The General Welfare
On October 26th, 2022, in the White House’s Eisenhower Executive Building, President Biden announced that the Secretary of the Department of Transportation (SDOT) would be going after unfair airline fees. “Last summer if your flight was canceled or delayed … rebook for free, even though they’re the ones that canceled, not you; you didn’t fail to show up, they canceled.” The President of the United States (POTUS) said SDOT Buttigieg called out the airlines and said, “That’s progress.”
Nah, it’s really not. It’s more a distraction than progress. It ignores the general welfare.
Buying an airline ticket is a contract between the purchaser and the airline. Even though POTUS revisited this superfluous topic again in his 2023 State of the Union, it was apparent that he would use ticket prices as an excuse to reregulate the airlines in some way, to portray government solving the ‘ills’ of society, even though the ‘ills’ in this case were fabricated … by government.
What happened with Southwest during the holidays was unfortunate, but not illegal, not even immoral. While upsets may have devastated travelers’ plans, assigning a committee to investigate what amounted to technology problems or job actions is not a good use of taxpayer money. Let’s save millions of dollars in investigation costs: Ticket costs are up because of higher fuel costs and CØVID shutdowns. Americans are less concerned with space available in the air and more worried about Chinese spy balloons in the national air space.
What has been going on with the Department of Transportation (DOT) lately? A Union Pacific train derailed in Albert Lea, Minnesota, on May 15, 2021; the Amtrak Empire Builder derailed near Joplin, Montana, on September 26, 2021; a Union Pacific train derailed in Hampton, Iowa on September 5, 2022. Now, a Norfolk Southern train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio on February 10, 2023. The devastation from this last accident is still too early to determine, with 20 cars carrying hazardous materials that are destroying animal life and harming humans. If not for the media’s bad case of short-term memory loss, these four derailments would be branded a safety crisis the DOT’s Rail division never experienced before.
Some think, ‘It’s only a cargo train.’ The momentum of each derailed train, the sum of metal destroyed, and the lives upended, ‘out-disasters’ any series of aviation crashes to date. Strange that rail safety has suffered so much in a period of 636 days, yet we don’t blink an eye because it doesn’t happen near us, to us. We should be scared because the CØVID shutdown effects are starting to be felt. We won’t read about safety issues in the DOT’s Marine division (unless there are still supply ships sitting outside LA harbors) or be able to filter out the uncountable safety issues in the DOT’s Highway division. Rail is giving us a taste of things to come. Transportation safety has hit an unprecedented low. While POTUS and SDOT distract with the cost of airline tickets, they hide from us the inevitable disaster yet to come. We just don’t know where, when, or how. But make no mistake, it’s coming.
A joke headline on social media read, ‘Pete Buttigieg [SDOT] promises to investigate Ohio Railway Chemical Spill for Signs of Racism.’ Under the ‘Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction’ category, this isn’t funny. SDOT’s comments about racial disparity to the National Association of Counties Legislative Conference in Washington on February 13th demonstrated he wouldn’t earnestly address the Ohio crisis. His past references to silliness, such as ‘racist roads’ and other such nonsense, only verifies that SDOT cannot speak with any seriousness to anything, especially safety. He said the normal bureaucratic platitudes, such as ‘We’re actively engaged’ or ‘I continue to be concerned,’ but it’s all supercilious blather thrown over SDOT’s shoulder as he runs to his next luncheon of chicken nuggets. This is why transportation is in danger of imploding; we give a microphone to mediocrity and get more big government waffling.
That is why ludicrous issues like airline tickets are a distraction … and a dangerous one at that. SDOT may look to weaponize the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) against the airlines, use the FAA in a campaign to gather power from the transportation industry’s free market system. The alarming part is the FAA has enough problems staying on mission, the pursuit of Aviation Safety, for which it has been failing miserably at for years.
The FAA’s internal structure has decayed. The Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Parts describe all the safety rules for aviation certificate holders, yet the directions the FAA has taken threaten aviation safety more than the most arrogant of rogue certificate holders.
To set the stage, in 2007, the FAA went to an extraordinary effort to become International Organization for Standardization – ISO-9001 – rated. The assistant administrator at the time decided the FAA across the country and international offices had to be consistent, a monumental idea at the time to get all FAA offices to function as one, to provide uniform oversight to the aviation industry. This long term mission would guarantee a safer, more efficient FAA and thus a safer and more efficient aviation industry. It would do so with less infighting and more attention to safety issues. Maintaining an ISO-9001 standard required a decades long process to weed out inconsistencies, while delivering promising progress to achieving its goal. FAA commitment to ISO meant internal audits – the Flight Standards Evaluation Program (FSEP) audits– of each office every three years.
This every-three-year FSEP audit schedule, however, did not sit well with those who chose management in the 2017 to 2019 timeframe. Some office managers exerted great efforts not fixing problems than to do what was necessary to correct the wrongs. Under the excuse of CØVID shutdowns, upper management decided to indefinitely suspend FSEP auditing before conveniently ‘forgetting’ to bring it back. FSEP audits have not been conducted since January 2020 and the FSEP shutdown is now in its fourth year.
