Attention All Passengers (23 page)

Unfortunately, frontline FAA inspectors say one problem remains: the State Department has more say over such matters than FAA experts. What we're left with, according to experts, is an FAA that doesn't have the final say on which airlines can fly into the United States.

Pilot Proficiency Still Wanting

Among those NTSB “Most Wanted” improvements for aviation, the first is improving oversight of pilot proficiency. Specifically, the board recommends that the FAA evaluate prior flight check failures for pilot applicants before hiring and provide training and additional oversight that considers full performance histories for flight crew members demonstrating performance deficiencies.

There are two aspects to the pilot proficiency problem. One is ensuring that an airline hires qualified pilots. The other is dealing with inadequate record keeping that prevents airlines from effectively evaluating performance. The FAA and NTSB have disagreed about citing pilots with repeated histories of failed flight checks, such as the captain of Colgan Air Flight 3407.
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The NTSB's proposal is to identify pilots with remedial problems and provide them with remedial training.

Hopefully the Airline Safety and Pilot Training Improvement Act, introduced by Congressman Jerry Costello in 2009, will do just that—improve safety. Costello told me: “I'm a strong believer in holding the FAA's feet to the fire. We need pressure and transparency.”

Unseen Dangers: Bogus Airplane Parts

For several years now, FAA inspectors and airline mechanics have been telling me about black-market parts making their way onto U.S.-registered commercial aircraft. Even determining the scope of the problem is difficult, since there are fewer FAA inspectors and airline mechanics present when heavy maintenance work is performed. A former Northwest mechanic says it was common for aircraft returning from service overseas to be outfitted with defective parts, and recalls a supervisor's warning: “We've had a rash of bad parts coming out of stock.” The mechanic adds, “Forget it—by the time you find out about it, it's too late.”

Chris Moore of the Teamsters Aviation Mechanics Coalition sums it up: “Here's the credible threat. The airlines in-country [in the United States] do a really good job of controlling their inventory. But in a Third World country, who's watching? Are you going to wait for a part to be shipped in? And who's overseeing it?” I also received an anonymous communication indicating that incidents with failed parts are increasing tenfold, with both new and refurbished components. John Goglia says, “For a while the FAA put a lot of manpower on this. Now it's creeping back in.”

Another mechanic for a major carrier told me of a related but equally disturbing problem: “We do see improperly assembled parts from outside repair facilities. We never saw that in the past. We've never seen it as bad as it is now. We have more ‘bad from stock' parts than we've ever had.” He explained how stocked parts are often rebuilt parts, and these days such work is done by outsourced shops: “Reverse actuators are rebuilt stock. To replace one we may have to go through our entire stock to find one that has been rebuilt properly. If it's not rebuilt properly, it can lead to smoke in the cabin.” And that, of course, can lead to a catastrophe. And all roads lead back to the FAA.

The FAA: Doing Right by Its Customers

The Federal Aviation Act of 1958—which created the Federal Aviation Agency, the predecessor organization of the current Federal Aviation Administration—elevates safety in its first declaration: “The assignment and maintenance of safety as the highest priority in air commerce.” But despite the gravity of this credo, whistle-blower Gabe Bruno declares, “It's no longer relevant to the FAA.”

That's a strong charge, and quite frankly I was skeptical when I first began speaking to former FAA employees and other aviation professionals who render such harsh assessments. Has their anger clouded their vision about the government agency that oversaw nearly twenty-nine thousand commercial flights per day in 2010 without a single fatality? Yet eventually I developed tremendous respect for Bruno and the other whistle-blowers who have taken tremendous personal risks to expose what's wrong with the FAA. And I came to believe their charges.

