Post by Steve Soto here.
This is what you get when we mix airline deregulation with an administration that has no interest in ensuring passenger safety. After FAA whistleblowers went public with the news that the agency let Southwest Airlines escape safety inspection requirements, the FAA under pressure began enforcing existing safety rules. With safety inspections and requirements staring them in the face for the first time in years, American Airlines suddenly cancelled flights this week because they couldn’t field enough inspected planes to support their schedules.
And with fuel costs rising, another bargain carrier, Frontier Airlines filed for bankruptcy this week, after several others had as well. You can blame each airline for not locking in fuel costs better, but the lack of an energy policy combined with a laissez faire approach to the nation’s commercial air travel infrastructure leads us to a place like this.
Keep in mind that Al Gore chaired a presidential commission in 1996 that recommended a slew of airline safety and security improvements, which the industry then killed with the help of Trent Lott and the GOP leadership, and a FAA that was under industry control. Some of these safety and security improvements would have prevented 9/11 and ensured better passenger safety, but the industry didn’t like the fact that it would have to help pay for them. Conservatives blamed Gore and Clinton for pre-9/11 airline security lapses without also mentioning that their own senators and representatives took industry cash and never acted to make the skies safer while they controlled Congress.
But at least the wealthy still get to ride their private planes unaffected by the these troubles.
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