Airline Safety

* Your Feb. 11 editorial, “Airliner Pilots Aren’t Mechanics,” misses the point. Over a year ago the Federal Aviation Administration issued an airworthiness directive on the stabilizer of the MD-80 series airplanes and those with like tail assemblies. Each operator was then given an extended amount of time to comply. Why were operators given so much time to comply? The FAA is the most negligent party here, by not calling for immediate inspections (within one week) of the subject horizontal stabilizer, once the directive was called for.

I would bet a bundle that the average pilot was never informed of the airworthiness directive. As a former military pilot and retired airline pilot, I learned early on that there are two things that require that the airplane be on the ground quickly. One is fire and the other is a flight control problem. Both are the worst kind of emergency.

J.T. BERTRAND

Newport Beach