Word: fleetly
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Force may have been its own worst enemy. A contract awarded to Boeing for a new fleet of aerial tankers had to be rebid after the corruption involved in the decision had been exposed; the new bidding process was won by a European consortium. Twice in the past year, the service seems to have misplaced sensitive nuclear components, including nuclear-tipped missiles that flew across the U.S. unbeknownst to the chain of command. Its chief of staff, General Michael Moseley, was implicated last week in a bizarre plot to steer a $50 million contract to friends to develop ground-based...
...that required its inspectors to make sure each carrier was complying with 10 randomly chosen "airworthiness directives," the agency's written safety bulletins. (About 200 are issued annually.) The FAA followed that with what it calls "phase two," where its inspectors are reviewing 10% of all airworthiness directives per fleet to determine compliance. Initial results show the airlines have been complying with about 99% of the directives. But that remaining 1% was enough to cause hundreds of flight cancellations...
...really predict what is going to happen." The two-phase review didn't start with the most challenging ADs, which means that the chance of more trouble for the airlines remains the same until the audit process concludes June 30. Aviation experts say the older an airline's fleet, like those used by the big legacy carriers such as American, Northwest and United, the more likely its planes are to be grounded...
...apart, and in some cases backwards. That's when the FAA - sensitive about complaints from its own workers that it had been too cozy with Southwest Airlines, which had been allowed to keep its planes flying without required inspections to detect fuselage cracks - insisted American ground its MD-80 fleet until the required work was repaired...
...ground the entire fleet, instead of letting the airline do it over several weeks, as it requested and as many carriers had been allowed to do with previous enforcement actions? "We would not have approved that," Duquette says. "Given what we found at Southwest Airlines, we feel we needed to step up our focus on AD compliance for a couple months. But that should be ending in June and hopefully there will be no disruption to summer travel plans...