Spot on. When you are flying and you miss a crossing restriction, think of it as scoring a demerit. When you mess up interpreting how to schedule, perform or document a repetitive maintenance task, the demerits keep racking up until someone fixes your foul up.

For example, when ASA missed some engine borescope inspections on 90-something CRJs at C-check last year, I was riding the crew bus with a flock of hens, I mean flight attendants, and roosters, I mean pilots, who were clucking and crowing about the situation. They wanted our new Maintenance management team to get the ax.. immediately. It turns out, for whatever reason, our computer software didn't include the engine borescope inspection as part of the C-check work package, so it wasn't done... for a long time. The new guys discovered the glitch, self-disclosed it to the Feds to minimize financial impact and got on the ball fixing things.

From all appearances, Chataqua could have had an identical problem. They just didn't handle the recovery as we did.

Again, not condoning anything, just trying to lend a little bit of insight that the furlough has given me. When I was flying the line, I used to get paired up with captains who thought every segment of the company was out to get us. As a pilot, I've learned that it's just not so. Every working stiff is bent over the barrel in one way or another in this industry.