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If you're a nervous flier, this past week's aviation news is unlikely to have inspired confidence.
For starters, US airlines canceled scores of flights last week to comply with stepped up FAA safety checks. Delta and American Airlines were forced to pull hundreds of their MD-80'sout of service in order to reinspect wiring, while Continental and Alaska Airlines have conducted additional inspections of their older 737 planes.
Then this weekend TheWall Street Journal reported that faulty landing gear wiring on Airbus A320 planes could be behind two recent runway incidents involving United Airlines. In one, a flight briefly skidded off the runway at Chicago O'Hare, and in the other a United jet crashed into a snowbank after landing at Jackson Hole (no one was injured in either incident).
Last week came the news that a piece of wing panel fell off a Orlando-bound US Airways 757, bouncing off and cracking several of the plane's rear windows before falling to earth, where the National Transportation Safety Board is still trying to find it. US Airways has since reinspected its 757 fleet and found problems with seven planes. In unrelated US Airways news, the airline is investigating how and why a pilot packing heat managed to discharge his gun during a flight to Charlotte, blowing a bullet hole into the cockpit wall.
Why all the anxiety-provoking safety news? Partly because the FAA has dramatically stepped up its inspection of the US commercial fleet. Earlier in March the agency discovered that Southwest Airlines was flying some
737s without completing routine inspections for fuselage cracks. It responded by fining Southwest $10.2 million and auditing maintenance records at all US airlines.
These stories are scary, and there's no doubt that the FAA dropped the ball. But you could also argue that the media attention is a good thing. It's giving the government and the airlines a well-needed kick in the butt, which makes it more likely that inspections will be done properly and regularly.
Sources: ATW, Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch
Photo: Cubbie_n_Vegas'/Creative Commons 2.0