There's no denying the FAA is one of the broadest targets in the federal government. It is assailed from all sides—Congress, the industry, the media, consumers. And the criticisms usually take several forms:

• FAA is beholden to the airlines

• FAA is slow-moving and excessively bureaucratic

• FAA is a schizophrenic collection of fiefdoms

Opposing Regulation Ad Hominem

It's a given that nearly all corporations will instinctively oppose, knee-jerk fashion,
any
form of regulation, regardless of the benefit to consumers, the national welfare, or the health of the planet. David Bollier, Ralph Nader's biographer, detailed how the auto industry responded to safety legislation: “Speaking for many of his Detroit colleagues, Henry Ford II complained that the new auto safety standards were ‘unreasonable, arbitrary, and technically unfeasible . . . if we can't meet them when they are published we'll have to close down.' But in 1977, an older and wiser Henry Ford conceded on
Meet the Press
, ‘We wouldn't have the kinds of safety built into automobiles that we have had unless there had been a federal law.' ”

In the war for strengthening airline safety standards, many experts contend the airlines are winning—hands down. In 2008, James P. Hoffa stated that United Airlines “does maintenance in Beijing with 2,200 mechanics, and only five of them are FAA-certified. That, to me, is a threat.” I asked Hoffa about FAA oversight, and he said, “Big industry does not want food inspectors, mine inspectors, bridge inspectors. Big business does not want to be regulated.” As Bill Voss of Flight Safety Foundation says, “The Air Transport Association [now Airlines for America] needs to outgrow the mentality that regulations equal bad.”

Eighteen years ago Nader cowrote
Collision Course: The Truth About Airline Safety
, which asserted that with airline safety “the level of risk appears to be growing.” In 2011 I asked Nader about his 1994 book and he responded, “It's the same thing now. Nothing has changed. It doesn't matter if it's a Republican or Democratic administration. They're constantly behind the eight ball and they're constantly allowing the airlines to self-regulate.” He added, “It's a charmed life. It's amazing there haven't been more crashes.”

Nader argues that the FAA has devolved into “basically a bureaucratic secretariat.” But his view of the agency's safety oversight is particularly stinging: “They're lucky. In that when something goes wrong there's instant accountability. It's called the pilot.” He articulates a view that many aviation professionals dare speak of only in whispers: “pilot error” covers any manner of sins in the wake of serious accidents, particularly when cockpit crews don't survive.

As for maintenance outsourcing, the key issue is FAA oversight. It's a long-standing problem, dating back to the agency's earliest days, when its “dual mandate” called for both regulation and promotion of the airline industry. Eventually Congress eliminated the
promotion
part in 1996, but critics say the mind-set remains the same.

Consider the watershed moment in 2003, when FAA administrator Marion Blakey, an appointee of President George W. Bush, introduced the FAA's “Customer Service Initiative.” In a speech before industry players that February, Blakey stated: “And, we want to know from our customers if we're not being consistent. We're going to let them know that they have the right to ask for review on any inspector's decision on any call that's made in the certification process.” Not lost on anyone—least of all frontline FAA inspectors—was the odd use of the word
customer
to describe the corporations a government regulatory agency was charged with overseeing.

It's a topic that came up more than a dozen times when I spoke to enraged FAA employees. As one put it: “Our customers are the American people, not the airlines.” It's duly noted that shortly after President Obama took office, the FAA Mission Statement was altered and “customers” became “stakeholders.” And once Randy Babbitt became administrator, the FAA issued a public pronouncement that the definition of CSI had changed, from Customer Service Initiative to Consistency and Standardization Initiative. But critics roll their eyes at the semantics and instead note that the endemic problems stem from the FAA's culture, not its written mandates.

Sometimes a headline can capture it all, as in this gem from the
Washington Post
in 2002: “Improper Use of Tape to Fix Wings May Lead to FAA Fine for United.” The keeper in that phrase, of course, is
may
. At issue were three Boeing 727s with holes in their ground spoiler panels—critical control surfaces on the wings—that United elected to repair with what is widely known in the business as “speed tape.” Since the three planes were improperly flown on a total of 193 flights, the total fine levied by the FAA should have been $2,123,000, but the initial penalty was immediately knocked down by 62 percent. The
Post
quoted a letter from the FAA: “Having considered all the circumstances in this case, we would be willing to accept an offer in compromise in the amount of $805,000 in full settlement of this matter.” Brantley estimates such final judgments are usually reduced to about 10 percent of the total: “They kind of abuse the concept of it not being punitive.”

