# 10 Safety and the FAA

Have been a professional pilot since 1970 and through various aviation positions, worked closely with assigned inspectors, mostly from the FAA district office in Milwaukee. Irrespective of the job, flight instructor, Chief instructor, FBO General Manager, Line pilot, Chief pilot, Director of Operations, Check Airman, Designated Pilot examiner or Knowledge test supervisor, A&P mechanic, Inspection Authorization, etc; FAA was always in the background, observing, training, recommending or commenting, essentially insuring I was conducting my position within Federal mandates. More often than not, with a limited aviation experience background, nonetheless holding a position of authority from which they often demanded an immediate positive response and 100% cooperation and support. To openly disagree or otherwise voice dissent was to be branded with a “bad attitude” or the “inability to work harmoniously with the FAA”. Didn’t work in reverse however, and the easiest way to get along was to agree with everything they said or remain silent. Sometimes, it wasn’t even the directives of the Administration but the personal preferences of the individual inspector posturing their importance and abusing authority. Several times, I have witnessed FAA course instructors comment about how foolish a deceased pilot had been prior to a fatal accident or openly mock a pilot that could no longer defend themselves. With the simplistic view of a child they would speculate, in a negative manner about the actions of others, often before knowing all the facts, with only the outcome known. with unlimited time to study; something the accident pilot never had. Case in point: After a fatal stall spin accident that occurred with an engine failure immediately after take off, FAA inspector commented; ” Did the pilot put the nose down to maintain airspeed ; no, he pulled back, stalled the aircraft and killed his whole family”. Another example: There was a DC8 crash on the west coast due to fuel exhaustion: During the last few minutes of flight as the engines were flaming out, the Captain was literally begging the flight engineer to find a thousand pounds of fuel so they could reach the airport ( they didn’t). FAA instructor, lecturing at a seminar, mocked the pilot by saying” what was he (flight engineer) supposed to do, manufacture fuel ?” A big joke to him, a know-it-all FAA instructor, that had never flown a large airplane, and most likely, limited experience. Granted a very bad mistake, but take a gear problem, dumping fuel, running checklists, crew discussions, ATC communications, company maintenance calls and other distractions it enters the realm of possible, even for the very experienced Captain. Also this happened in the days prior to CRM and aircraft modifications specifically engineered to prevent exactly this situation from occurring again. Now, for those of you thinking how stupid this was or ” can’t happen to me” , I would respectfully remind you that history often repeats itself and several variations of this exact scenario have occurred since. Having observed hundreds of pilots and scenarios during practical tests and flight instruction I can attest to the fact that most of us would have done the same things as our fellow airmen did, given the same circumstances. Many times, after the accident is studied in detail, and the causal factors known, and they will then be duplicated, in a simulator, with the same results. Experienced pilots with thousands of accident free hours repeating the same human errors as others because usually there is no simple fix for a complicated set of unusual circumstances. So, in my opinion; if we genuinely desire to prevent others, and possibly ourselves, from responding the same way as the accident crew, requires an open mind, objective overview, and unbiased judgement; something the FAA doesn’t have. They rush to judge, assign blame and prefer enforcement over preventing another incident. Fortunately, the National Transportation Safety Board does the real investigation and analysis in the interest of safety, often making recommendations that FAA has sometimes chosen to ignore which resulted in similar accidents. Some resulting in top FAA officials being fired.
Based upon my interactions with the FAA, especially those from the Milwaukee FSDO is that they care more for the illusion of safety than actually improving it, ignoring their own rules when it suits them, manipulating data to validate their actions, proving their worth by pilot certificate action instead of “retraining” as purported by the agency. They dismissed blatant regulation infractions, ignored unsafe operations and did nothing about dangerous, repetitive safety issues.

Their lack of experience is often reflected in their fear of required pilot operations such as in-flight shutdowns of engines, which is an FAA mandated training and testing procedure, even at altitudes greater than 3000 agl. Occasionally, during Examiner/FAA meetings demonstrating ways to circumvent the requirements.
Some examples:
Military recklessness that was covered up and disregarded such as high speed, low altitude passes well over 400 knots then vertical climbs though overhead airway, aerobatic operations below 500′ in F16 and C130 aircraft.
Allowing unsafe airmen into the system.
Accepting unsafe training procedures at large flight schools.