Word: faa
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...aides tried to squelch a Transportation Department warning to American travelers about lax safeguards against terrorism at the airport. White House aides feared such a warning would prompt a frosty reception for Hillary Clinton when she visited Athens in March to witness the lighting of the Olympic flame. Outraged FAA officials protested that travelers shouldn't be kept in the dark about the warning--which was required by law. Eventually White House lawyers decided the warning couldn't be skirted, so it was issued on March 21, a week before Mrs. Clinton's visit. The White House then pressured...
ATLANTA: ValuJet's plans to take to the air less than three months after its disastrous May plane crash were met with a tight-lipped response from the FAA Wednesday. While the airline, grounded since mid-June, says it anticipates that revamped maintenance and training procedures will convince the FAA to reinstate its license by early August, the agency won't say when it expects to reach a decision. "The FAA knows the heat is on and is going to scrutinize ValuJet's operations from top to bottom before it lets the airline fly again," says TIME's Jerry Hannifin...
...plaudits for trying to buck the bureaucracy--for instance, by pushing last year to regulate commuter airlines in the same way as larger commercial airlines--reviews are mixed about Pena, who has been criticized for putting politics over safety, and about Broderick. In his nearly 20 years at the FAA, Broderick was a tough, respected administrator, and his supporters believe he is being sacrificed on the altar of public relations. But others claim that he could be unyielding and slow to acknowledge problems. For instance, it took two fatal crashes before he had the agency investigate wing-deicing difficulties...
Many aviation experts see this as a golden moment of opportunity for the FAA--and by extension, the flying public. There is talk of privatizing the agency, while some experts say they hope the agency exploits revolutionary technologies to improve flight safety, such as the enhanced ground-positioning warning system, which might have averted the December crash of an American Airlines jet in Cali, Colombia. Still, even if the FAA takes a more activist role rather than scrambling for cover after the next plane tumbles out of the sky, planes will fall. "We are dealing with machines and people...
...would a seemingly vital federal agency be so unprepared? For one thing, the FAA is financially strapped, and has lost 5,000 employees since 1993. It has a constant shortage of inspectors, and rather than inspecting, they must devote increasing amounts of time to clerical tasks. Moreover, the agency continues to assign inspectors according to the size of an airline rather than the number of subcontractors it uses. The agency says it will change the way it monitors outsourcing, requiring stricter supervision and compliance in the future. "The regulatory climate is going to be quite changed," says John Strong...