"Disturbing"

MANIFESTO

Airline issues are on my mind this morning since Mrs. Monocle and our lovely daughter are winging their way west over the Atlantic as I write this. Anyway, in what the Washington Post describes as a "black eye," the paper reports this morning that

Federal Aviation Administration managers covered up mistakes by air traffic controllers at a Texas facility, making it more difficult for authorities to detect safety hazards in some of the nation's busiest airspace, FAA officials disclosed yesterday.

In revealing the results of a government watchdog investigation, the FAA was also forced to admit that it failed to adequately address similar allegations raised publicly several years ago.

The disclosures come as the FAA has been battered in recent weeks for lax oversight of airline maintenance programs and their compliance with safety mandates. Embarrassed by those revelations, the FAA launched a crackdown on air carriers, resulting in massive groundings of planes and flight cancellations as maintenance workers scrambled to look for potential flaws ...

"The report is disturbing," FAA Acting Administrator Robert Sturgell said in a hasty statement before leaving a news conference without taking any questions.

So it looks like the incredible inconveniences that American Airlines travelers suffered recently were for naught since the FAA, irresponsible "acting administrator" and all, doesn't follow through on safety mandates anyway.

The Bushies, of course, don't care since they don't have to fly in public aircraft. It's a certainty that no safety hazards on "Air Force 1" are being ignored.