Posted in Evan's Fiskings, tagged faa, regulation, safety on April 19, 2008 | No Comments »
Cliff Winston and Bob Crandall of Brookings have an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today on airline safety. They argue that “the FAA needs a cozy relationship with the airlines. This is because the agency needs to at least give the appearance that it is having a significant impact on safety.” They place the [...]
Posted in Evan's Commentary, tagged congress, delays, faa, network airlines, safety, southwest, Southwest and the FAA, usa on April 11, 2008 | 2 Comments »
As I’ve written before, the failure of the FAA in the Southwest Airlines case and elsewhere seems to stem from a personnel problem. The safety inspection chain of command at the agency ignored and abetted an inspector who was consistently neglecting policies and procedures. This is not an indictment of the FAA’s collaborative approach to [...]
Posted in Daily Departures, tagged faa, safety, Southwest and the FAA on April 8, 2008 | No Comments »
According to an AP report, the agency is reassigning Southwest Region Flight Standards Director Thomas Stuckey to an administrative position without safety oversight responsibilities.
Posted in Evan's Commentary, tagged congress, faa, regulation, safety, Southwest and the FAA on April 7, 2008 | 6 Comments »
On Thursday night I posted the narrative that emerged about the Southwest Airlines-FAA maintenance debacle. Now I’d like to post some of my observations and offer some policy lessons from the April 3 hearing. You should read the Thursday post before you look at this one.
The “collaborative” relationship between airlines and regulators doesn’t have to [...]
Posted in Evan's Commentary, tagged congress, faa, regulation, safety, Southwest and the FAA on April 3, 2008 | 4 Comments »
There were systemic breakdowns in the FAA’s airline safety inspection program, key whistleblowers testified before Congress on April 3. One unaccountable inspector, enabled by a culture of relaxed standards, allowed Southwest Airlines (SWA) to violate FAA rules and airworthiness directives. FAA line staff, top agency officials, and SWA executives testified before the House Transportation and [...]
Posted in Evan's Commentary, tagged congress, faa, regulation, safety, Southwest and the FAA on April 3, 2008 | 2 Comments »
WASHINGTON — In testimony today before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, several current and former FAA employees related their roles in the lapses in inspection of Southwest Airlines, how supervisors collaborated with the airline to minimize the punishments, and how a culture of lack of accountability was built up in the FAA’s southwest region.
More [...]
Posted in Evan's Commentary, tagged congress, faa, regulation, safety, southwest, Southwest and the FAA on March 16, 2008 | 1 Comment »
I’ve been watching the Southwest Airlines inspections controversy unfold over the past week without much comment (except for one post), trying to make sense of what’s happening. There are some big red flags in the way the FAA has handled this case.
Here’s what’s happened so far:
On March 15, 2007, Southwest notified the FAA that it [...]
Posted in Evan's News and Quick Takes, tagged aerospace, faa, safety, southwest, Southwest and the FAA on March 7, 2008 | 3 Comments »
The FAA has filed an action for a $10.2 million fine against Southwest Airlines on account of operating aircraft without conducting a particular routine inspection on them. Here’s the story: For some unstated reason, Southwest failed to conduct “mandatory inspections for fuselage fatigue cracking” on forty-six Boeing 737 Classic-series aircraft from June 2006 to March [...]
Posted in Evan's News and Quick Takes, tagged air traffic control, airports, icao, labor, latin america, safety, world on March 7, 2008 | No Comments »
As of March 5, according to new International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) rules, English proficiency is now be the required of all pilots and air traffic controllers. In the past, controllers and pilots could communicate in a local language if both spoke it, even though English was the most common standard. More than anything else, [...]
Posted in Evan's News and Quick Takes, tagged air traffic control, canada, congress, europe, faa, regulation, safety, world on February 27, 2008 | No Comments »
Air traffic control commercialization can change the incentives in the ATC system, Eugene Hoeven (pictured at right) said during a panel discussion last Wednesday, leading to dramatic improvements in the industry. Hoeven, the director for ICAO affairs of the Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation (CANSO), the trade association for air naviation service providers (ANSP), spoke [...]
