Originally Posted by
Bucking Bar
Is she? I've seen both sides of the FAA, where they have done very poor work and where they have done a very good job at enforcing regulation to get at the heart of a safety issue.
Some regional airlines tend to abuse the concept of the FAA's granting of immunity for voluntary disclosures. In most cases the regional self discloses in such a way that their operational error falls on their Captain's Certificate and not on the Company's. They use self disclosure primarily to protect their company's Certificate at the expense of their pilot's Certificate. (and usually they hide, to the point of flat out lying, their involvement in the screw up)
A lazy, self absorbed, Inspector might be inclined to take these pre packaged enforcement cases and run with them. In contrast a good guy who's willing to dig a little finds common threads in the self disclosures and learns the systematic threats. They then act to interrupt, or fix, the chain that results in the errors. It probably would not be appropriate to name names here, but I've been impressed by some of the FAA Inspectors. The older, worked for a couple of airline types, with flight experience, tend to be VERY good.
Self reporting has proven itself as a very useful tool to improve safety. Yes, it can be abused, but over and over again this partnership has proven to be worth the effort.
The FAA, like the Department of Homeland Security does not have the luxury of being 99.999% successful in their mission when it comes to safety. If they fail once, people might die. THAT is an unacceptable situation IMHO. Ms. Sciavo called them on that, and she was right. I am not condemning the inspectors of which you speak. I know some of them too, and you are correct, they are very good. But like most folks out there in the trenches, they... we... all do our job to the best of our abilities. It's the management.. bureaucrats that are always in CYA mode. Those are the folks that set policy, make decisions that make the entire organisation look like the Keystone Cops. It is a function of the tort laden society that we find ourselves in...
As far as the self-reporting tool: If you can defend it in one breath, and note how there might be a propensity for abuse at the regional level(I have zero knowledge about this one way or the other) isn't that a condemnation of the system as a whole? I'm just asking the question...