FLYING INTO TROUBLE

(7 of 16)

I was working at home on my computer when Pena took to the airwaves. As I heard his comments from the television across the room, my fingers froze over the keyboard. Was Pena ignorant of the true nature of the FAA?

The FAA administrator, David Hinson, echoed [Pena's] assurances. A former executive at Midway Airlines and McDonnell Douglas, Hinson had always seemed genuinely determined to streamline the FAA and address safety as well as commercial interests. Yet I knew he had to have seen the agency's own account of the differences among air carriers. Hinson had to realize that within a few days of the disaster, records had revealed that the crashed plane was a used DC-9, serial number 901VJ, that had been plagued with faulty equipment and emergency landings since January. Watching Transportation and FAA officials, I realized there was no charitable way to characterize what they were doing--they were simply lying to the public about ValuJet's record. It was not the first time I had seen the department react to a plane crash with a blitz of political spin control. But this time their overstatement and vehemence left me outraged.

The FAA officials very likely would have continued with their charade if not for a phone call to my home late in the week after the ValuJet crash. An anonymous FAA employee had tracked me down through a reporter. I needed to know, the voice said nervously, that in the days after Weintrob grilled the Atlanta inspectors about ValuJet, the Atlanta staff took a good look at the airline. Ten days later, they put their fears in writing to headquarters. Did I understand? the caller demanded. The field staff in Atlanta had recommended in February that ValuJet be grounded. They had put it in writing. Someone had quashed the memo.

The person on the line had just left the FAA building to call and tell me that one of the FAA associate administrators had gone into his office for a meeting to discuss the secret memo. He had the memo with him right now, the caller insisted.

I dialed the Inspector General's investigations office. "Send an investigator with a subpoena over" to the FAA, I demanded. For once, government wheels turned quickly, and the investigator rushed to the FAA. The meeting was already over, though, and FAA officials said they knew nothing about the memo.

But the next morning, the FAA called a press conference to offhandedly release a tall stack of ValuJet documents. Buried in the middle was the innocuous-looking report from the Atlanta staff. I practically lunged at the copy handed to me. Skimming several pages on Valujet's troubles, I stopped short at the field inspectors' bombshell: that "consideration should be given to an immediate FAR-121 recertification of this airline." Official FAA jargon, yes, but the meaning was clear: ground ValuJet.

The 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."