What did this mean to the FAA mission? Those in upper management who allowed the ISO-9001 rating to expire and the FSEP audits to go away, could now focus on nonsensical pursuits. Safety gradually took a backseat to entitlement programs and political mischief. While this break from FAA’s mission didn’t begin with the present SDOT, it slowly built up during former SDOTs’ tenures.
Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion (DEI) policies began to override the FAA’s mission. Unproven and unethical in a safety environment, DEI infiltrated FAA training, becoming a required course. The problem was that the FAA – and most likely any other transportation mode oversight agency – was not racist or misogynist. Professional women and those ‘not white’ were suddenly lumped into groups with those who have make-believe gꞓnders or the emotionally ill. And to what end? Not to increase safety or even to keep to mission, but to make a progressive utopia dedicated to individual needs … not the general welfare.
Every FAA employee, from management to ASI, after fulfilling their training, took an oath to uphold the Constitution. The Constitution is very specific about its application, namely, “… to promote the general welfare …” What does this mean? As a sworn public servant, every FAA aviation safety inspector (ASI) is sworn to protect aviation industry safety. It’s not a contract, but a sworn dedication and responsibility. However, as an agency, the FAA, particularly management, cannot honestly say that they’ve been honoring that commitment.
The FAA’s newfound DEI principles led to the trivial replacing safety. For instance, why is the term ‘airman’ such a problem? Or ‘repairman’? Or manpower? In my forty years in the aviation industry, I’ve known thousands of men and women of every race certificated as ‘airmen’ or ‘repairmen’ who have never paid attention to the title, because they have the maturity to know it’s a title and doesn’t reflect on their gender. How ignorant do we have to be to lower our self-worth to a title? How often should the FAA surrender to ignoble concepts, dignifying individual neediness while ignoring the general welfare?
FAA ASIs will be unjustly tagged for years to come for FAA management’s kneeling to woke concepts, delving into DEI’s emotional eccentricities, or postponing much needed surveillance because political agenda eclipsed safety. For three years FAA ASIs have been reined in from working towards the goal of aviation safety so that the fear of doing one’s job could obscure the more important anxiety of not doing one’s job. Consider how the medical community will suffer for years to come for surrendering to the CØVID foolishness. Think about how the population has been denied medical treatment or are forced to wear masks after three years while everyone with common sense knows it’s a farce.
Speaking of the medical community, for what purpose did the FAA medical department quietly change the electrocardiogram (EKG) requirements for pilots? On October 24th, 2022, with no warning, the FAA lowered the EKG health needs for pilots. Pilots whose heart conditions were a health issue before are now a shrug of the shoulders, as if to say, “That angina? Pain in your chest? Shortness of breath? You can ignore it now. The FAA says, you’re fine. Happy flight.” This EKG change, along with the uptick in athlete deaths and fatalities among the young, is strangely aligned with the CØVID vaꞓꞓine timeframe.
To be clear, EKG medical findings of pilots taking their flight physicals in September 2022, were more stringent than EKG medical findings in pilots since October 24th. Why? If the EKG changes were not a concern, then why not speak to it publicly – why hide it? Did SDOT know about these changes? Why didn’t he pursue a hearing with FAA management? That the FAA made this dishonest move without thought for the countless lives put at risk is demonstrative to how corrupt FAA upper management has become and the level of complacency that has gripped the agency. The long term – maybe even short term – consequences are clear: This will be disastrous. Safety has been trafficked for agenda.
Since FAA’s oversight capabilities have been dramatically weakened by CØVID, so also are the safety reporting and investigations ASIs accomplished. The pre-CØVID FAA would go onsite to conduct safety hotlines and whistleblower investigations; eyes-on scrutiny stipulated by the certificate office’s work programs. These weren’t a choice, these were required. But since CØVID forced certificate offices to hide their resources in their caves, many certificate holders in the industry have had the freedom to loosen the bonds of regulatory responsibility, the reason why FAA maintained constant surveillance for decades.
With vaꞓꞓine mąndates forced on a wary FAA workforce, those who could, left. The unconstitutional mąndate left an enormous vacuum at FAA; decades of industry experience and knowledge of regulatory oversight were forever lost in just weeks. Then the FAA Academy went into overdrive to get manpower to pre-CØVID numbers. Academy instructors, many FAA retirees, tried to give FAA new hires the exposure to regulatory oversight they deserved. The only hindrance was that FAA management still clung to pre-CØVID restrictions, such as ineffective virtual instruction. Again, FAA management crippled aviation safety with shortsightedness.
No one with common sense is asking for SDOT’s resignation; that serves no purpose. What we, as taxpaying citizens, demand is that SDOT do his job, namely making all transportation safe again. Remove the three-year old CØVID leashes you have put on safety regulators and get back to prioritizing Safety. There are many consequences to be had. FAA culture has been damaged far beyond the abilities of a short-term comeback. These effects are unseen by the public and the industry. FAA management will discover that agendas and emotions have cancelled the FAA’s effectiveness. FAA management is about to discover they ignored a promise, a 235-year-old contract to promote the general welfare.