Since the Southwest decompression incident last Friday, there have been a number of parties suddenly using the event to promote an agenda.  The DoT and FAA have both acted more politically than anyone would necessarily like to see.  In fact, I believe a number of people have failed to see what went right in this incident such as a successful emergency descent and safe landing.  A recovery that was so smooth, all but one passenger continued on their flight when a replacement aircraft was sent.

Now the TWU (Transport Workers Union) is calling for the FAA to clamp down on maintenance being down out of the United States.  What they would really like is for it to be forbidden altogether.  Sadly, this is much more about jobs than it is about safety.  The reality is that if maintenance done outside the United States was the hazard that the TWU would have you believe, we would have catastrophes happening left and right.  The fact is that air travel in the United States over the past 10 years is vastly more safe (by inicidents and type of incidents) than it has ever been before. 

We don’t have lax safety procedures.  We really don’t.  An unpredicted and unpredictable event happened and the good news is that everything that was supposed to happen if the unforeseen happened did actually happen.  the hole in the fuselage was contained, the aircraft performed an emergency descent with no further issues and the aircraft was landed safetly with no substantive injuries.  And for every event remotely similar to this over the past 10 years, the outcome was the same.

Making political hay out of this or any other event is irresponsible and unsafe.  When you begin to allow political motiviations control the ultimate outcome of these situations, you lose the transparency that actually makes this industry safe.  Who wants to self report unsafe events and incidents if they know they’ll be crucified for it politically?

This is my criticism of how France approaches such things.  By opening criminal investigations into air disasters, they encourage people to not cooperate, not self report and, worst of all, not engage in self examination with a goal of avoiding or eliminating the problem in the future.

The most responsible thing that could be done in this event would be to let the NTSB do its job, make its recommendations and then follow those recommendations.   Allowing anyone to “score” politically as a result of this incidents puts us all more at risk.

Filed under: Airline News by ajax