Texas Coverup Is Latest FAA Black Eye

[flashl]

Source: Washington Post


Controllers' Errors Were Pinned on Pilots

Federal Aviation Administration managers covered up mistakes by air traffic controllers at a Texas facility, making it more difficult for authorities to detect safety hazards in some of the nation's busiest airspace, FAA officials disclosed yesterday.

In revealing the results of a government watchdog investigation, the FAA was also forced to admit that it failed to adequately address similar allegations raised publicly several years ago.

The disclosures come as the FAA has been battered in recent weeks for lax oversight of airline maintenance programs and their compliance with safety mandates. Embarrassed by those revelations, the FAA launched a crackdown on air carriers, resulting in massive groundings of planes and flight cancellations as maintenance workers scrambled to look for potential flaws.

The Texas investigation centered on how supervisors misreported errors at a control center that handles thousands of airplanes arriving and departing daily from airports in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Washington Post

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/24/AR2008042403939.html