Federal Aviation Administration: Robert Sturgell Strands Air Travelers With Crackdown After Criticism
Federal Aviation Administration: Robert Sturgell Strands Air Travelers With Crackdown After Criticism
Robert Sturgell, a federal agency chief unknown to most air travelers, helped strand 273,000 of them by cracking down on safety after being criticized for doing too little.
Sturgell, acting administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, and his agency enforced an order against American Airlines to “look like they’re tough” amid congressional pressure, industry consultant Michael Boyd said in an interview yesterday.
The FAA is “playing politics,” said Boyd, president of Evergreen, Colorado-based Boyd Group. “You’ve got hundreds of thousands of people inconvenienced, jobs being threatened, and it’s got nothing to do with improving safety.”
The cancellation of almost 2,500 American flights over three days may further dim the prospects that Sturgell, 48, will win Senate approval for the job. The disruptions followed the FAA’s finding that wiring in 300 of American’s jets wasn’t fastened according to a 2006 directive.
“They certainly shouldn’t confirm Mr. Sturgell until he shows a regulatory-compliant attitude instead of being defensive and saying everything’s hunky-dory,” Representative James Oberstar, a Minnesota Democrat who chairs the House Transportation committee, said yesterday in an interview.
Criticism snowballed last month after a probe by Oberstar’s panel found that an FAA supervisor let 46 Southwest Airlines Co. planes fly without inspections in 2007. The uproar was still under way when the FAA questioned the wiring bundles in American’s Boeing Co. MD-80s.
`All About Safety’
“Under no circumstances” was FAA’s response to American an overreaction or political in nature, spokeswoman Lynn Tierney said. “We found them out of compliance. It’s a complex process, and it’s all about safety.”
Sturgell, a former United Airlines pilot and U.S. Navy aviator, wasn’t available for comment or an interview, Tierney said.
The FAA hasn’t been attacked so harshly on its oversight since the 1996 ValuJet crash that killed 110 people, said Peter Goelz, former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board.
“By-the-book” enforcement is the agency’s response to the current criticism, Goelz said.
“When they saw that the system could almost be gamed the way it was at Southwest, they decided to take a look at everybody under the umbrella of the zero tolerance,” said Goelz, senior vice president at O’Neill & Associates in Washington. “That’s what Congress was calling for.”
Robert Ditchey, a founder of America West Airlines, said American could have fixed the wiring without grounding the jets. The FAA found no safety issues on the planes and was concerned that the bundles didn’t meet standards including the orientation of certain clamps, according to AMR Corp.’s American.
`Overreacted’
“The FAA in my judgment overreacted,” said Ditchey, who is now an independent consultant in Marina del Rey, California. “The airline executives are afraid to stand up and say, `Hey, let’s put a little common sense to this.”’
Sturgell has avoided the spotlight since the Southwest disclosures. His safety chief, Nicholas Sabatini, has been the agency’s face at hearings where the FAA has been slammed.
“Lax oversight of Southwest Airlines has cast a serious pall over the agency’s ability to execute its core mission,” Senator Jay Rockefeller, the West Virginia Democrat who chairs the Senate aviation subcommittee, said at a hearing yesterday. “Each passing day brings more questions and not answers.”
Sturgell, speaking at an April 3 news conference, said the agency “had a breakdown” with the Southwest inspections. “The bottom line, despite what a small few may imply, is that our system works,” he said.
`No Repentance’
“I see no repentance at the top,” Oberstar said. “They’re still in denial.”
Tom Brantley, the chief of the FAA’s inspectors union, said, “Not admitting there’s a problem really starts making the agency look worse than it would.”
Sturgell was tapped by Marion Blakey as a senior policy adviser when she chaired the NTSB. A U.S. Naval Academy graduate, he had an aviation background that included flying jets such as the F-18 for the Navy and Boeing 757s and 767s for UAL Corp.’s United, along with a law degree from the University of Virginia.
He followed Blakey to the FAA when she became the administrator and worked for four years as her deputy. A former instructor at Top Gun, the Navy Fighter Weapons School, Sturgell also previously worked as an attorney practicing aviation law.
A month after Blakey left the FAA, President George W. Bush nominated Sturgell for a five-year term to run the agency. His Senate confirmation stalled when New Jersey Democrats Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez put “holds” in place in February, citing questions about his leadership.
“Mr. Sturgell has to be held accountable, not promoted,” Lautenberg said at yesterday’s hearing.
