[Phillip Beall]

All,

Most of you know that I am an airline pilot.  The Wall Street Journal article Their Loved Ones Died in Plane Crashes. Now They Fight for Change. touches on many points.

• FAA is a “tombstone agency”, meaning they rarely promulgate a rule unless someone has died.
• FAA is a huge entity and they are hard to move on any subject.
• FAA is highly politicized.

I personally think that Boeing lost their way many years ago.  I can give examples of how and why in a conversation, it would be too lengthy to write here.  But I am personally certain that they have lost their way in the airliner part of their business.

The article doesn’t just focus on Boeing, but it lightly touches on recent efforts to lower pilot experience levels (I am opposed.) and raise retirement age from 65 to 67 years + 364 days (I am opposed.).  Where but in Washington is that not from 65 to 68?

The article was a thoughtful piece that confirms for us that families are reliably helping to get FAA moving, and keep it moving, in the right direction.  Not mentioned in the article is that their effort also recently secured the requirement for airlines and plane manufacturers to add secondary barriers to planes.  Think heavy duty netting to keep someone from charging the cockpit when we are getting food/drink and/or taking a physiological break.  Who would oppose such a common sense solution?  All the airline and plane manufacturers have fought it since 911. We got pilots armed, but we could not get the cockpit secondary barriers.  Ellen Saracini, the widow of one of the United pilots killed on 911; she has been relentless in pursuit of that item.  It was recently mandated in the FAA reauthorization bill.

We have a lot – A LOT – of pilots in the Club.  But even non-pilots should find it an interesting read.

Enjoy,

Phillip Beall (W5EBC)

[Author]

Posts