Air Safety

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malfunctioning engine, but it wasn't repaired until it failed on takeoff at the Dallas-Ft. Worth airport.

The FAA also found that American had used plastic pulleys on three DC-10s in place of metal devices that help control the wing slats that slow the plane down. The error went undetected for three months until a 200-pound slat fell off when one of the planes landed.

Management at American claimed the mistake wasn't dangerous, but an FAA inspector says it could have been "catastrophic" if the falling slat had dam -aged other aircraft parts. The FAA inspector said American's response indicated a "poor attitude toward safety."

FAA's honor system

However, it would be misleading to assume that the FAA's attitude toward enforcing good safety attitudes is much better.

Most people probably assume that the FAA wouldn't allow an unsafe airline to fly. "But seldom have so many people been so profoundly deluded," Nance tells us in Blind Trust. "The FAA has no such control....In reality, the FAA is too undermanned and ill equipped to have any idea what actually goes on at the heart of the average airline.

"As of 1985," Nance concludes, "the airlines are on the honor system with respect to safety-and not all are honorable."

And things are not getting any better. In 1979 the FAA had 2012 inspectors to monitor 237 air carriers, commuters, and air taxi operators. In 1985 the number of inspectors had dropped to 1469, but the number of airlines had jumped to more than 400.

To make matters worse, this reduced inspector workforce has had to devote more time to certifying the rash of new postderegulation airlines that have gone into A MASS fui business. From 1980 to 1985, to be exact, 76 new carriers and 233 new commuter airlines entered the market. This means less time for the FAA to monitor already operating carriers.

Yet, Congress has cut another $55 million from the FAA's fiscal year 1986 budget. And another 5-percent cut is expected in March under the new GrammRudman "budget balancing" law.

FAA Administrator Donald Engen has imposed "severe constraints" on spending and is expected to begin laying off FAA technicians who maintain the air-traffic control systems.

Howard Johannssen, president of the Professional Airways Systems Specialists, the technicians union, said the layoffs will "induce a whole new slate (of safety problems) that is going to cause more and more disasters."

Johannssen said that the FAA will "find out what the natural disaster level is in the name of fiscal responsibility."

At the same time, ALPA charges that the FAA is stockpiling some $7.5 billion in an air-safety trust fund that could be used to keep the skies safer.

The pilots union is especially concerned over delays in implementing new Doppler radar systems at airports, which would vastly improve the capability to detect wind shear and microburst wind phenomena, which have caused 15 commerical accidents since 1970.

Understaffed, underfunded, and over -whelmed by the enormity of its respon -sibility, the FAA tries to get by with "softcop" monitoring in an industry engaged in hard-nosed competition. The results, at times, can be disastrous.

Another area of genuine concern involves the severely strained air-traffic control system. Today, the system is back at full capacity, nearly five years after President Reagan fired more than 10,000 striking airtraffic controllers in 1981.

More planes and less controllers But it is lagging far behind its pre-strike capability. Before the strike, there were 16,412 controllers. As of June 1985, there were 12,472 controllers. Today, there are about 5000 less of the most highly skilled full-performance level controllers than before the 1981 strike.

And the problems that led to the strike remain in full force. The House Subcommittee on Investigations and Over -sight recently reported that " stress, fatigue, staffing shortages, increasing traffic, lack of supervision and an unseasoned workforce have all impacted the margin of safety." The facility manager for the FAA's Denver center, in fact, warned his superiors in May 1984 that heavy traffic and an overtaxed workforce had created a "very high risk of a midair collision" at Denver. But Denver is not an isolated trouble spot. The number of near misses in the skies soared to a record 592 in 1984. During the first five months of 1985 the rate of near misses grew even faster than the previous year.

If the controllers had won their strike in 1981, air traffic today would be controlled by a more experienced, larger, and lessstressed workforce. It would have meant a better working environment and-safer skies.

Nance explains Blind Trust that the Available Now Socialist Action pamphlets 1. "A Mass Action Strategy for Peace, Jobs and Justice," by Carl Finamore, 24 pp. ,75 cents ($1.10 includes postage). 2. "Revolt in South Africa," by Michael Schreiber and Carole Seligman, 24 pp., 75 cents ($1.10 includes postage).

To order write: Socialist Action Publishing Association, 3435 Army St., Rm. 308, San Francisco, CA 94110.

SOCIALIST ACTI The question is this: How safe is it technically and humanly possible for air travel to be? Are things as safe as they should be? The answer is no.

The more extreme advocates of deregulation believe that airlines should run their operations as they see fit. If they kill too many passengers, business will drop off, and they will fall by the economic wayside.

Leave air safety to the whims of the marketplace, they in effect argue, and let the passenger decide which airline is least likely to kill.

For those who make the wrong consumer choice, as Nance concludes with grim irony, "the knowledge that you have helped free-market forces reign supreme will be of little solace to you in the final seconds before impact."

Helping "free-market forces reign supreme"-this is the built-in flaw in the FAA's charter, which mandates the agency's duty to not only ensure safe air travel, but "promote" the aviation industry. Time and again these two tasks have proved to be mutally exclusive.

But more than the FAA, it is a flaw in the industry itself. As long as management profit margins dictate the nature of public air transportation, safety will remain a "cost-accountable" item-and human be -ings will continue to die in air disasters that should not have happened.

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& JUSTICE A SOCIALIST ACTION PANI

AFRICA A SOCIALIST ACTION PAMPHLET