American Report to Blast FAA Over MD-80 Groundings

[Matt Molnar]

WSJ:

FAA Takes Heat for Groundings

American to Claim Massive Disruptions Didn't Have to Occur

By ANDY PASZTOR and CHRISTOPHER CONKEY
May 2, 2008; Page A2

American Airlines is set to allege in a report to the U.S. Transportation Department that its recent grounding of more than 3,300 flights -- disrupting travel for roughly 300,000 passengers -- could have been avoided if a tentative agreement between the airline and local Federal Aviation Administration officials hadn't been reversed, according to people familiar with the matter.

The report to be delivered Friday to Transportation Secretary Mary Peters is expected to indicate that the airline thought it had a handshake agreement with regional FAA managers intended to put repairs to wiring systems on its MD-80 aircraft on a schedule that would have kept the entire fleet in the air and avoided massive passenger disruptions. [Full Article]

[markg]

I like this comment in the article
"The company is "planning to comply with the exact details" of all future FAA safety directives"

Maybe they should have been doing that from the start and not doing "secret handshake" deals to allow them to do it on their own schedule.

Imagine if we were all allowed to do a similar deal with our local DMV and police departments to ignore things like emissions and bald tires??