Check out how Democrat Senators used the issue of inspections to play politics:
Today, as neglect of airline inspections took center stage at a Congressional hearing, New Jersey Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) say they are adding it to the list of issues the Federal Aviation Administration must resolve before they would consider lifting their holds on the nomination for FAA Administrator.
That is probably why we are here, for political games egged on by the news media who is in the tack for the Dems. For the record, I have no proof of this. But after those in the FAA were charged with what amounts to criminal negligence that could lead to homicide charges, I can understand why the FAA decided it was time to go back to the letter of the regulations, no matter the cost or impact. Folks, it is possible this is not about safety at all – it could be one big political power play and the people of this country are paying the price for the extremists in Congress obsessed with power, no matter the cost to us little people. Wild conspiracy theory? I’ll let you folks decide.
so basically if the airlines had been doing the required inspections when they were supposed to there would have been no issue. the media and or some democratic conspiracy prevented them from doing the required inspections when they were supposed to?
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I feel much more conerned today about airline saftey than on Monday, because mechanics doing this much work under this much presseure CANNOT be doing as good a job if it were spread out over time. And all those parts being ‘jiggled” makes me real nervous.
AJ, the fact is that what you wrote is most likely true based on how the democrats operate. For example, they, along with their media partners in propaganda, have been trying for the past 2-3 years to set a “tone” for this year…one where everyone is in a malaise and depressed and upset. Fact. Have you been listening for the past year to all the commercials on TV that feature “1968” (the year of “revolution” in America) music? American Express forms a new entity to deal with the “hippies of the sixties”. Coincidence? Not to me.
What the disengenuous democrats aka global socialists don’t understand is that in the end, Americans can see through their intellectual dishonesty (except those spme who are products of the national education association) and they are disgusted at the America bashers.
Norm,
We already know your ignorance knows no bounds, so demonstrating it on another thread is just more of the same. As I said, what it means is the airlines have been safe under the same procedures for decades.
Ignoramuses who don’t understand the airline industry and how maintenance works went of on a smear campaign for political points and now we are all getting a lesson on how not to do oversight. The fact is no airplanes that I am aware have failed these new, by-the-rule, inspections. And that is what people need to understand.
Determining how to handle a possible problem or maintenance issue is best left to the experts, not those arrogant idiots who think watching some science channels on TV makes them experts worthy of comment. And in every bureaucracy are those who fail to grasp they are not god’s gift to mankind and have no greater voice than the others in the process.
Norm, you are hopelessly out of your element – but you demonstrate very nicely why novices are irrelevant when it comes to grasping complex systems. Watch the results. If no airplanes fail then this was a lesson to those who smear without cause or conscience. Like you.
this is not a complex system…in fact it’s pretty basic…the way to not do oversight is to allow required inspections to go undone. do the inspections as required…no problem. do not do the required inspections…a problem. it only becomes complex when you are looking for someone to blame. or smear.
Norm,
You have a talent for demonstrating why ignorance is not bliss. The commercial airline industry and the machines they use ARE complex – and just like no one is going to go to you for advice in brain surgery no one is going to listen to you on avionics.
Especially when you boil things down to the level of 3rd grade comprehension. Ugh, please tell me you are a mindless cog in a machine and not in charge of anything important or possibly dangerous.
I was upset by the recent hearings with the FAA. The press played it up like the FAA and the airlines were “cozy”. Well, I believe they have to be for many reasons. You don”t want the airlines and the FAA to have an adversarial relationship. If they do, the airlines will begin to start covering their butts and hiding things. The idea is to have some comfort that you can be open and honest about things, admit mistakes, get them corrected and save people’s lives.
If you start down a path where the FAA and the airlines are enemies, human nature tends to cause one to be defensive if they believe they are going to get into trouble for something so they might cover it up, hide mistakes, falsify documents, and the result might be more deaths from airline accidents going forward.
Yes, the FAA and the airlines are “cozy” … but we have the just about the safest air transit system per passenger mile in the world. It seems to me that Congress was less concerned with safety than they were upset that the FAA and the airlines had a friendly relationship. The nature of the relationship seemed to be the major item under scrutiny at the hearings and there seemed to be a determination to destroy that.
Since coming to control Congress, the Democrats have proved themselves to be stupid on more levels that I had even considered beforehand. They appear at this point to be quite the lot of fools who would get people killed because they don’t like friendly relations between the regulator and the regulated. What happens when they regulate my health care … are they going to want THAT relationship to be adversarial too?
Well AJ I guess you got your doers!
When will the public get to ground the FAA and inspect their procedures?
And let’s not forget Al Gore’s responsiblity with NOT going along with airline security after Lockerbee, as I recall… Bill OReilly had a show on this…
Ive,
That’s pronounced Algore…all in one name…like Igor.
😉
AJ,
There is probably something in your tin-foil-hat theory. That is how bureaucracies work, eh. Piss em off and they piss on you…
Here is another tidbit. I think American is used for official government travel. Maybe Norm’s brilliant Senators and CongressCritters are now sitting in airports complaining that perfectly good airplanes are being grounded for not maintaining their propellers as per some 1936 FAA regulation or something.
However, in Norm’s defense, we should wait and see if there have been some major safety issues. The fact that the problem is limited to a specific carrier may mean that said carrier is sloppy. It will all come out – and, if so, than we will have one less airline competing in the market. These airlines have been living on the edge. While things were boom boom good they could survive off of 3% profit. Now, not so good, eh.
If it turns out that American did not have true safety violations that necessitated a fleet stand-down than I would hope they sue the government for everything we have.
That’s right, 75! LOL!
So, why is it that they did this to Alaskan Airlines last week,and now this week on the same plane(MD80?) to American Airlines?If there is a legitimate problem then why not ground all the planes at once? And not just American and Alaskan Airlines,they can’t be the only lines to be flying these particular planes.
I have to admit I was thinking that it was a much more sinister problem than your conclusion.So I am hoping that you are right.
Actually except for the mess it would cause,I wish that many of the industries/regulators could pull this off on Congress. Just look at the self-promoting braying that has been coming out of there for the last couple of months from people who haven’t had a clue about what the businesses or industries(or the folks in charge of their regulation) do or what they can or can not do differently.A lot of these congresscritters seem to think that they know more about how to run any particular industry than folks that have been doing just that for decades.
I dont agree with AJ’s interpretation of events.
If American Airlines had done the inspections, they would be done. Is anyone suggesting that the inspections were done properly before the grounding and the grounding was done for no legitimate reason?
I say who cares what’s going on at the FAA… I want to know why AA didn’t do the proper maintenance on so much of their fleet.