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Carl Marbach |
Parts of this book are disturbingly familiar
for those who follow the FAA's internal infighting, politicking and intrigue.
Mary Schiavo, as the Inspector General of the Department of Transportation,
tried to dig into the inner workings of the FAA, intrude on the good-old-boy
network and root out mutual hand holding between the inspected and the inspectee.
Unfortunately, she achieved only a modicum of success and a great deal of
frustration. Of all the emotions -- and there are quite a few coming from
this book -- Ms. Schiavo's frustration is at the head of the list. While
we don't agree with many of her conclusions, the book makes interesting reading
and provokes lots of thought.
In the book's analysis of the ValuJet tragedy, the author makes the case
that the FAA had to have known that ValuJet was not as safe as other airlines.
The inference is clear here: that there was a conflict of interest between
the FAA job of oversight and the FAA job of promoting aviation. The FAA wanted
ValueJet to survive, but in order to help that along the FAA did not do a
good enough job of overseeing and enforcing all the rules.
While ValuJet is a particular case, Ms. Schiavo is also critical of the FAA
inspectors, some of whom are not qualified to do their jobs. The main criticism
she offers is the FAA's reluctance to do anything about its many shortcomings,
some of which she, as Inspector general, brought to their attention. While
we all know that any government agency is by definition "political", the
FAA seems to have gone over the deep end in this regard.
How safe do we want our airlines to be? A friend who ran a charter service
once related a story to me about a customer who asked how safe was the flight
he was about to make considering the poor weather he saw outside. My friend
replied, "We don't think about how safe, we just decide if
the flight can be made safely -- if so we fly the trip, if not we don't go.
It is either safe or it isn't."
Do any of us think about the fact that night IFR is not as safe as day VFR?
Will you fly IFR in a single engine airplane? At night? We all know that
nothing is 100% except taxes and the "D" word. So, how safe should a flight
be?
Flying Blind, Flying Safe tells us that the FAA has a formula that
gives a value to human life, and using that number decides if the extra cost
of extra safety is worth it dollars that need to be spent. For example, if
equipping the airline fleet with smoke detectors in their baggage compartments
would cost $100 million, but it would only save 10 lives each of which is
worth $1 million, then spending the $100 million to save $10 million in lives
is not worth doing. This is not acceptable to the author. (Note:
The numbers used here are not real numbers, just ones used for explanation
purposes).
While equating human lives to a specific dollar amount is upsetting, there
must be limits on what we would spend to make flying 100% safe. While we
must strive to make flying as safe as possible, we must also realize that
it is not without risk, even if that risk is exceptionally small.
Ms. Schiavo is equally damning of the internal FAA politics and normal operating
procedures. The administrator job, she charges, is just a glorified flying
club. The administrators used the job to get rated in all types of aircraft
operated by the FAA, spending time in the cockpit when they should have been
spending the time running the Agency. She writes, "I can't remember when
I started calling these men the 'Kidney Stone Administrators,' but I do know
that it became apparent to me early on that they were tolerated only because
everyone at the FAA knew it was merely time before they would pass."
I found the chapters on the ValuJet crash, the FAA, bogus parts and other
hard information on how the FAA operated and didn't operate to be interesting
and thought-provoking. But when the book descends into aging airplanes, where
to sit in commercial airlines to maximize your safety, which carriers have
the best/worst accident rate and a final suggestion about which carriers
not to fly, it loses credibility. There is more "scare" than
facts in this part of the book and it diminishes the important issues brought
out in the first part. Without regard for the law of holes which says, "when
you are in a hole, stop digging," the book recommends that you carry your
own smoke hoods, call the local FAA weather station to get a weather report
to decide if you want to fly, avoid flying in thunderstorms and to keep an
eye out for ice and snow on the plane's wings; then speak up and point it
out to the cabin crew. All of this cheapens the effect and reduces the book
to a trite "airline safety" novel.
On the whole, the book has some worthwhile sections notwithstanding the soap
opera ramblings at the end. Read the first half, then pass it along to another
pilot-friend.
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