Ramblings From the Ragged Crumbling Edge Of The Reality-Based Community

Thursday, April 10, 2008

So You Thought You Were Going To Fly Somewhere? 

...some days you just have to wonder just exactly who is actually being messed with. On the surface, it would appear that the FAA, having been caught with its pants around its ankles over Southwest Airlines' problem with missed aircraft inspections, has begun a righteous round of getting its house in order by going over inspection records of airlines. This week's sudden spasm of regulatory zeal resulted in the odds of getting to some intended destination by jumping off of a freeway overpass onto the trailer of some random passing semi-truck just about as good as getting there by purchasing a ticket for an American Airlines flight. The now stern-faced defenders of the flying public's safety promises that there will be more review of safety compliance records to come, and the blizzard of flight cancellations most likely isn't over yet...

And, yeah, I've got a dog in this fight, because at the end of next month I have a 19-year-old who has flown exactly once (with her mother) who needs to get on a couple of different air carriers to fly back home for the summer from the college on the other side of the nation (which is the place she flew on her first ever flight). Yes, I know she's a big girl now and its time to let her spread her wings to fly and all that crap, but I'm still a dad and this isn't the sort of circumstance that helps me drop right off to sleep at night. Chalk it up to my hard-earned lack of faith in the willingness of the air travel industry to actually take care of its customers when the deal goes wrong...

The curious thing is that all this sudden muscular concern over airline safety is something of a departure from the sort of behavior with which we have grown accustom by the Bush Administration. The natural question to ask is "What are the Bushies up to?", and it's a fair one because these shysters don't have anything that even looks like a track record of being concerned about consumers when it comes to regulation, even on issues of health and safety. All we do know is that while the business world clutches its pearls over the financial beating that the airline industry will suffer if there is a rolling series of massive aircraft groundings for safety inspections, the actual victims are going to be the people who are trusting there will actually be an airplane sitting at the gate when they show up to catch their flights. It almost seems that the Bushco version of the FAA, having been caught out actively interferring with the efforts of career employees to make the airlines do what they are supposed to do, has decided to create a crisis that create blow-back on the Democratic Congress for being so pushy for insisting on oversight on the inspection process with its whistleblower hearings...

You will hear all the staunchly pro-safety 'right' words coming out of Gee Dub's FAA minions, but the very best that can be said for all of this wild crazyness that they have finally got around to flinging at the traveling public is that they are trying to brush out their tracks just in case a plane goes down for reasons that turns out to be the result of inspection failures. Lord knows you just have to hope they aren't looking for some 'atta-boy' for their efforts; it was their lack of effort that led to this problem to begin with...
Posted by: Jack K. / 6:30 PM

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