Air safety: thanks to whistle-blowers, the system works

Next time you get on a commercial airplane in this country, say a brief prayer of thanks for guys like Charalambe Boutris and Douglas Peters. Boutris is a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) inspector at Southwest Airlines, and Peters used to be. They ripped open the blinds and let the sun shine in on what James Oberstar, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman, calls a “systematic breakdown” of FAA oversight at the airline that allowed Boeing 737s to fly even as government-mandated airworthiness directives said they shouldn’t.

The proximate issue was failure to check for cracks in the aircrafts’ fuselages, or keep them on the ground until those checks were made. The real failure appears to be one of priorities. The question is to whom does FAA management owe its allegiance? To the airlines they’re there to oversee, or the young mother and child back in Seat 21E? That’s the irreducible issue.

Even FAA appears to concede that some of its management got their priorities wrong. Nicholas Sabatini, the agency’s safety chief, told the committee that the Southwest case was “egregious” and that FAA failed to carry out its responsibilities.

With the media attention to the issue, some flyers are antsy about booking an airline seat – especially in light of groundings in recent days of aircraft from American, Delta, and, most recently, United. Indeed, a survey of travel industry professionals by the Business Travel Association finds that four-fifths of respondents are “very concerned” about FAA oversight of airline maintenance, and 39.6 percent of these frequent-flyer heavyweights say they’re less willing to fly because of recent maintenance revelations.

It’s a message the airlines hear loud and clear. In the wake of the Congressional hearings, Southwest decided not to outsource some of its maintenance to a firm in El Salvador.

The Air Transport Association (ATA), an airline trade group, accedes that the hearings: “sent a very clear message – as good as the airline industry’s safety record is (there’s not been a fatal commercial crash in this country since 2006), the safety oversight system that supports it can always be improved.”

ATA argues that regulators, however, should “avoid a rush to change the vast majority of the processes that have enabled us to provide the world’s safest mode of transportation”.

Indeed. While FAA oversight demonstrably broke down this time, the genius of our form of government — and the conscientiousness of a couple of FAA inspectors on the hangar floor — saw to it that the overall system worked, worked to shine white hot light on the recesses of a regulator/regulatee relationship that can be too cozy.

I’ve written about airline safety for a long time, have seen first hand what happens when the system really breaks down. Two of my family members have died in commercial airline crashes. I can viscerally relate to that lady cradling her child back in 21E.

As Jim Oberstar’s hearing revealed, thank God, so do everyday heroes like Charalambe Boutris and Douglas Peters.

The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not reflect the views of Cheap Flight News.

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