No Supersonic Pace for FAA

It’s become something of a sorry refrain. The federal government’s National Transportation Safety Board, charged with investigating accidents in the air (and on the ground), does a thorough job and urges immediate steps to safeguard the flying public. The Federal Aviation Administration takes it all in and marches to its own by-the-book beat, which is anything but urgent.

Case in point: the NTSB’s dramatic call Tuesday for the inspection “as soon as possible” of some 650 aircraft that might have the same suspect wiring that possibly contributed to the crash of TWA Flight 800 in 1996, killing all 230 aboard. The board also called for the replacement of specific rough-edged aircraft parts that could damage wiring. The inspection of such a large number of aircraft in itself will be a major task and will involve untold expense.

Here’s the FAA response, also on Tuesday. It will issue, among other things, “a notice of proposed rulemaking . . . later this spring” on a service bulletin that will require wiring inspections. It will issue an “airworthiness directive . . . this summer” with instructions on how to replace a rough-edged aircraft part with a part that has a smooth surface.

This is just one more instance in which the FAA could have and should have joined the safety board in making sure inspections and changes took place as quickly as possible.

No one is saying that a midair explosion like that which occurred on TWA Flight 800 is imminent or even probable. But the board says its investigation points to unsafe conditions that may exist. It’s in cases like this that the flying public prefers action to rote bureaucratic procedure.