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 and more details continue to emerge about the Southwest inspections matter, which I’ve written about here and here. On March 6, the FAA announced a $10M fine against Southwest for operating forty-six of its 737-500 aircraft between March 15 and March 23, 2007. Under the FAA’s Voluntary Disclosure Reporting Program (in which airlines can self-report maintenance flaws without risking fines or public censure), the FAA reported the lapse in inspections on the forty-six aircraft for a specific defect: the possibility of cracks in the fuselage. (Six planes had cracking, as it turns out.) Southwest continued to operate these forty-six planes after March 15 — the offense for which they were fined — which Southwest claims was approved by the FAA. Today’s testimony makes clear that Southwest’s operation of these aircraft during that interval was approved.
One Douglas Gawadzinski, the principal maintenance inspector in the FAA’s Certification Management Office (CMO) for Southwest, was cast as the villain of the hearing. Bobby Boutris, one of the inspectors in the office, reported that Gawadzinski routinely made Boutris downgrade his notices to Southwest from enforceable “letters of investigation” to advisory “letters of concern.” Gawadzinski was apparently friendly with a former FAA inspector who had gone to work for Southwest, and he pressured the other inspectors to go easy on the airline, taking the FAA’s friendly regulator approach to the airlines much too far.
There’s a lot more to report, but the hearing will reconvene soon (with FAA officials and Southwest executives on tap to testify). I’ll write more when I get a chance. DEVELOPING…
UPDATE: The first part of my full report is here.
Evan Sparks's Aviation Policy Blog 
I just rescently went on a local (Denver , Colorado Government website) and they wanted $3.99 for me to make a comment??? I am 52 years old and ex marine
and i cant remember when i had to pay the leaders
that represent me ??
This FAA, Southwest airlines thing is pretty scary stuff.
This should be criminal ?? These planes have hudreds
of people counting on government agencies (FAA) to
insure thier safety.
Isnt this a form of fraud? What are attorneys saying about this?
What can we do about this?
Anyone who has ever worked with the FAA – and that phrase right there might be a great misnowmer – learns pretty quickly that the way to stay in business is make the FAA inspectors your friends.
You don’t want them as enemies as Southwest found out recently, anymore than we want to be on the bad side of the IRS. They simply have too much power to wreak havoc in our lives.
People have said the FAA inspectors were simply doing their jobs when they nailed Southwest. Unfortunately, live in aviation is not always that clear cut.
The Southwest Airlines folks thought they were doing what FAA had commanded. Then, for some odd reason – perhaps the continuing squabbles between FAA employee unions and the agency itself – some inspector did what we all lose sleep over when we fly. They changed their mind.
Or, even worse, another inspector was given the evidence and developed a completely different interpretation of the incident, as well as the potential outcome.
This kind of chaos happens much more than people outside the aviation industry realize.
The good news for the reader above, I think, is that increased scrutiny of all operators is essentially a good thing. Of course at a time when dollars are scare, the last thing an airline wants to do is spend more money checking airplanes it already inspected. But again, that is part of the game we play with FAA in this industry.
What the reader should keep in mind is that part of all this publicity was designed specifically to get everyone to watch the airlines more closely.
Because if we’re watching the airlines under a microscope, we will be less inclinded to scrutinize the agency that regulates U.S. aviation.
But what airlines will never say – because of the power the agency wields – is that FAA is not simply the regulator in this case. They are a huge part of the problem as well.
Rob Mark