Who’s Watching Airline Safety?

April 4, 2008

The Facts

A couple of weeks ago Southwest Airlines was forced to ground several of their planes to perform government required safety inspections that had been overdue for as long as 30 months. Southwest was fined over $10 million for the violation. Since then several other airlines have voluntarily grounded hundreds of their planes to perform overdue inspections. Yesterday a congressional committee held hearings addressing this problem. The committee’s star players were two FAA inspectors, Douglas Peters and Bobby Boutris. However, one FAA manager, Terry Lambert, also testified. The latter said he was forced to destroy notes and conversations about the violations.

My View

Ok, to begin with, where are all those moaners & groaners who say our government should stay out of big businesses business and stop “regulating” them out of business? I have to admit I use to be one of those people; but now we are in a new era of business leadership.

This is not the first post I have written saying that unless businesses are forced to conduct themselves in a legal, ethical, & moral fashion they will not do so. The last time I said this was relative to our current crisis in the financials markets. However, while I still have a problem with our government sticking their noses in places they really have no business, it is extremely obvious that our current-day business leadership will not do the right thing unless they are forced to, and you can find no better example than this. We have the management of a governmental department, the FAA, getting into bed with businesses and helping them break government regulations. Proof of this lays in the fact that at least one of the FAA whistle blowers, Douglas Peters, was threatened with his job if he didn’t overlook these violations.

It’s no wonder that the FAA feels they can get away with something like this when our own President is allowing the same thing. Remember the two border patrol agents who were convicted and sent to prison for doing the job they were hired to do and Bush just ignored it? Hell, if the President of the United States condones this sort of thing, why should the FAA or any other government agency be concerned. It all comes down to one thing which can be stated in one word; greed. FAA staff personnel are being hired by the airlines, according to testimony.

Ready more here.