Asleep at the Stick
It took more than 150 fatalities in the United States and abroad before Congress finally enacted new automobile safety laws and penalties designed to save lives on America’s roads. Now, the question is whether it will take an airline disaster clearly laid to pilot fatigue to similarly inspire legislators to take on one of the aviation industry’s longest-standing problems.
Note that the catalyst for laws passed this month that set new auto safety standards was the massive recall of Firestone tires linked to dozens of fatal accidents. The congressional push was also prompted by the allegation that company executives knew about potential tire problems early on. Moreover, the federal regulatory agency charged with protecting the public in this case--the National Highway Transportation Safety Board--was seen as having fallen down on the job.
Pilot fatigue is obviously not a product liability issue, but it does represent an enormous public safety problem. And, again, another important federal agency has failed to do its job. This time, it’s the Federal Aviation Administration, which has made a mockery of Administrator Jane Garvey’s promise in June 1999 to rigorously enforce FAA standards for ensuring that exhausted pilots are not flying passengers across the nation’s skies.
The shocking admission that there was a total breakdown in oversight emerged this month in a Times story by staff writer Eric Malnic. Top FAA administrators admitted that they had allowed American Airlines to temporarily maintain the worst record of compliance on pilot fatigue without exerting agency pressure on the carrier.
“That is a failure that calls for heads to roll,” Nick Lacey, the FAA’s director of flight standards service, told a meeting of the FAA’s top brass this past summer. “We have failed to do our job.”
For its part, American Airlines says it is back in compliance and that passenger safety was never jeopardized.
Pilot work rules call for no more than eight hours of flying time and require eight hours of rest during any 24-hour period, but there are many loopholes and exceptions that must be closed. Flight crew fatigue has been cited in at least three major jetliner crashes in the last decade, and the problem has been on the National Transportation Safety Board’s top-10 list of safety problems for more than a decade.
What’s needed when Congress reconvenes after the November elections is a series of congressional hearings that will inform the public, help promulgate rules that have fewer loopholes and force the FAA to do its job. This time, a mere promise by the FAA about pilot alertness in the cockpit just won’t do.
