Aviation Conspiracy: More Airline Bankruptcies Coming!!!

Aviation Conspiracy Newsletter
#483........................................................................June
1, 2008 Past newsletters can be accessed at:
http://pages.prodigy.net/rockaway/ACNewsmenu.htm If you want to get the
newsletter sent to you every week, sign up to AviationWatch. Bill Mulcahy
rockaway@prodigy.net

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Quote of the Week: "I kept bringing up these problems, and they kept saying
we didn't have any problems," comment in a story this week from FAA air
traffic controller who filed a whistle-blower complaint because his bosses
did not take his safety concerns seriously

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More Airline Bankruptcies Coming!!!

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As Bill Sees It (Editorial): It Couldn't Happen To Nicer People!!! News
stories this week tell of soaring (pardon the pun) bankruptcies in the
airline industry. While the case can be made that it is the
scum-of-the-earth FAA who is responsible for doing things like sending jumbo
jets over residential communities 24 hours a day, seven days a week, I think
the airlines share equal responsibility for these crimes. If you're feeling
sympathetic towards the airlines (I do care about the employees) just
remember how they pack people in their planes like sardines and then leave
them sitting on the runways for several hours. I would like to see them all
go under, but that will not a happen. What will happen will be that
financially weak airlines will be absorbed by larger airlines with deeper
pockets.

FAA Is Having Their Own Problems!!! While all this is going on the airlines
partner-in-crime, the FAA, is having their own trouble as congress has been
putting off reauthorization, possibly until after the November elections.
After November, we'll see the other part of the Aviation Cabal, the
politicians, make their deals to continue to protect their favored
communities and it will be aviation expansion business as usual. Now
however, sleazy politicians, like New Jersey's senator Lautenberg, will be
fighting for communities threatened by new flight routes in the northeast
U.S. Airspace Redesign scheme.

No Environmental Impact Study On New Stewart Airport Helicopter Service!!!
News stories this week tell of a new helicopter service to be started at New
York's Stewart Airport. Of course no mention was made of any Environmental
Impact Study (EIS) being done on noise and air pollution impacts on this
major change in airport use as required by law.

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More Whistleblowers Step Up To Complain About The FAA: Kim Farrington says
she was only doing her job as a Federal Aviation Administration inspector
when she raised concerns about problems involving an airline's training
program. But her bosses, who she thought were too cozy with the carrier,
punished her for her warnings, she said. Her workplace became unbearable,
and Farrington said she was essentially fired in 2004. Last month,
Farrington came forward as a whistle-blower, filing a complaint about her
treatment with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel after she read news
reports about how FAA inspectors blew the whistle last year on lax oversight
of Southwest Airlines. She was not alone. Like Farrington, other former and
current FAA employees have filed complaints about how the agency treated
them and responded to their safety concerns. The special counsel has
received complaints from at least six other FAA whistle-blowers in the weeks
since Congress held hearings into the Southwest debacle, according to some
of the whistle-blowers and sources familiar with the investigations. Those
complaints and several others received in the past year formed the basis of
a letter sent to top FAA officials several weeks ago, asking the agency to
retain a massive number of documents, e-mails and other records at its
offices across the country to aid the investigations.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/30/AR2008053002914.html?hpid=moreheadlines
Editor's Note: Picture on the left is a FAA air traffic controller, Mike
Cole, who whose warnings about plane safety were called "paranoia" by his
bosses.

Skepticism Surrounds FAA 'Customer' Initiative For Airlines!!! Over the past
two months, hundreds of thousands of airline passengers were stranded in
airports nationwide as more than 3,500 flights were canceled because
carriers failed to perform required maintenance. The mass groundings - more
extensive than any previous airline safety grounding in history - cost
airlines tens of millions of dollars and the goodwill of thousands of people
whose plans were disrupted. An investigation into maintenance at Southwest
Airlines has also resulted in a $10.2 million proposed fine. Critics in
Congress and leaders of the FAA's inspector force say blame for the
breakdown in airline maintenance rests at least in part on what they call
the agency's misguided "Customer Service Initiative" and the way it undercut
enforcement of critical safety rules. FAA officials say the customer program
was designed to make the agency more responsive to legitimate complaints
from airlines that the agency had enforced rules inconsistently. It was not
designed, officials say, to soften regulation or stifle inspectors. "These
are principles that I would think every taxpayer would want a government
agency to abide by," said FAA acting Administrator Robert Sturgell.
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/flights/2008-05-29-faa-customers_N.htm
Editor's Note: Why is Sturgell (pictured above right with President Moronic
Polluter) still in an executive position in the FAA?

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Important Aviation News
Stories This Week

More Step Up To Complain About FAA

Whistle-Blowers Say Agency Ignored Safety Concerns

By Del Quentin Wilber Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 31, 2008; Page D01

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/30/AR2008053002914.html?hpid=moreheadlines

Kim Farrington says she was only doing her job as a Federal Aviation
Administration inspector when she raised concerns about problems involving
an airline's training program. But her bosses, who she thought were too cozy
with the carrier, punished her for her warnings, she said.

Her workplace became unbearable, and Farrington said she was essentially
fired in 2004.

