FAA Caught in New Cover-up Scandal

The Associated Press:

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FAA tries again to fix cover-up of air safety errors

By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN – 17 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Aviation Administration announced Thursday its second effort in three years to stop its managers in Texas from covering up air safety violations — after a new investigation found the misconduct continued into last year.

In the latest blow to an agency already under fire for letting airlines ignore its safety directives, the FAA announced that the top two managers of an air traffic control facility in Dallas-Fort Worth had been removed from their jobs.

In addition, the Transportation Department's inspector general found FAA managers in Dallas-Fort Worth routinely and intentionally misclassified instances where airplanes were allowed to fly closer together than they were supposed to, the FAA said. Instead of calling them operational errors or deviations from safety rules by FAA controllers, the managers labeled them pilot errors or nonevents. [Full Article]

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