Time Magazine: Airline Chaos Avoidable

Robert Sturgell, the FAA's acting administrator, who is up for the permanent position, has had to answer charges, from whistleblowers and lawmakers, of excessive coziness with and lax oversight of the nation's commercial carriers

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Here's a little secret about inspecting an airplane: it only takes a few days to do it, and airlines routinely take planes out of service to check them without stranding hundreds of thousands of passengers or costing themselves tens of millions of dollars.

So why are both of those things happening in the current airlines' chaos? Did the friendly skies suddenly become too dangerous to fly? Not at all. The massive flight cancellations at American Airlines - about 1,200 flights, more than half of its daily schedule, affecting 273,000 passengers after the Federal Aviation Administration ordered the carrier to ground 300 planes for inspection - are the aviation equivalent of a traffic cop behind on his quota blanketing a street with tickets to avoid catching heat from his sergeant. Woe unto thee unlucky enough to double park.


The cop in this scenario is the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The agency responsible for policing the safety of the nation's airlines has been under intense pressure over the last few weeks, ever since an investigation by the House Transportation Committee revealed in March that an FAA supervisor allowed Southwest Airlines to fly 46 planes that had missed inspections. Congress has been holding hearings on aviation safety, during which Robert Sturgell, the FAA's acting administrator, who is up for the permanent position, has had to answer charges, from whistleblowers and lawmakers, of excessive coziness with and lax oversight of the nation's commercial carriers.

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