Word: faa
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...near misses. To minimize the possibility of airborne illness, the Federal Aviation Administration requires all U.S. command pilots to undergo regular physical examinations every six months. Few doubt that the examinations, which include annual electrocardiograms for all pilots over 40, are necessary. But a growing number of doctors and FAA officials now question if they are stringent enough...
...recent meeting on aviation medicine in Nice, France, Dr. Alois Sauer, a West German physician who does overseas examinations for the FAA, reported that he had put 804 U.S. and German pilots through voluntary checkups stricter than those the FAA requires. Over a period of eight years, Dr. Sauer's examinations revealed that at least 50 pilots, nearly all of them Americans who fly charter planes, had diseases that could have made them unfit to fly. Some had serious cardiovascular disorders which might not have shown up in FAA exams. Other problems discovered included diabetes, liver ailments, syphilis, tuberculosis...
Most of the country's major airlines subject their pilots to examinations with more rigorous standards than the FAA'S. American Airlines' testing includes brain-wave monitoring and screening for "prediabetic" and heart problems. Pan American, Trans-World Airlines and United are similarly strict. The Mayo Clinic includes extensive psychological testing in its preemployment examinations of Northwest Airlines pilots. The pilots' contracts with the companies expressly prohibit any information gained through the airlines' medical tests from being passed on to the FAA...
...telephone repairmen, had entered a bank in Arlington, Va., and tried to hold it up. They were interrupted before they could get away with any money, and in the gunfight that followed, both the bank manager and a policeman were killed. After the bandits made their escape, the FAA sent out a warning to airlines that they might try to hijack a plane. But the airlines get so many alerts of this kind that it is hard to act on all of them. Even if he had recognized them, the solitary, unarmed ticket agent would hardly have been a match...
...solution to the airport problem is that big plots of land are simply not available on the crowded East and West coasts, where air traffic is most congested. In response, New York City is now studying the possibilities of building a new jetport five miles out at sea. "FAA studies indicate that it would cost about $7 billion to create an airport island in the Atlantic," says Lawrence Lerner, the project's designer. "But to build a comparable airport inland would cost at least $5 billion-not counting the costs of transportation and pollution." There may be no other...