Category Archives: Aviation Safety

January 18, 2013 · 12:00 am

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner — Words I Wrote in 2009!


I’m going to interrupt this week’s series on the El Paso Museum of Art for some breaking news (and an “I told you so”).  Look for the third and final installment on EPMA on Monday.  Meanwhile:

Just before I retired from the FAA I submitted to my literary agent an exposé on the FAA under Administrator Marion C. Blakey.  Try as he might, my agent could not find a publisher for that book.  The responses from many was that The Tombstone Agency was just too terrifying to see print.

As I’m writing these words (Wednesday, January 16, 2013), the FAA has just announced the grounding of Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner.  This came within hours of a grounding of Dreamliners in Japan.  And once again, my words have been validated by events.  Below are excerpts of what I had to say back in 2009 on the subject of Administrator Blakey’s decision to allow aircraft manufacturers to practically self-certify their own aircraft as airworthy, with particular focus on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

What’s that, you say?  Self-certify?  Their own aircraft?  Isn’t that like that fox and hen house thing?  Surely you jest.

I never jest about aviation safety,  and don’t call me “Shirley.”  From the Seattle Times concerning an extension of a Blakey-era mandate that redefined airlines and aircraft manufacturers as “customers”:

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Tuesday extended the authority of Boeing Commercial Airplanes to self-certify its aircraft and aircraft technologies. Under the agency’s new safety oversight model, Boeing manufacturing and engineering employees will perform delegated tasks for the FAA, including signing certificates approving new designs.

That above excerpt was written in August of 2009, well after Marion Blakey had done her damage and moved on to greener pastures.  But her legacy continues to this day.

Now that you’ve digested the above (Getting the flick on Marion Blakey by now?  If not, see the links at the end of this article.), here’s what I said back in 2009:

Flight Standards Division —
Certifications of New Aircraft

Aircraft certifications—both completed and ongoing—are so tainted by bonus-hungry, customer-oriented managers as to be worthless as far as the flying public is concerned.  No one should feel safe stepping aboard any aircraft certified as airworthy during this time period, or even if any part of the certification process was conducted over the past seven years.

That includes the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner.  Indeed in February 2009, the FAA rewrote its own certification rules on fuel tank safety—rules written in the aftermath of the 1996 TWA 800 Boeing 747 explosion—because the Dreamliner could not meet those standards.  An unprecedented 190 FAA Engineers signed a letter deeming this move, “… an unjustified step backward in safety.”  And those FAA Engineers were backed up by other voices outside the Agency.  In the words of former NTSB Chairman Jim Hall, “It appears that management has overruled the judgment of the people [who] have day-to-day responsibility for the safety of aircraft.”

And:

Flight Standards Division —
Certifications of New Aircraft

Currently, specific Flight Standards District Offices (FSDO) have certification authority over aircraft manufacturers within their geographic area of jurisdiction.  Since, for instance, Boeing’s new aircraft will always be inspected by the FSDO serving Washington State, then the FAA inspectors and more importantly their managers will over time develop a relationship with Boeing and Boeing personnel.  This is only human nature.

But human nature and personal relationships have no business in ensuring the safety of the flying public.  As such, this practice simply has to stop.  The recent rewriting of fuel tank standards by FAA FSDO managers because Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner could not meet requirements is a classic example.  Until this symbiotic relationship is abolished, aircraft certifications will always be tainted because of how the system was gamed under the Blakey regime.

The only way to fix this is to rotate certifications of new aircraft among FSDO personnel assigned outside the geographical area.  Expensive?  Yes.  But then so is the crash of a Boeing 787 carrying 300+ passengers—not to mention the impact to business Boeing would incur should other countries no longer accept FAA certifications because of mistrust or scandal.

Managers need to have their mandates narrowed in scope.  They should oversee the performance and needs of their inspectors.  They should never be in a position to overturn the findings of their own inspectors; they have neither the expertise nor the direct knowledge of the inspector to justify such actions.

One final recommendation:  Under no circumstance should anyone in FSDO ever be allowed to refer to any aircraft manufacturer as a ‘customer.’  They are not.

Here’s those promised links for more on Marion Blakey:

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October 14, 2012 · 7:08 pm

Thank You, Joe Kittinger


While everyone else is taking the time to high-five Felix Baumgartner, I would like to take the contrarian road and thank Joe Kittinger, Jr. for today’s achievement.  It takes a very special man to help the new kid break all the records that man set fifty-two years ago — including highest parachute jump, longest free fall, and fastest velocity through the atmosphere by a human outside of the confines of an aircraft.

But that is the kind of man Joe Kittinger is.