Karen Eckert, who maintains that the Colgan Air crash that killed her sister and forty-nine others was not an accident at all, since the contributing factors were both “controllable and predictable,” says, “It's profit first, safety second.” She says flying is “a horror show,” because the FAA has gotten too cozy with the airlines it oversees. Although she asserts this is an understandable manifestation of human nature, she suggests that teams of inspectors rotate to avoid such issues.

The coziness charge is nothing new. As one FAA inspector told me, “A lot of these guys came from the airlines and they still think like they're airline guys. It's not that they'll cover up everything. But they are gonna soft-sell certain things.”

However, the NTSB's Tom Haueter rejects the coziness theory: “It goes back to laziness. It's more about not doing the job. To me, it's not cozy, it's just lazy.” So is the FAA divorced from reality? “You need boots on the ground,” says Haueter. “The FAA philosophy is ‘We're working with an honest man.' I think they should not trust anyone. There are competitive pressures in this industry.” He says this FAA mind-set even extends to treatment of aircraft manufacturers: “The 787 is essentially being certified by Boeing. Where's the FAA oversight?”

Critics also claim that the FAA's self-disclosure programs allow airlines to have it both ways: address apparent concerns yet avoid any penalties. Brantley says, “The idea of self-reporting is you get immunity. If you think you're going to get caught anyway, it's a huge way to protect yourself. That's human nature.”

The FAA has earned a nickname that is well-known throughout aviation: the Tombstone Agency, meaning the FAA responds only
after
a fatal accident, not before. I brought it into the open with Randy Babbitt himself prior to his abrupt resignation, and asked if he thought it was fair. He responded: “You're right. There has been the charge that it's a tombstone agency. What we have done is increase voluntary reporting, so people can tell us. And I think it's taken hold a little bit.” He also pointed out that “when I came here I didn't appreciate how complex the FAA is. I thought I knew a fair amount and I didn't.”

I asked Secretary LaHood if he worries about his workforce getting too close to the industries they oversee, and he responded: “Not at all. Not at all. We have people that have worked here for years and they're very professional people. They don't get too close to the industry. As a matter of fact, they really go out of their way to make sure they're doing things for the right reason, for the people who are riding these different forms of transportation.”

Controlling the Fiefdoms

One of the toughest questions is whether any FAA administrator can oversee such a large, far-flung organization. In Babbitt's view, “You need to get on a bully pulpit. The only way to improve is better collection and analysis of the data. So you can identify risk everywhere you see it.”

Voss says the system is designed so the FAA administrator does not have “a whole lot” of effect on the organization's culture. He explains: “With all these huge stinking problems, there's no one who can sit in that seat and steer it. And Congress really enjoys that it's not succeeding. It's cynical, but there's no investment in changing. The FAA is the donkey you stick the tail on. It's an agency that is designed to take blame and risk.” He adds, “You do have a culture that is extremely change-resistant.”

Others speak about the lack of uniformity in interpreting and enforcing regulations from coast to coast. Industry veterans note that airlines frustrated by a given Flight Standards District Office will consult with another office. Even NTSB employees speak of “FSDO shopping,” whereby airlines that don't like mandates issued by a given FSDO simply find another FSDO that interprets the regulations differently.
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John Goglia, the only FAA-licensed airframe and powerplant mechanic to have served as a board member on the NTSB, is characteristically blunt: “It's not budget. That would help but it's not enough. It's culture and it's how to do the job.” I asked him for an update: “Nothing has changed. If anything, it's worse. The FAA can't do the job. . . . They're jerking each other off. The airlines love it when the FAA doesn't do its job.” Occasionally there are cases when this becomes apparent.