Word: atlantas
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Some individual ValuJet planes had chronic problems. It would not have been difficult for inspectors [in the Atlanta FAA office] to go over ValuJet records and trace these persistent breakdowns. Instead, the Atlanta inspectors seemed unimpressed with the summary [of problems compiled by Weintrob]. The number of accidents and incidents was not "disproportionate," they said. There was no common link between them. The FAA had no special plans for ValuJet...
...Weintrob's visit apparently prompted the FAA's Atlanta office to think twice about its conclusions and conduct its own quick re-evaluation of the ValuJet safety record...
...days after [our investigators' visit], the Atlanta FAA staff wrote a memo to headquarters. For eight pages, they described accidents and poor FAA surveillance until reaching an inevitable conclusion so startling and obvious that it should have changed history--except that it was also a conclusion so threatening to ValuJet and contrary to FAA habit that the memo was immediately buried, secreted away until disaster forced it into the open...
...have continued with their charade if not for a phone call to my home late in the week after the ValuJet crash. An anonymous FAA employee had tracked me down through a reporter. I needed to know, the voice said nervously, that in the days after Weintrob grilled the Atlanta inspectors about ValuJet, the Atlanta staff took a good look at the airline. Ten days later, they put their fears in writing to headquarters. Did I understand? the caller demanded. The field staff in Atlanta had recommended in February that ValuJet be grounded. They had put it in writing. Someone...
...next morning, the FAA called a press conference to offhandedly release a tall stack of ValuJet documents. Buried in the middle was the innocuous-looking report from the Atlanta staff. I practically lunged at the copy handed to me. Skimming several pages on Valujet's troubles, I stopped short at the field inspectors' bombshell: that "consideration should be given to an immediate FAR-121 recertification of this airline." Official FAA jargon, yes, but the meaning was clear: ground ValuJet...