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 [...]
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According to an AP report, the agency is reassigning Southwest Region Flight Standards Director Thomas Stuckey to an administrative position without safety oversight responsibilities.
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
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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.
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
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