Speaking of Airline Safety

Brandy’s Jon Stewart quote is spot-on, but at the time he spoke he hadn’t seen the half of it — literally:

American Airlines canceled more than 1,000 flights today — almost half of its schedule — stranding an estimated 100,000 passengers at airports around the country as it grounded planes for another round of maintenance checks.

Why is this happening now? Good question. The issue is focused on the wiring in the wheel-wells of MD-80s; the potential problems can include (and have included) sparking (bad news, since they’re right next to the fuel tanks) and fun stuff like this:

The American Airlines pilot says the plane’s nose gear would not retract and he quickly began circling the Minnesota airport. But freezing temperatures and icy precipitation started to create problems inside the plane, Mayer says.

“Our windshield started to cover with ice from the bottom working its way up,” he says.

“As we were running the emergency procedures, there was a pop. Everyone’s ears blew out. We realized that we had lost the pressurization of the aircraft at that time.”

Within minutes, Mayer managed to bring the airplane safely back to the airport. But when he inspected the exterior of the aircraft, he says the MD-80 jetliner looked like a “popsicle.” The malfunctioning nose gear disabled the plane’s anti-icing systems, according to Mayer, who says the wings and tail of the plane were freezing over.

But this didn’t just happen yesterday: the FAA issued an airworthiness directive about the MD-80 wiring problem two years ago. American was obviously aware of the problem and did nothing until last month, when the FAA started actually, you know, inspecting airplanes and stuff.

American, of course, says there’s nothing to worry about:

Airline spokesman Roger Frizzell says the inspections are technical compliance issues and are not related to flight safety.

So we’ve got the “government busybodies” meme going. But wait, let’s throw in the “greedy unions” bit, too:

American does not dispute that it has had issues on MD-80s, but the airline said pilots are in contract talks and “certain misinformation” has been shared with the media.

Because obviously the pilot’s union would benefit tremendously by financially destroying the corporation they’re trying to work for.

I’m increasingly convinced that corporate America truly believes everything in the world would work beautifully if only all these silly little people didn’t keep making outrageous demands for sumptuous luxuries like salaries, benefits, and airplanes that don’t drop out of the sky.

Tags: airline safety, American Airlines, FAA