Originally Posted by rickair7777

Both.

The bureaucrats don't make the Sovereign Immunity call, that goes up the food chain I suspect to the Secretary level. The bureaucrats don't want to have go hat-in-hand and explain to the Secretary why they need SI in the first place. That would be a tough conversation... "you knew about this guy when?!?!"

Put themselves on the spot, or put a few airmen on the spot? I think you know the answer.

Also my previous post was in reference to applicants suing the FAA for making them take a 709... in that case, the FAA didn't (yet) know about the DPE's behavior therefore SI is reasonable... can't just let every ambulance chaser use the federal treasury as his personal piggy bank.

But in the event of an accident AFTER the FAA knew about this... that would be one of those times where they might actually waive SI and allow lawsuits to proceed.

Would have been nice if they had supervised this guy to prevent this from happening but honestly, if people were buying checkride outcomes they might actually suck as pilots, and innocent pax might die. So I'm Ok with evaluating their credentials.

Originally Posted by terks43

Thats easy, steady Taxpayer funded income with a pension for life and the security of knowing no matter how poorly a job you do as a regulator that nobody is ever going to replace you. (Last bit is in relation to the entire FAA and no just a single inspector) The FAA doesn’t have to preform well to justify its existence and further funding, it just merely has to exist to get that.

Originally Posted by JamesNoBrakes

FERS is not a simple pension and the simple pensions of 50 years ago are long gone. I've noticed the last few inspectors that "retired" died within a year or two of retiring. Pretty morbid, but the Government seems to save a lot of money on those "pensions". I know of a few that have gotten let go as well, not immune to poor performance.

Originally Posted by rickair7777

Bottom line, if something happened involving one of these airmen and it came out that the FAA knew or suspected their certification was questionable, the lawyers would have a field day. And some politicians.

Also, I'll say this... it's sounds like this guy was Santa-for-Hire. I'd imagine at least of some of these cert holders may have known, or should have suspected, they were taking a shortcut.

Originally Posted by JamesNoBrakes

FERS is not a simple pension and the simple pensions of 50 years ago are long gone. I've noticed the last few inspectors that "retired" died within a year or two of retiring. Pretty morbid, but the Government seems to save a lot of money on those "pensions". I know of a few that have gotten let go as well, not immune to poor performance.

Originally Posted by aeroengineer

I keep saying I want to live to a 100 plus and the VA and Social Security both show up at my funeral to celebrate my demise and the end of having to pay out on my behalf.

I'll show'em

Originally Posted by TransWorld

I’ll settle for being shot to death at 100 by a jealous husband of a 20 something fashion model while she and I are in bed together.