Current Event 8

Whistle-Blowers: Ties Between FAA, Southwest Too Close

Federal aviation safety inspectors testified before Congress today that lax oversight by their bosses and other regulators allowed Southwest Airlines last year to fly thousands of passengers on potentially unsafe jets in need of key safety checks.
The inspectors, who sought protection as whistle-blowers from Congress and federal investigators, said managers did little to correct problems with how Southwest and their own colleagues were handling the carrier's safety lapses.
"I am here today because I am concerned for the safety of the flying public," said Charalambe Boutris, an inspector who is credited with exposing the problems.
Boutris and the other inspectors testified before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which has been investigating Southwest's maintenance practices and allegations of weak FAA oversight of the carrier and potentially others. Since the investigation became public last month, four major airlines have been forced to ground hundreds of planes to conduct needed safety checks or make repairs to comply with safety directives.
Rep. James L. Oberstar (D-Minn.), chairman of the committee, said the issues raised by the inspectors represented the "most egregious lapse of safety I have seen in the last 23 years."
"The FAA would have us believe that what took place was an isolated incident," he said. "But the testimony we have heard substantiates that this is not an isolated aberration attributable to a rogue individual. But rather, this was a systematic breakdown of the safety oversight role of the FAA."
Federal Aviation Administration officials have said the Southwest problems were isolated. They have said a recent audit revealed that airlines were complying with 99 percent of safety directions. Four carriers are under investigation for not complying with directives, the FAA has said.
Southwest officials have apologized for any potential safety lapses, but said that even though the airline was late in making inspections of planes, the public was never endangered.
The safety lapses are coming to light during the safest stretch in U.S. commercial aviation history. And even the sharpest critics of the FAA's oversight, including Oberstar, have said that air travelers should not be afraid to get on passenger planes.
During today's hearing, the inspectors said many of the problems stemmed from a close relationship that had developed between a supervisor in their Dallas office, Douglas Gawadzinski, and a former FAA employee who had taken a job at Southwest. They believed that Gawadzinski was too lenient on the carrier because of that relationship.
The inspectors said Gawadzinski allowed Southwest to continue flying planes in March 2007 even after inspectors and airline personnel discovered that jets were well-beyond deadlines to complete checks for cracks in their skins.
Such checks were enacted after a large chunk of fuselage ripped away from a Boeing 737 in 1988. Undiscovered cracks on the Southwest planes "could have resulted in a sudden fracture . . . which would have had a catastrophic impact during flight," Boutris said.
The next month, the airline kept flying planes in need of critical rudder inspections even after it alerted the FAA to lapsed checks.
When the inspectors approached supervisors about the problems, they said they encountered roadblocks. Gawadzinski underplayed the potential safety dangers, and they received no help from high-ranking officials despite repeated attempts to air their concerns. Three were removed, at least temporarily, from their posts, and Boutris received a death threat that congressional staffers said was being investigated by the FBI. "No supervisor can do what my supervisor was doing without the support from fellow inspectors . . . and I believe with the support of people in Washington," Boutris testified.
Inspector Douglas E. Peters said his experiences proved that there "was evidence that FAA management personnel with the responsibility and the authority to take appropriate action proved themselves unworthy of being custodians of the public trust."
"The proof was provided by their blatant disregard and failure to respond to significant safety events that were constantly reported, Peters testified.
They also raised concerns about the broader issue of the FAA's partnership with carriers and its reliance on them to disclose safety problems. Such disclosures often do not result in punishment if the airlines are upfront about the issues.
The programs generally have been credited with encouraging carriers, pilots, maintenance crews and others to report mistakes and quickly correct them. However, many outside safety experts, members of Congress and federal investigators believe the FAA should tougher on the carriers.
In prepared testimony, the Department of Transportation's Inspector General Calvin L. Scovel III said the FAA developed "an overly collaborative relationship with" Southwest, which helped lead to last year's lapses.
Scovel added that he believes the FAA "relies too heavily on self-disclosures and promotes a pattern of excessive leniency at the expense of effective oversight and appropriate enforcement."
Last month -- a year after the original problems at Southwest -- the FAA fined the carrier $10.2 million for the missed safety checks and for continuing to fly the planes even after the airline learned that it had missed the inspections.