Here/s an interesting piece of information, as we approach the summer travel season:

A safety inspector for the Federal Aviation Administration at Chicago/s Midway Airport spotted a Southwest Airlines maintenance crew repairing a crack in the fuselage on one its jetliners.

Cracks in fuselages can cause a plane to crash. But that didn/t seem to matter to the FAA inspector/s boss, a bureaucrat who had already been told of the plane/s potentially fatal deficiency, because he allowed the suspect aircraft and others like it to continue flying, putting thousands of passengers at risk.

Wait a second. Isn/t the FAA supposed to help ensure that commercial airliners are safe and ready to fly? Isn/t it part of the FAA/s job to keep unsafe airplanes on the ground?

Yes, and yes. Then why did the FAA supervisor ignore information 7 from the airline company itself 7 that the planes had problems that should have kept them grounded, until the cracks were fixed?

Two FAA inspectors who testified before Congress last week said it/s because the FAA brass routinely treat airlines as BcustomersC rather than businesses to be strictly regulated. The whistleblowers also said there were threats 7 from inside the FAA hierarchy 7 that they/d lose their jobs if they ratted out this miserably handled regulatory lapse.

Sort of gives new meaning to the notion that taxpayers fly at their own risk.

April 7, 2008