“No one at all was well served by what happened last week, and we want to prevent that to the extent possible,” Ms. Peters said. “But … based on what we knew and the data we saw, it was not an overreaction.”
That said, Peters is either more guileful than any other member of the Bush cabinet, or else she’s not really part of the team, because it sounds like she doesn’t believe “deregulation is always better.” She wants to fix some things. Specifically, in the press conference, she announced several steps to improve Federal Aviation Administration oversight:
• A program to track safety inspections and alert officials when they are overdue.
• A national team of safety inspectors to focus on the biggest safety risks.
• The appointment of five outside experts to evaluate the FAA’s safety oversight program, which has come under heavy criticism from Rep. James Oberstar, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
If she is serious about that, and the five aren’t simply a bunch of hacks, or this isn’t just a stalling process, I’m all for it. I don’t want to junk the current incentive for airlines to voluntarily report problems to the FAA, but I want to get rid of some of incestuous relationships, such as what FAA managers had with Southwest.
Maybe we need to stipulate you can’t go from the FAA to the airline you last inspected, if you want to work in the private sector.
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