Inspector to
review claim of
isle flight safety
violations

A pilot is contesting
American Air's assigning of
2 pilots instead of 3 on some
Dallas-Honolulu legs

---

By John Hughes
Bloomberg News

WASHINGTON >> A U.S. inspector agreed to review a pilot union official's claim that aviation regulators in Fort Worth, Texas, were lax in overseeing American Airlines.

The claim was prompted after the Federal Aviation Administration found the airline stayed within safety rules when assigning two pilots, instead of three, on some flights from Dallas to Honolulu.

The regional FAA officials ignored union complaints, conducted biased investigations and failed to tell FAA Washington officials of rule violations, said Rich Rubin of the Allied Pilots Association.

FAA officials in Fort Worth also joined American in trying to reverse an FAA Washington official's interpretation of pilot duty time requirements, Rubin said. "Obviously they did not perform their role to provide oversight over American," he said.

Kenneth Mead, the U.S. Department of Transportation's inspector general, is "taking an initial look" at the complaints, said spokesman David Barnes. "We're taking a sniff to see if there's anything to it," he said.

FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said she had not yet been briefed on Mead's plans so she could not yet comment, though she said the FAA would cooperate fully. John Hotard, a spokesman for Fort Worth-based American, said airline officials "welcome" the Mead review and would work with the inspector general.

Rubin, who chairs Allied pilots' flight time/duty time committee, detailed his allegations in a 14-page letter to Mead and met with officials in Mead's office. Rubin said he sought Mead's help in part because the union official was unhappy with an Aug. 1 decision by the FAA's Fort Worth office. Thomas Stuckey, the flight standards division manager in the office, found that American worked within safety rules by using two pilots instead of three on June flights between Dallas and Honolulu.

Rubin had filed a complaint July 2 that the absence of a reserve pilot, who could give the other two pilots rest breaks, compromised safety.

One captain reported that a Fort Worth FAA inspector observed him nodding off involuntarily in the cockpit on a Dallas-to-Honolulu flight, Rubin said. The captain observed the inspector involuntarily nodding off on the same flight, he said.

Rubin also contends a Fort Worth FAA official knew American violated pilot duty requirements from December 1999 to May 2000 but failed to advise FAA headquarters of the problem. FAA auditors from Washington discovered the deficiencies themselves during an audit of American in May 2000, Rubin said. The FAA in July proposed fining American $285,000, saying the world's largest carrier in 38 instances during a 15-day period in August 2000 did not give pilots the eight hours of rest required in the 24-hour period before the pilots completed flights.