From the Washington Post:
Federal aviation safety inspectors told members of Congress yesterday that they repeatedly ran into roadblocks when trying to report oversight lapses that allowed Southwest Airlines last year to operate passenger flights with planes in need of key safety checks. Those problems demonstrate weakness in the Federal Aviation Administration's efforts to ensure safety at all airlines, the inspector general for the Transportation Department told lawmakers. Since it was disclosed last month that Southwest kept flying dozens of planes in need of inspections for fuselage cracks, four carriers have grounded more than 500 planes and canceled hundreds of flights to conduct inspections or make required repairs. The FAA's reliance on airlines to voluntarily disclose safety issues "promotes a pattern of excessive leniency at the expense of effective oversight and appropriate enforcement," Inspector General Calvin L. Scovel told the House Transportation Committee yesterday. Several FAA inspectors described their struggles in trying to get their superiors and other inspectors to take tougher stances with Southwest. Instead of taking prompt regulatory action, their bosses tried to find ways to help Southwest avoid sanctions, they testified. When they attempted to report those issues to officials higher up the FAA chain of command, they were harassed, threatened and even punished, they said. They also said the FAA had gone from aggressively regulating airlines to treating them like customers or clients. Lawmakers and outside safety experts have expressed similar worries about regulators' coziness with the carriers. One inspector, Douglas E. Peters, said his experience 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." Rep. James L. Oberstar (D-Minn.), chairman of the committee, said 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," Oberstar said. "But . . . this was a systematic breakdown of the safety oversight role of the FAA."