The Wall Street Journal
By Andy Pasztor
Aug. 7, 2014 8:25 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON—U.S. pilot union leaders have alleged that before the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, federal agencies didn't promptly assess or publicize the potential threats antiaircraft missiles posed to airliners flying over eastern Ukraine.
Lee Moak, president of the largest North American pilot union, on Wednesday leveled his strongest criticism against American intelligence officials and aviation regulators over the issue.
In a speech and separate interview, the Air Line Pilots Association chief asserted that U.S. and other government didn't properly fulfill their "duty to warn" airlines about the possible hazards of flying over areas where fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists raged on the ground.
Malaysia 17 was "a watershed event" and was "uniquely different" from other airliners brought down by hostile fire in earlier decades, Mr. Moak said in the interview. As a result of what occurred over Ukraine last month, he said "the federal government has to come up with a dynamic process" to alert airlines about such future threats.
"When there is intelligence that is available" about flying over hostile airspace, he added, "there has to be a timely process to notify" the industry, and then carriers have to more effectively share information between themselves.
In response to the presumed shootdown, according to Mr. Moak, labor and airlines representatives have joined forces to prod the Federal Aviation Administration and U.S. intelligence community to streamline and accelerate the threat-assessment system.
Industry and labor officials have said the FAA had intelligence about threats from Ukrainian rebels at least a day before Malaysia Flight 17 went down.
An FAA spokeswoman reiterated that before the Flight 17 incident, "there was no intelligence to indicate separatists intended to target civil aircraft" over Ukraine. Her written statement reiterated that "our first indication that they had an operable" SA-11 antiaircraft system came "the day of the crash."
The spokeswoman also reiterated that "agency officials work with counterparts in the U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement communities on a continuous basis to monitor and analyze intelligence," and the agency provides guidance or imposes restrictions when it "receives specific and credible actionable intelligence of a threat."
Questions about what the FAA knew before the downing—and steps it subsequently took to impose temporary restrictions on U.S. airlines flying into Israel—are expected to be highlighted Thursday at ALPA's biggest annual safety conference here. Claudio Manno, the FAA's assistant administrator for security and hazardous materials, is scheduled to make a presentation.
Ukraine barred commercial aircraft from flying below 32,000 feet over the region before the downing of Flight MH17 as combat continued on the ground and Ukrainian rebels previously shot down two military aircraft. The Ukrainian government did that without giving the U.S. or the Internal Civil Aviation Organization, an arm of the United Nations, a detailed explanation, according to U.S. and air-safety officials. Countries are responsible for controlling and monitoring threats to their own airspace, and they traditionally haven't been obligated to provide such explanations to ICAO or other governments.
The FAA barred U.S. commercial flights over Ukraine after Flight 17 went down and the ban remains in effect.
The downing of the Malaysian Boeing 777, which further shocked the global aviation community when investigators were barred from the site for some two weeks, has prompted widespread debate about the broader role of both ICAO and the U.S. in analyzing airspace threats stemming from hostilities on the ground.
ICAO has set up a government-industry task force to study the matter and make recommendations in several months to its policy-making body.
If the U.S. and industry wait for ICAO to dramatically change its procedures, "we will end up waiting forever," Mr. Moak said in the interview.
But in the U.S., he said, government officials are "going through a process" to identify ways to improve and speed up the warning system. "I hope that they're going to announce something in the near future," Mr. Moak said without providing specifics. ALPA has been involved in some of those discussions
"ICAO does need to have a role," according to Mr. Moak, but "it would be better if the U.S. government is a leader here and they get out in front." Then he said "we don't have any confusion."
-- Source: http://online.wsj.com
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