Word: hinson
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...night following the crash, Schiavo would be ignored no longer: she appeared on ABC's Nightline opposite FAA administrator David Hinson, who insisted that ValuJet was "safe to fly. I would fly it." Flatly contradicting him and alluding to the FAA's mission to promote air travel, Schiavo declared, "It's not my job to sell tickets on ValuJet." She dramatically disclosed to a national audience the FAA's own damning statistics: ValuJet's safety record was 14 times as poor as that of other discount carriers, even though the agency claimed that all airlines were equally safe. "I would...
...were only unapproved parts. It was a label the FAA would rely on to blur the issue, allowing officials to talk about the investigation without appearing to endorse it or offend the repair stations, parts makers or brokers. The FAA wouldn't even use the term bogus parts. Administrator Hinson would tell Congress that "unapproved parts may fit somebody's definition of bogus parts, but we only deal in 'approved' and 'unapproved.'" Associate administrator Anthony Broderick would tell Air Transport World in 1994 that "there is no safety problem associated with undocumented parts...
Thirteen years and nearly $1 billion later, the FAA had to admit its ambitious program was an utter failure. In 1994, under Hinson, the program was canceled. In spite of the hundreds of millions of dollars spent and the manpower exerted, no new system had been produced, installed or was operating, and every attempt to see the program to its end only prolonged the disaster...
...Hinson's demeanor was familiar: he was his usual easygoing self. I expected the FAA staff and the Secretary's underlings not to like our findings, but I wasn't prepared for the real point of our meeting: they wanted me to bury the report. The Olympic Games were opening in Atlanta that month. The investigation might have miserable results, but "the threat is low," they kept repeating. What good would it do to upset the public and generate a lot of negative publicity right before the Olympics? I couldn't say an attack was imminent. Still, I knew that...
...letter of resignation but because of the long holiday weekend, I could not find anyone at the White House to take the letter until July 8. A week later, the House Subcommittee on Aviation asked me to explain why I was leaving my job. Transportation Secretary Pena and administrator Hinson were there too, and they seemed determined to distance themselves from any responsibility for the problems at the FAA that I complained about. The Inspector General had never warned him about ValuJet, Pena told the Senators. He had no knowledge, he insisted, of how deep the crisis...