Southwest Airlines safety probe mushrooms

Calvin Scovel III, the U.S. Department of Transportation inspector general, has found that Southwest Airlines has violated more federal safety regulations than previously reported, and that the Federal Aviation Administration has more enforcement problems than previously reported:

It also discovered that FAA managers in North Texas didn't act on questions — raised as early as September 2005 — about whether decisions to let Southwest off the hook violated the FAA's own guidance about how its amnesty programs should be used.

“FAA’s oversight in this case appears to allow, rather than mitigate, recurring safety violations,” the inspector general found.

That’s bad news for both Southwest and the FAA. How bad? This bad:

The inspector general's report cites weaknesses in that model, known as the Air Transportation Oversight System. The system apparently missed that inspectors hadn't checked Southwest’s program for complying with airworthiness directives since 1999, according to the ongoing review. That check was 90 months overdue, the review found.

By the time the airline told the FAA about the error for which it was penalized, in March 2007, “21 key inspections were overdue for at least five years,” according to the inspector general’s investigation.

Five to seven years overdue? As many as 21 key inspections overdue?

Southwest’s legendary founder, Herb Kelleher, is in the hot seat before the House Transportation Commission as I write. Herb’s legendary charm isn’t going to defuse this problem. Nor is Gary Kelly’s “don’t look here, move along” attitude that was brought out in the first days after FFA announced its original findings about Southwest failing to do fuselage inspections.

And, we don’t even know just what those inspections were supposed to be about. Electrical wiring? Pressurization? What?

And, the FAA? Its airline-centric self-reporting system may not need to be totally scrapped. But it does need a full overhaul, not just cosmetic changes.

It probably won’t like these words:

“It is misfeasance, malfeasance, and bordering on corruption,” said committee chairman Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn. “If this were a grand jury proceeding, I think it would result in an indictment.”

The FAA just announced some changes yesterday:

• Clarifying complex airworthiness directives to reduce confusion among airlines.
• Adding a system for inspectors to report complaints about how managers deal with safety questions, to protect against concerns that managers may grow cozy with airline employees.
• Instituting a new rule to prevent inspectors from immediately going to work for the airline they regulated.

Of course, inquiring minds will ask why inspectors were allowed to do this in the first place, and cite that as Example No. 1 of the need for more thorough-going FAA reform.

Example No. 2 would be the FAA’s former policy of being more hands-on and detective-minded in its inspections, something Clay Foushee (see bottom hyperlink) would like to resume.

But wait — that’s not Southwest’s only problem.

In addition to the $10.2 million fine the FAA levied on Southwest last month for not inspecting fuselages on its 737s, it could face another fine for not properly doing rudder inspections.

An FAA inspector from North Texas, Bobby Boutris, told lawmakers today that Southwest disclosed the error to an FAA manager last year but continued to operate the jets for 10 days. The airline should have grounded the 70 jets after self-disclosing the error, according to the inspector.

Boutris is the whistleblower who flagged the too-cozy relationship between FAA inspector Douglas Gawadzinski and Southwest that allowed the airline to keep flying jets even without the fuselage inspections.

That “coziness,” not just with Southwest, but between the FAA and all carriers, is what Clay Foushee wants to investigate. Foushee is the lead investigator for Oberstar.

As for Republican complaints that Oberstar hasn’t involved them in the investigation, or that issues at hand haven’t been shown to concern other airline-connected oversight agencies, show me a Republican worried about too little regulation and I’ll show you a Republican who’s been dead 20 years.