San Francisco Chronicle: FAA Needs New Leadership, Bring In Sully Sullenberger
By Captain Shem Malmquist and Roger Rapoport
Donald Trump, former CEO of an eponymous failed airline, has ungrounded the Boeing 737 MAX which resumes commercial service this week from Miami and New York. His administration’s lame-duck decision has been met with skepticism from many passengers nervous about boarding the plane.
Despite criticism from Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Chair Roger Wicker, R-Miss., former National Transportation Safety Board member John Goglia and ourselves, Trump’s Federal Aviation Administration has hurriedly greenlighted this controversial aircraft for commercial service. The president wants Americans to fly the 737 MAX at the same time the Centers for Disease Control has implored Americans to stop traveling in an attempt to curb the spread of COVID-19.
Grounded and mothballed worldwide for 21 months after 2018 and 2019 crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia, this plane is the fastest-selling airliner in aviation history. For months normally communicative FAA and Boeing experts have refused to answer our questions focused on lessons learned from the MAX and other computer-related aviation disasters worldwide.
They include failed probability estimates, common cause anomalies, radio frequency interference, radome damage (the shell protecting the radar antenna), the parameters of horizontal stabilizer testing, unusual events where the stabilizer is dangerously stuck and emergency procedures. Any one of these issues could potentially be cause for concern with the recertified MAX and contribute to unexpected difficulties.
Critical to this process is FAA Administrator Steve Dickson, former Delta flight operations senior vice president. He and the airline have just ended up on the losing end of the biggest aviation whistle-blower judgment in American history. Harsh words for Dickson in the Dec. 21 OSHA tribunal ruling raise questions about his integrity and credibility.
In January 2016, veteran Delta first officer Karlene Petitt delivered a report to her superiors raising issues concerning: pilot fatigue, pilot training, pilot training records, and Delta’s failure to properly maintain its FAA-mandated Safety Management Systems (SMS) program. Her study was based on the Ph.D. thesis she wrote at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
Even though the FAA agreed with Petitt’s complaint on the fatigue issue and implemented corrective action, the self-proclaimed “open door” airline disputed this employee analysis. The carrier grounded Petitt for 21 months while Illinois psychiatrist David Altman reviewed her fitness to fly for a $73,000 fee.
The Delta-hired examiner diagnosed Pettit as “bipolar” after revisiting her remarkable multitasking 30 years earlier. In a deposition he said flying, going to night school, assisting her husband’s business and being the nursing mom of three children was “well beyond what any woman I’ve ever met could do.”
Mayo Clinic experts and a third tiebreaker psychiatrist disputed Dr. Altman’s opinion. Petitt subsequently filed an OSHA AIR 21 aviation whistle-blower lawsuit against Delta and Dickson. As the case was being reviewed, the airline restored Petitt to international flight duty.
Last week an OSHA tribunal awarded Petitt $500,000 in compensatory damages for the “severe emotional toll placed on (her) well being,” a pay raise, and back vacation pay.
This opinion concluded that Dickson’s deposition in this high profile case was “less than credible as it found many of his responses evasive.” His emails made it clear that Delta’s “much touted ‘open door policy’ was not as opened as portrayed.’” Noting that Altman signed an August consent decree with state regulators that terminated his practice of medicine in Illinois, the tribunal said:
“It is improper for (Delta) to weaponize this process for the purposes of obtaining blind compliance by its pilots due to fear that (Delta) can ruin their career.”
At Dickson’s July 2019 confirmation, Commerce Committee Ranking Member Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said the candidate’s failure to make a Senate-required disclosure of his key role in Petitt’s case raised “serious questions about his leadership.”
We believe Transportation Secretary nominee Pete Buttigieg and President-elect Joe Biden should ask FAA Administrator Dickson to resign and replace him with a well-qualified independent voice: “Miracle on the Hudson” Captain Chesley Sullenberger.
He was a farsighted opponent of Dickson’s bitterly divided confirmation opposed by all voting Senate Democrats last year. Sullenberger has the lifetime experience, wisdom and good judgment to lead the FAA at this critical moment in American aviation history.
Shem Malmquist, a veteran international Boeing captain and accident investigator, is a visiting professor at Florida Institute of Technology. He and Roger Rapoport are coauthors of the new book “Grounded: How To Solve the Aviation Crisis” (Lexographic Press).