While the latest aviation safety issues and accidents over the last few months scare some, to seasoned professionals the aviation tragedies and near misses do not come as a surprise. The only question is: Why did it take so long?
There’s a long list of safety failures in the airline industry. United Airlines B777 plunged to the Pacific during climb in 2023, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), United, and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) didn’t investigate it for months. A 265-pound main tire fell off a B777 taking off out of Los Angeles; it fell from over 200 feet — still spinning — into an airport parking lot. The nose tire came off a taxiing B757. Two mechanics were killed when an incorrectly pressurized tire exploded in Atlanta. Most memorable were the Endeavour regional jet that flipped in Toronto, the mid-air collision between a PSA Airlines regional plane and a military helicopter, and an Endeavour regional aircraft that struck a wing during a go-around at La Guardia airport. More such events never made the news or were easily forgotten.
Boeing’s 737-Max was a failure on so many levels. But it wasn’t Boeing’s failure, as people were led to believe. Boeing makes products. Airlines buy these aircraft for technological improvements. It’s solely the airline’s responsibility to properly train their pilots and technicians to operate and maintain the aircraft — not the manufacturer’s.
The Alaska Airlines flight 1282 door plug loss was Boeing’s fault; but Boeing didn’t own it alone. Blame for that failure was shared with the FAA, the contract fuselage producer, Spirit AeroSystems, and the NTSB. All missed the important cues. They permitted breakdowns in quality control; both internal and external quality evaluations were ignored and almost cost a plane full of people their lives. It’s impossible to analyze these multiple facts in so short a space, but Alaska flight 1282 was never recognized for what it was: a symptom.
Why the Uptick of Safety Failures?
First, the events playing out come on the tail end of Covid-19 shutdowns. When then-President Joe Biden started telework policies, many of the FAA aviation safety inspector (ASI) workforce stayed home. Onsite surveillance and oversight of FAA-certificate holders, including international component repair stations and overhaul facilities, were stopped. This means the United States has been blind to many FAA certificate holders’ activities, including many air operators, since 2020.
Second, the FAA suffered a mass exodus of knowledgeable and experienced ASIs who refused the Covid shot. Airlines and their contract providers also surrendered to the mandate.
Third, many “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) hires, in both government and industry, further reduced the level of experience of many in the industry. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg ignored real safety issues by focusing on “racist roads” and DEI promotions. Buttigieg’s distractions meant safety took a back seat to ideology.
The path to safety failure has been years in the making; problems hiding in plain sight evolved into nightmares of industry’s own creation.
Root Causes
The root causes of the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines B737-Max accidents weren’t complacency, though it did play an important role. Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines’ bean counters played the most fundamental roles in the safety failures.
Poor skills don’t result from manufacturers not providing training to their customers; poor skills come from over dependency on technology. Where do bean counters fit in? Airlines invest in new high technology aircraft, like the Boeing B737-Max, to exploit the cost-savings the technology promises. Bean counters expect pilots and technicians to ignore honing their skills and instead let the aircraft fly itself or fix itself. Meanwhile, new aircraft technologies will continue to evolve with future innovations, like one- or zero-pilot cockpits.
Modern aircraft are also designed to be fuel-efficient; every aspect of an aircraft’s flight profile, from flight control settings to adjusting engine power, is intended to acquire the lowest fuel consumption. The caveat is the pilots must be hands-off. Today’s pilot programs the flight computer, which then plots the altitude, speed, and course. During the takeoff or landing phases, the pilot retracts/extends the gear and flaps, then sits back and babysits. Airlines push pilots to surrender authority to the aircraft because the aircraft computer flies more economically than the human pilot. While the results are improved fuel efficiency and lower costs, pilots become complacent. Their skills become stale; their competence atrophies.
Technicians are also restricted. Troubleshooting skills are discouraged. Airline management wants the aircraft to tell the technician what to fix. Skills that were common knowledge decades ago are not so common today, especially with developing fly-by-wire systems. The old ways are forgotten; they’ll never be passed on to the next generation.
Just as important, self-evaluations of safety and regulatory agencies are compromised. The FAA, still reeling from record ASI departures, is scrambling to train new-hire ASIs. Their experience levels have plummeted, meaning it will take incoming ASIs decades to build FAA job knowledge to pre-2020 levels. Remaining FAA veterans will never succeed in imparting decades of knowledge before they retire. All this while the FAA also faces challenges in aerospace and unmanned vehicles.
Meanwhile, the NTSB, hypothetical transportation detectives, is now demonstrating a fundamental lack of industry knowledge. Investigatory protocols are being trashed. Whether it has been from ignorance or a collective lack of experience, since the NTSB was established in 1967, it has not produced an accident report that has increased safety. Based on the NTSB’s debatable authority, it’s unclear how the aviation industry can expect the NTSB to understand and support aviation safety.
Travelers are scared; they’re asking themselves, “Is it safe?” We have an airline industry that thinks DEI trumps experience and knowledge; a regulator that thinks it can oversee such an industry with inspectors who have greatly reduced proficiency; an investigation agency that doesn’t take accidents seriously; and a media who can’t honestly report what’s happening.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has his work cut out for him. He has critical problems with the quality of staff in both the FAA and the NTSB. He will have to think outside the box and trust the lower-level people — those who do the oversight, inspection, and surveillance — to fix these agencies. Why? Because bureaucrats and upper-management types broke these agencies to begin with.
Stephen Carbone has spent 40 years in the aviation industry, 19 years of it with the airlines. He retired in 2022 after 20 years as an FAA inspector and NTSB major accident investigator before starting his own consulting business, Aircraft Maintenance Safety Professionals.
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