Word: airport
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...airports to do a better job at screening. In January 1996 it warned airline and airport managers at major airports across the country that there were serious problems not only with airline screening processes but also with the airports' security procedures. For example, O'Hare was in 16th place among 19 big international airports. The FAA said its people watched 1,500 bags go through checkpoints, and saw only one opened for closer inspection...
...manipulating a potential public relations crisis without a thought for the safety issues involved. The Secretary of Transportation's office was assisting the cover-up by insisting the report should be classified, even though the classifiers had already approved it for release. They didn't really care that the airport-security report wouldn't qualify for classification; it would take weeks to figure that out, and by then the Olympics would be over, the goal accomplished, the crisis past...
...expected change, I knew I had to devise yet another strategy to circumvent the FAA, to find a way to offer my concerns about safety and security directly to the public. I had to resign, even though it meant leaving the airport-security report behind and unprotected. The dot was adrift, blown wherever the winds of a media event or crisis carried it. The Secretary offered no leadership, no knowledge or understanding, no accountability. The administrator of the FAA was a figurehead. Neither of them heeded NTSB recommendations; neither followed through on the many reports detailing safety problems...
After I resigned my position as Inspector General at the Department of Transportation, the report on airport security that my office had readied for the Secretary, the White House and Congress was suppressed. It didn't matter that the decision had already been made not to classify the report. It was buried for several weeks, until after the Democratic National Convention. When it was finally issued, all the incriminating information about the FAA had been blacked out, including the failure rates and the FAA's response to our findings...
...also took a fatal plane crash for the FAA to heed years of evidence showing that the distance between planes landing at an airport should be increased. For years, the National Transportation Safety Board [the independent agency that investigates plane accidents] told the FAA to increase the distance between jets. The board studied 51 accidents caused by wake turbulence from 1983 to 1993. Twenty-seven people had been killed, and 40 planes had been damaged or destroyed. In those years, the NTSB repeatedly asked the FAA to set new rules, but the FAA refused. It would be three years more...