Kind Words for Continental

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Langdon's findings were never made public. When Senators reviewed the report last March at a hearing of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, the recommendations for enforcement action had been deleted. Also missing were critical comments about Continental's management, the company's strike problems and the shortage of personnel. Expunged were Langdon's criticisms of lax enforcement of regulations by Western Pacific regional officials of the FAA. Whole pages and key paragraphs had disappeared, but some words had been added. "Continental Airlines personnel and management remained cooperative" was changed to "Continental Airlines personnel and management were very cooperative."

The revisions came from the top level of FAA management. Anthony Broderick, the agency's associate administrator for aviation standards, took the highly unusual step of returning the voluminous report and documentation to the Western Pacific regional office with orders to rewrite it. As he said to the Senate subcommittee, "I requested that they . . . remove any material that was unwarranted generalization or unsubstantiated opinion not supported by facts." The rewrite, however, left in undocumented statements of opinion favorable to Continental.

Langdon, who has since retired, wrote to Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Dole protesting what he called a "cover-up." Dole did not respond, but FAA Chief Donald Engen says "there is no basis in fact for what Mr. Langdon states . . . When you get down to it, you find it to be a labor-management issue."

Republican Congressman Guy Molinari of New York intends to press for further hearings on the matter. Molinari particularly wants to know whether the regulatory agency was unduly influenced by former high-level FAA officials hired by Continental. These include Clark Onstad, the FAA's onetime chief counsel, now Continental's vice president of governmental affairs in Washington, and Dewey Roark, the FAA regulations attorney who became a legal consultant to Continental in March 1984 and helped draft the airline's rebuttal to the Langdon report.

Ultimately, the penalties against Continental were no more than a mild slap. The FAA fined the airline less than $100,000 for three of the violations, and allowed the others to be corrected after warning letters. In contrast to the Continental experience, Alaska Airlines had 90 pilots grounded in 1984 for similar training violations. The FAA also fined the smaller airline a stiff $600,000.