Safety Pushes Stall at Embattled FAA

[question everything]

The Wall Street Journal

Safety Pushes Stall at Embattled FAA
By ANDY PASZTOR and CHRISTOPHER CONKEY
June 26, 2008; Page A1

In July 1996, a fuel-tank explosion ripped apart TWA Flight 800, killing all 230 people aboard and sparking an urgent call from air-safety experts to find a fail-safe way to avoid a repeat tragedy. Twelve years later, they're still waiting.

Experts quickly and broadly agreed that like TWA 800's main fuel tank, those on thousands of other planes were at risk of exploding during normal operations if hot vapors became exposed to sparks or electrical short-circuits. Within months, federal investigators at the National Transportation Safety Board called for a sweeping retrofit of planes with "fundamentally flawed" fuel-tank designs. Independent safety experts called such changes essential. But the issue has bogged down for more than a decade inside the Federal Aviation Administration, the agency charged with regulating U.S. airlines. Manufacturers argued the proposed fix was unnecessary, while carriers called it marginal and too expensive. They repeatedly persuaded the FAA to delay, revise or scale back its plans. While the industry has reduced the danger of fuel-tank accidents, whatever "foolproof" plan the agency ultimately imposes will come too late to affect many jetliners now in service.

The fuel-tank issue is just one of the major initiatives to stall at the FAA, which finds itself in the spotlight following a series of safety lapses that came to light this spring. Even when change is clearly needed, critics say, the agency can be reluctant to challenge the industry's strongly held positions. The FAA has failed to make good on longstanding promises to quickly modernize air-traffic control systems and to institute effective technology to prevent aircraft from colliding on busy runways. In 1995, the FAA proposed sweeping changes to address chronic pilot fatigue. Airlines resisted, and 13 years later, the FAA is still waiting for carriers and pilot unions to reach compromises on crew scheduling. Failure to take an aggressive stand on some of the toughest safety issues could end up costing lives, critics say. Too often, they say, the agency is hobbled by bureaucratic inertia and a lack of political will, with FAA leaders more focused on cooperative efforts than on taking a hard line on a change-resistant industry.

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The FAA says early solutions to the fuel-tank problem weren't viable. On pilot fatigue, senior agency official Peggy Gilligan says the FAA is pushing carriers and their crews to revise schedules voluntarily: "If this could easily be solved by rulemaking, I assure you I would have done it by now." The agency says the most effective way to regulate the airline industry is to work in close partnership with it, rather than handing down directives. It's in carriers' own interest, after all, to avoid accidents. And fatal airline accidents in the U.S. are at historic lows: On a three-year average, U.S. airlines have suffered one fatal accident for roughly every 15 million departures. The last major crash of a big jetliner occurred nearly seven years ago.

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Still, the shortcomings of the FAA's partnership approach became apparent earlier this year. In March, the FAA proposed a record $10.2 million penalty against Southwest Airlines Co., after revelations that the carrier had missed mandatory maintenance work. Shortly afterward, FAA whistleblowers alleged that cozy ties between the airline and some local inspectors had allowed the carrier to keep these planes flying. A few weeks later the FAA also found maintenance lapses at AMR Corp.'s American Airlines, forcing the carrier to cancel thousands of flights over several days.

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