AA finally blames the FAA for flip-flop on MD-80s

[FWAAA]

According to the Wall St Journal, AA is finally blasting the FAA on the MD-80 fiasco:

American Faults FAA in Grounding

Agency and Airline At Odds Over What Led to Cancellations

By ANDY PASZTOR and CHRISTOPHER CONKEY
May 2, 2008

American Airlines is set to allege in a report to the U.S. Transportation Department that its recent grounding of more than 3,300 flights -- disrupting travel for roughly 300,000 passengers -- could have been avoided if a tentative agreement between the airline and local Federal Aviation Administration officials hadn't been reversed, according to people familiar with the matter.

The report to be delivered Friday to Transportation Secretary Mary Peters is expected to indicate that the airline thought it had a handshake agreement with regional FAA managers intended to put repairs to wiring systems on its MD-80 aircraft on a schedule that would have kept the entire fleet in the air and avoided massive passenger disruptions.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1209687190...hs&ru=yahoo

Good for AA.

 

[eolesen]

I'm sure it will still be Arpey's fault.

 

[TWU informer]

I'm sure it will still be Arpey's fault.

Not possible!

Could be a Consulting Firm's fault but not Arpey.

 

[eolesen]

We know it wasn't Carmine's doing...

 

[WingNaPrayer]

It still tells the public there was a problem with the aircraft, albeit a minor one, that AA had an agreement with the FAA to keep flying the planes anyway and fix later, a deal the FAA backed out of.

It isn't very good from a P R standpoint to keep beating the war drums over this.

 

[eolesen]

Screw PR. If it prevents a repeat event for something this trivial, it is worth the risk.

The FAA are not God(s), and needs to be called out for overstepping their regulatory charter over a piece of string...

Next time, perhaps they'll be grounding flights over someone forgetting to put the ever so important "final assembly of this aircraft = USA" text on a briefing card.

 

[Flyboy4u]

Screw PR. If it prevents a repeat event for something this trivial, it is worth the risk.

The FAA are not God(s), and needs to be called out for overstepping their regulatory charter over a piece of string...

Next time, perhaps they'll be grounding flights over someone forgetting to put the ever so important "final assembly of this aircraft = USA" text on a briefing card.

A comment like this just shows how out of touch you are with reality....The FAA Are gods when it comes to the airline industry withing the United States. They can keep you in the air or ground you at the snap of a finger ie, recent md80 groundings. A piece of string must mean something since all airlines are now complying with this mandated directive..

 

[flyhigh]

THey're not gods, they're little Napoleons. This was not a true airworthyness issue. This was a PR issue. They got busted for being too close to WN on what could be an airworthyness issue, so they felt they needed to make everything an airworthyness issue. As AA is pointing out, they had an agreement with district FAA people which was over-ridden by National because the National couldn't let it be seen as another cozy relationship.

 

[FrequentFlierCA]

THey're not gods, they're little Napoleons. This was not a true airworthyness issue. This was a PR issue. They got busted for being too close to WN on what could be an airworthyness issue, so they felt they needed to make everything an airworthyness issue. As AA is pointing out, they had an agreement with district FAA people which was over-ridden by National because the National couldn't let it be seen as another cozy relationship.

Exactly. This was muscle flexing on the part of the FAA. AA is rightly calling this bs for what it is, and hopefully this pressure will make the FAA re-think playing politics with future issues.

 

[eolesen]

A comment like this just shows how out of touch you are with reality....The FAA Are gods when it comes to the airline industry withing the United States. They can keep you in the air or ground you at the snap of a finger ie, recent md80 groundings. A piece of string must mean something since all airlines are now complying with this mandated directive..

Ah, blind obedience without questioning authority.... Warren Jeffs, is that you? Or are you one of the couple dozen or so teenage brides they just liberated from the compound in Texas?....

If the TSA said that you had to walk thru the magnetometers in your underwear, would you strip down to your skivvies at the checkpoint? After all, they are the gods when it comes to security screening....

 

[Bob Owens]

As AA is pointing out, they had an agreement with district FAA people which was over-ridden by National because the National couldn't let it be seen as another cozy relationship.

Which it is and has been for a long time.

 

[UAL_TECH]

Ah, blind obedience without questioning authority.... Warren Jeffs, is that you? Or are you one of the couple dozen or so teenage brides they just liberated from the compound in Texas?....

If the TSA said that you had to walk thru the magnetometers in your underwear, would you strip down to your skivvies at the checkpoint? After all, they are the gods when it comes to security screening....

Welcome to the A$$ Family

B) UT

 

[limit]

A piece of string must mean something since all airlines are now complying with this mandated directive..

Truly it does.
It means the FAA succeeded in convincing the clueless that it does.

Many of the FAA spokesperson statements in this case were true in general terms , yet absolutely misleading in this particular case.

Example: when The FAA spokesperson was shown on many national TV channels to say :That the direction of the head of the bolt in an installation is critical because if it rubs on wires it could cause fires in a wire bundle.
A true statement, yet not really applicable in this case since the ground stud installation that have brought this up( and the feds were adamant about it being corrected and installed per the diagram on the ECO or the plane does not fly) would be located about 3-4 inches below the wire bundle on the whale bone side ,and have a horizontal clearance of at least 2 inches on the aft side and a few feet on the forward side, ( kind of hard to explain buy I believe the general dimensions are close if memory serves correctly,but you get the idea).
To the public of course it sounded good, it does not know what the min clearance is supposed to be.
To anyone that knew what they were looking at, it generally produced blank stares of disbelief, because believe me, it was nothing more than a deliberate attempt to deceive the public and you could not say anything about it,just in case you upset the talking amoebas with the Napoleonic syndrome.

 

[1Conehead]

A comment like this just shows how out of touch you are with reality....The FAA Are gods when it comes to the airline industry withing the United States. They can keep you in the air or ground you at the snap of a finger ie, recent md80 groundings. A piece of string must mean something since all airlines are now complying with this mandated directive..

The work done was within the standard practices of the aircraft builders , just not the new FAA standards, It was not an airworthiness problem.

 

[formeraa]

The work done was within the standard practices of the aircraft builders , just not the new FAA standards, It was not an airworthiness problem.

I was just hoping that one of the media outlets would find a retired airline mechanic, who wasn't afraid of telling the truth. But so much for the objectivity of the media!