Federal Aviation Administration Fails to Follow Up on Safety Violations Even When Carriers Self Report: Judicial Watch

Six years after Congress learned that the federal agency in charge of aviation safety ignores serious violations that endanger the public, the culture continues and the details are documented in a distressing government audit released this month.

It’s a truly unbelievable tale of incessant negligence—and corruption—on the part of a huge government agency, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), tasked with protecting millions of lives. In 2008 two FAA inspectors actually testified before Congress about how the agency let the safety violations of major U.S. airlines slide because supervisors had cozy relationships with the carriers.

The inspectors were threatened with dismissal when they pointed out the serious safety violations and became government whistleblowers. A year earlier a scathing congressional report detailed the serious safety mishaps that regularly occur on runways across the country, especially at the nation’s busiest airports. That investigation also exposed that the FAA has unscrupulously close ties to the industry it regulates.

At the time the head of the FAA, Marion Blakey, accepted a job as head of a powerful trade group that represents major firms regulated by the agency. As FAA chief, Blakey oversaw and awarded lucrative federal contracts to many of the firms that she went on to represent in the private sector.

A number of other scandals have rocked the FAA over the years and Judicial Watch has reported many of them. For instance, the agency certifies mechanics that can’t even speak English, has lost track of more than 100,000 airplanes and fails to properly secure flight schools. Remember how the 9/11 hijackers received their training at U.S. flight schools? It’s the FAA’s duty to prevent this sort of thing from ever happening yet even after the 2001 terrorist attacks it has failed miserably to do so. Read JW’s coverage of the FAA here.

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