I met Colonel Kittinger back in 1976.  I was a freshly minted air traffic controller just months out of technical training at my first real assignment.  That assignment was the control tower at RAF Lakenheath in East Anglia, about 70 miles northeast of London.  Colonel Kittinger was the Vice Wing Commander for Lakenheath’s 48th Tactical Fighter Wing toward the end of the Wing’s F-4D era just before the transition to the F-111F.  Colonel Kittinger made the trek up all those stairs to the tower cab just to visit with us after the Wing had completed flying for the day.  I was quite in awe of the man then.  I’m still in awe of him to this day.

So, while I may be congratulating Felix Baumgartner, it’s Joe Kittinger whom I choose to thank this day for making today’s achievement possible.

Way to go, Joe . . . er, Sir.

Felix Baumgartner and Joe Kittinger, Jr.

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September 19, 2012 · 12:00 am

Marion Blakey — The “Gift” Who Keeps on Giving


Aviation safety is a subject that is near and dear to my heart.  After all, I worked in that field (as an air traffic controller) for nearly thirty-five years.  It’s also a subject about which I’ve not blogged in some time.  In other words, I’m long overdue and something has turned up in the news in such a way as to allow me to say, “I told you so.”

Host is the automation system that has run our nation’s en route air traffic control systems for some forty years.  Host originally ran on the IBM 9020 mainframe, a computer system that dates back to 1964 and which was first installed in FAA en route facilities in the late 1960s.  That mainframe infrastructure has been upgraded twice — first to the IBM 3083 and later to the IBM 9672 — however the original Host system remains pretty much as it did upon implementation.

Yes.  You read that correctly.  The computer automation used in the en route environment in the United States dates back to a system that was developed almost fifty years ago.

Those who’ve followed this blog since its inception know that former FAA Administrator Marion Blakey (with the considerable help of Congressman John Mica of Florida’s 7th Congressional District) managed in just five short years to destroy twenty-five years of rebuilding efforts following in the wake of the illegal PATCO strike that occurred on August 3, 1981.  She managed to do this by in effect declaring war on her own controller workforce, freezing pay, illegally imposing an unnegotiated “contract,” and removing controllers and their input from all equipment modernization programs.  Considering that controllers (understandably) become eligible for retirement from this stressful, nerve-wracking, and very demanding job after only twenty-five years of service, and understanding that 1981 + 25 = 2006 . . . .  Well, you can imagine the results.  Many of the controllers who had reached retirement eligibility, and whose skills were desperately needed because of long-standing, nation-wide staffing shortages, headed for the door in record numbers.

But let’s go back for a moment to that bit about removing controllers and their input from modernization programs.  One of those programs was the En Route Automation Modernization (ERAM) program.  ERAM is the replacement for the antiquated Host system.  Removing controllers from the development of the equipment they must use to keep Airplane A from smacking into Airplane B at 37,000 feet and a closure speed in excess of 1,000 m.p.h. is a bit like designing the cockpit of a modern jetliner without any pilot input.  It’s as if engineers decided what customer-drivers want in a car without ever asking them.  It’s the equivalent of using a chimpanzee to test the ergonomics and comfort of a recliner intended for a football-watching, beer-swilling couch potato.  In other words, it’s stupid not only in practice, but even intuitively.  You just know it’s wrong without even thinking about it.

The inevitable, entirely predictable, totally expected result of such stupidity?  We found out last week in testimony before Congress.  ERAM is now four years behind schedule and $330 million over budget.

You can read all the gory details here, here, and here,

That $330 million cost overrun, by the way, is probably much more than what Ms. Blakey saved in freezing controller pay and enticing badly needed controllers to head for the golf course.  And it’s probably just a fraction of what Ms. Blakey’s war on controllers has cost the airlines, their passengers, and their passengers’ employers in delays, wasted fuel, lost time, and lost productivity.  That figure very likely runs into the tens of billions.

And those pesky controllers who Marion Blakey didn’t want anywhere near ERAM development?  They’ve been called in by the current Administrator and management team to try to salvage the mess that Ms. Blakey’s and Congressman Mica’s inept, vindictive, childish, stupid decisions wrought.  Unfortunately, controllers have been brought into the tail end of the process, and much of what was previously developed is in desperate need of redevelopment.  Meanwhile, current FAA management struggles to correct the horrendous mistakes of the past, rebuild the shattered relations with their controller workforce, and put back on track the derailed development of the technologies desperately needed to bring about modernization of this nation’s vital aviation infrastructure.

$333 million over budget and four years behind schedule.

Stupid is awfully hard to fix.

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