The Frankfurter School

Each day this week, headlines repeatedly announce hundreds of flights canceled by major carriers and focus on the frustration of stranded travelers. CNN devotes itself to coverage of how difficult this is for the airline industry and scare-and-reassure information for the weary traveler. It’s the kind of story that sells papers, and every outlet in the country is reporting on it. Yet almost none are reporting the real story: that the problem stems from high-level corruption at the FAA and that the thousands (not hundreds) of cancellations that airlines are forced to endure during Spring Break are a direct result of the public testimony of whistleblowers in Congressional hearings.

Over the past few years, following the same pattern as every other federal regulatory agency, FAA regulators have become increasingly close to the companies they are responsible for, in many cases leaving one to go to work for the other, and vice-versa. The expensive and public embarrassment being faced by American Airlines right now is a voluntary solution undertaken by the world’s largest airline, which also has the largest membership of maintenance union workers and the most regulatory structure in place. Northwest Airlines is the airline at the other end of the spectrum, having slashed its maintenance staff and outsourced most of its work, and is not subject to even the minimum oversight that is prompting the recalls from American. This problem is not even close to over, as the entire nation’s aircraft fleet will now come under greater scrutiny from these revelations. Luckily, the real possibility of “hull loss,” the industry term for losing an airplane in an accident, has such a negative financial impact on an airline that there is great incentive to address these problems now that they have come to light. However, the underlying problems of the hollowed-out of regulatory system are nearly as important as the crossed wires to avoid catastrophe. Whether that will be addressed is an open question.

UPDATED:
The press is catching up with the story. The New York Times published a story this weekend gently suggesting that there was a sudden shift at the FAA that was quite possibly connected to whistleblower testimony in Congress.  And McClatchy has devoted itself to investigating this story, reporting in one article the congressional criticism of the FAA that prompted the hearings in which the whistleblowers’ testimony came to light, and another article tells of more whistleblowers coming forward with allegations of a “culture of complacency” within the agency, and gives some historical context for the regulatory issues.

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