Special watchdog needed for airline safety

That’s the bottom line from the Department of Transportation’s inspector general.

The report says a quasi –independent watchdog within the Federal Aviation Administration would do more than the FAA’s own plan that would allow whistleblowers to directly report safety and inspections concerns to top officials.

The DOT inspector general’s findings were based on FAA’s slow reaction to whistleblowers talking about Southwest Airlines inspection blowoffs earlier this year.

For more on the Southwest inspections story, look up old blog posts with my Southwest tag.

The inspector general, in light of that, also recommends airplane inspectors be rotated between assignments, something the FAA has resisted.

I agree it’s a great idea, but good luck getting that done in a federal bureaucracy.