Last month, Farrington came forward as a whistle-blower, filing a complaint
about her treatment with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel after she read
news reports about how FAA inspectors blew the whistle last year on lax
oversight of Southwest Airlines. She was not alone. Like Farrington, other
former and current FAA employees have filed complaints about how the agency
treated them and responded to their safety concerns.

The special counsel has received complaints from at least six other FAA
whistle-blowers in the weeks since Congress held hearings into the Southwest
debacle, according to some of the whistle-blowers and sources familiar with
the investigations.

Those complaints and several others received in the past year formed the
basis of a letter sent to top FAA officials several weeks ago, asking the
agency to retain a massive number of documents, e-mails and other records at
its offices across the country to aid the investigations.

Congressional staff members have received hundreds of other tips from
whistle-blowers about the FAA, according to Jim Berard, a spokesman for the
House Transportation Committee, which held a high-profile hearing in early
April into the Southwest and FAA lapses. A few of those complaints have been
referred to the Transportation Department's inspector general. Others are
being examined by investigators on the Transportation Committee, Berard
said.

The complaints suggest that the FAA will continue to face tough questions in
coming months.

Investigators acknowledge that the cases may not be as clear-cut as those
raised by FAA inspectors who reported lapses in how the agency oversaw
Southwest Airlines. The FAA last year improperly allowed Southwest to keep
flying jets in need of key safety checks, a decision that top FAA officials
have acknowledged was a big mistake.

"Whistle-blower disclosures and retaliation can be very difficult to bring
home," said Jim Mitchell, a spokesman for the special counsel's office.
"It's vital that we get hold of evidence beyond what we are getting from the
whistle-blower."

Mitchell declined to comment on the cases the special counsel's office is
pursuing. However, sources familiar with the probes and interviews with FAA
employees reveal a wide range of complaints and allegations of potential
safety lapses and unfair treatment in recent years.

Peter Nesbitt, an air traffic controller at Memphis International Airport,
said he filed a whistle-blower complaint over the way he was treated after
he made repeated disclosures last year about safety problems tied to what he
thought was a dangerous approach pattern for planes. He sent letters
expressing his concerns to his congressman, the National Transportation
Safety Board (NTSB) and top FAA safety officials, he said.

Some of the issues were corrected, Nesbitt said. But the controller, who has
made disclosures of other alleged safety issues, said he soon found himself
under intense scrutiny at work and was punished for reasons he still does
not understand. He is no longer allowed to control air traffic, he said.

"At my facility, a culture of fear exists because of what they have done to
me," said Nesbitt, whose complaint was filed in October but helped form the
basis of the investigators' request to the FAA to retain records. "It has
made my life a wreck."

FAA spokeswoman Lynn Tierney said she could not address the individual
allegations by whistle-blowers that have not been made public, yet. But she
added that workplace retaliation is an "impediment to a safety culture."

"We strive to create a professional, mission critical atmosphere where
people work together and resolve issues," Tierney wrote in an e-mail, adding
that the allegations by whistle-blowers "are troubling."

Another FAA employee, Mike Cole, said he filed a whistle-blower complaint
because his bosses did not take his safety concerns seriously and then
punished him when he reported his worries over an FAA safety hot line.

Cole was worried, he said, about a procedure in which controllers in the
tower at an airport in Juneau, Alaska, cleared pilots to take off and then
closed their facility for the night. Cole worked in a flight service station
that issues weather briefings and files flight plans for pilots, and he was
concerned that planes might take off later than scheduled, and their pilots
would not know whether other aircraft were heading to the airport. Such an
error could result in a collision, he said.

"Juneau Air Traffic Control Tower is playing dodge ball" with the airlines,
Cole said.

Several times, Cole said, he stopped pilots from taking off because he
learned another plane was about to land. He reported the problems to his
bosses but did not get anywhere with it, he said. In December, he filed a
complaint with the FAA's safety hot line service.

Shortly after, his boss yelled at him, Cole said, and he was decertified for
alleged mental health reasons. In a report explaining his decision to
rescind Cole's medical clearance to work, his boss complained that the
flight service worker "has become paralyzed by overwhelming paranoia and
delusion in which he sees nothing but aviation disaster."

His doctors, however, found no evidence of serious mental disorders and
recommended that Cole return to duty. "From a psychiatric point of view, I
see no reason why Mr. Cole is not able to resume work," one doctor wrote in
a report submitted to the FAA in March.

"I kept bringing up these problems, and they kept saying we didn't have any
problems," said Cole, who went back to work the same month.

Farrington, a former FAA inspector in Orlando who oversaw cabin safety at
AirTran Airways, said she waited four years to make her allegations of
misconduct and retaliation because she thought no one would care.

The former inspector alleges that she raised issues with her bosses about
poor training of flight attendants at AirTran and problems related to
replica fuselages used to teach flight crews how to exit the back of a
Boeing 717 in an emergency. AirTran was using a mock-up of the tail section
of a DC-9, not a Boeing 717 replica, to teach flight attendants how to
deploy an emergency slide to exit the plane. The two planes are similar, but
the tail sections are slightly different. In 2003, the carrier had far more
717s than DC-9s, company records show, and the carrier was aggressively
moving to retire its remaining gas-guzzling DC-9s.

date: Wed, 4 Jun 2008 19:02:14 -0400 author: Bill Mulcahy