Word: safe
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...less responsive to the needs of the airlines. Stifled continually by the FAA's political prowess, Schiavo eventually decided that the best way to bring about reform at the agency was to resign and tell her story. In the following excerpts from her new book, Flying Blind, Flying Safe, she describes how her work at the Transportation Department left her "dismayed, disillusioned and afraid for the flying public...
After the crash, ValuJet was grounded for more than three months. The carrier has since returned to the air, although reduced in size. Is ValuJet safe to fly? Is any airline? Yes, if compared with other means of transportation, such as autos. But given the rapid growth of air travel, today's low accident rate will mean greater numbers of crashes in the next decade unless safety is improved. In the wake of Schiavo's campaign, Congress has changed the FAA's mandate to make safety its primary mission...
After the crash, government officials began appearing on television to reassure the public that discount airlines were safe to fly. Top officials at the Department of Transportation shifted quickly into crisis-management mode. Secretary Federico Pena drew on his own experience flying ValuJet to reassure the public on national television: "I have flown ValuJet. ValuJet is a safe airline, as is our entire aviation system." Pena insisted that "if ValuJet was unsafe, we would have grounded...
...agitated, defensive voice, Pena said an FAA report proved that discount airlines were as safe as the major carriers. But Pena had to know this simply wasn't true. He was protecting an airline just the way government officials had for decades. In fact, the FAA had an avalanche of evidence that proved that ValuJet had been troubled for months and that other marginal airlines were just as unsafe. Conclusions from the report Pena referred to were etched into my memory. It revealed that the cumulative safety rate of discount carriers was skewed because one of them, Southwest...
...memo from the field, written three months before the May 11 crash, proved highly embarrassing to the FAA and helped force the agency to re-evaluate its self-assured contention that ValuJet was a "safe airline...