Federal Aviation Administration: Robert Sturgell Strands Air Travelers With Crackdown After Criticism - Editing by Angus Smith
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April 26, 2008
Honorable United States Senator Arlen Specter (PA) The United States Senate, The United States Capitol
711 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510 USA
Re: Yesterday’s FAA Airspace Redesign Field Hearing In Philadelphia, PA
Quiet Rockland Requests You Withdraw All Support For “Bobby” Sturgell’s Confirmation
Dear Honorable Senator Specter:
I very much enjoyed speaking with you yesterday at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Thank you for chairing that field hearing (“Hearing”) of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Transportation and Housing and Urban Development. Thank you also for your hospitality, and that of your staff and the good people of Philadelphia.
Would-be FAA Head “Bobby” Sturgell’s evasive non-answers to you yesterday, were an outrage.
You performed a heroic tenacious job of cross-examining possibly the most evasive and squirmy witness I have ever seen or heard – that non-witness being one Robert Allan “Bobby” Sturgell himself. You had the courage to chastise a fellow Republican, Sturgell, for the salient fact also obvious to everyone in the room. You asked Mr. Sturgell essentially the same question seven (7) consecutive times calling for a simple “Yes” or “No” answer. This FAA Acting Administrator just flat-out refused to give you, or any of us American people, a clear answer on each of those consecutive seven (7) occasions.
Moreover, Sturgell smirked and laughed nervously as he (thought he) evaded you time-after-time - like a DelMarVa teenager thinking he was getting over on a law enforcement officer on a Spring Break traffic stop. I saw it, Senator. Up close. In person. I watched the whole spectacle in disgust.
“Bobby” Sturgell’s contemptuous behavior in your chaired off-site Senate proceeding, aside from being deceitful and unlawful, was an insult to you, an insult to those of us present, an insult to all your constituent Philadelphians and Pennsylvanians, an insult to the Constitution, and an insult to this country.
As you too saw, on the hallowed walls of the National Constitution Center was a clear inscribed writing on which Sturgell’s gaze must have been fixed as he lamely shuffled out of the building with his poster-boards and enablers in tow, reading: “The PEOPLE THEMSELVES [emphasis added] must be the ultimate means of their own Constitution. Theodore Roosevelt, 1912”.
Senator Specter, the people themselves have spoken, once again, now almost 100 years after President Roosevelt uttered those words. The people say that “Bobby” Sturgell must be lawfully removed from office now and immediately.
Please do not stand for, and do not tolerate, “Bobby” Sturgell’s insult to you, to your party, to your Pennsylvania constituents, and to this country.
Please make an on-record public statement withdrawing any previously-stated support you may have indicated for “Bobby” Sturgell’s confirmation as FAA Administrator. Sturgell lied to Senators Boxer, Lautenberg, McCaskill and the full Commerce Committee on February 8, 2008. He also lied to you in the writing that you called him on during his yesterday testimony.
Sturgell’s dishonesty knows no party, and no bounds – he will lie to members of either political party and to anyone else, in an endeavor to cover-up the defects of his FAA regime and to try to save his ever-shedding political skin. Yet under Sturgell’s failed FAA, the cracks in the Southwest Airlines airplanes in which his “leadership” let innocent unsuspecting passengers fly, and the fissures in his failed administration generally, are now as notable to all of us Americans as the very crack in the Liberty Bell itself, located just steps from the National Constitution Center.
Our country’s resolve shall never break, and shall most certainly not crack simply from the malfeasance of a dishonest rogue federal agency and ersatz appointee official within. We the people would simply select somebody else. We need you to make that happen for us.
Headed home yesterday shaking my head in disbelief after the Hearing, I walked by the site at which Thomas Jefferson is said to have penned the Declaration of Independence. Another day in beautiful, historic, and inspiring Philadelphia. Senator Specter, if Thomas Jefferson were still alive he would have found a way to fire “Bobby” Sturgell already. Jefferson too knew that a little revolution once in a while can be a good thing. We ask you to do everything in your power to send Sturgell out the revolution of that revolving door at 800 Independence Avenue, SW.
Quiet Rockland again calls for the removal of “Bobby” Sturgell even as Acting Administrator of the FAA. Sturgell is disingenuous, unfit to lead, and must be replaced immediately by a competent federal official who can handle the delicate balance of aviation safety, candor, and the Constitutional rights of American citizens.
Respectfully submitted, to your health and your good offices, with prayer,
John J. Tormey III, Esq.
Quiet Rockland
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