FAA Safety Crackdown Strands Air Travelers

Tag: F clamp

Robert Sturgell, a federal agency chief unknown to most air travelers, helped strand 273,000 of them by cracking down on safety after being criticized for doing too little.

Sturgell, acting administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, and his agency enforced an order against American Airlines to ``look like they're tough'' amid congressional pressure, industry consultant Michael Boyd said in an interview yesterday.

The FAA is ``playing politics,'' said Boyd, president of Evergreen, Colorado-based Boyd Group. ``You've got hundreds of thousands of people inconvenienced, jobs being threatened, and it's got nothing to do with improving safety.''

The cancellation of more than 3,000 American flights over four days may further dim the prospects that Sturgell, 48, will win Senate approval for the job. The disruptions followed the FAA's finding that wiring in 300 of American's jets wasn't fastened according to a 2006 directive.

``They certainly shouldn't confirm Mr. Sturgell until he shows a regulatory-compliant attitude instead of being defensive and saying everything's hunky-dory,'' Representative James Oberstar, a Minnesota Democrat who chairs the House Transportation committee, said yesterday in an interview.

Criticism snowballed last month after a probe by Oberstar's panel found that an FAA supervisor let 46 Southwest Airlines Co. planes fly without inspections in 2007. The uproar was still under way when the FAA questioned the wiring bundles in American's Boeing Co. MD-80s.

`All About Safety'

``Under no circumstances'' was FAA's response to American an overreaction or political in nature, spokeswoman Lynn Tierney said. ``We found them out of compliance. It's a complex process, and it's all about safety.''

Sturgell, a former United Airlines pilot and U.S. Navy aviator, wasn't available for comment or an interview, Tierney said.

Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, called today for the formation of an FAA-industry task force to craft ideas for coping with flight cancellations.

``This week produced the most appalling disruption in U.S. air service in memory, and the FAA still does not have a plan to carry out inspections without causing mass cancellations,'' Schumer said in a statement.

The FAA hasn't been attacked so harshly on its oversight since the 1996 ValuJet crash that killed 110 people, said Peter Goelz, former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board. ``By-the-book'' enforcement is the agency's response to the current criticism, Goelz said.

System `Gamed'

``When they saw that the system could almost be gamed the way it was at Southwest, they decided to take a look at everybody under the umbrella of the zero tolerance,'' said Goelz, senior vice president at O'Neill & Associates in Washington. ``That's what Congress was calling for.''

The FAA is continuing the same special inspections that snagged American. Prompted by the Southwest failure, the audits have inspectors examining airlines' compliance with a 10 percent sample of FAA directives, and the checks will run until June 30.

American should have been allowed to fix the wiring faulted by the FAA without being forced to ground jets, said Robert Ditchey, a founder of America West Airlines. The FAA found no safety issues on the planes and was concerned that the bundles didn't meet standards including the orientation of certain clamps, according to AMR Corp.'s American.

``The FAA in my judgment overreacted,'' said Ditchey, who is now an independent consultant in Marina del Rey, California. ``The airline executives are afraid to stand up and say, `Hey, let's put a little common sense to this.'''

`Safest System'

Sturgell, speaking yesterday on PBS's ``NewsHour with Jim Lehrer,'' said ``there was a twofold breakdown in the system'' and that ``the FAA had a share in that, as well as Southwest.''

``We currently have the safest system in the world,'' he also said.

Sturgell's failure to admit the depth of FAA problems ``really starts making the agency look worse than it would,'' said Tom Brantley, the chief of the FAA's inspectors union, Professional Aviation Safety Specialists.

``I see no repentance at the top,'' Oberstar said. ``They're still in denial.''

Support From Bush

President George W. Bush ``has faith in Bobby Sturgell's ability to lead the FAA,'' White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said at a briefing today in Crawford, Texas. Bush will be briefed on ``the situation in the airline industry'' at a Cabinet meeting on April 14, Stanzel said.

Sturgell was tapped by Marion Blakey as a senior policy adviser when she chaired the NTSB. A U.S. Naval Academy graduate, he had an aviation background that included flying jets such as the F-18 for the Navy and Boeing 757s and 767s for UAL Corp.'s United, along with a law degree from the University of Virginia.

He followed Blakey to the FAA when she became the administrator and worked for four years as her deputy. A former instructor at Top Gun, the Navy Fighter Weapons School, Sturgell also previously worked as an attorney practicing aviation law.

A month after Blakey left the FAA, Bush nominated Sturgell for a five-year term to run the agency. His Senate confirmation stalled when New Jersey Democrats Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez put ``holds'' in place in February, citing questions about his leadership.

``Mr. Sturgell has to be held accountable, not promoted,'' Lautenberg said at yesterday's hearing.