Safety Record Stands Out To Foreign Regulators

If you watched news coverage around the United States over the past few months, you could come away very disillusioned with the Federal Aviation Administration. The administration's attempt to ram a square user-fee peg into a round political hole, a constant stream of embarrassing charges from unions representing inspectors and air traffic controllers, and recent revelations of major gaps in airline oversight, followed by Draconian groundings that stranded hundreds of thousands of passengers, all make the agency and its acting administrator look like the Keystone Cops.

With the exception of everywhere else in the world, that is. The New York Times reports the FAA is still held up as a shining example by aviation regulators worldwide for one simple reason -- the world's best safety record.

The Times notes regulation in the rapidly-growing Asia-Pacific region, where passenger traffic grew seven percent just in the last year, is a patchwork. The European Union now holds individual countries to a higher, European bloc standard, yet still has an accident rate far higher than the United States. In Africa, airliners crash once in every 244,000 flights, about six times the worldwide average.

There are many reasons for the disparity among nations. In many areas, growth in air travel is outstripping the supply of qualified mechanics, regulators are underpaid or corrupt, and top people in relatively poor countries are lured away to higher-paying jobs in the industry.

Wolfgang Didszuhn, a retired vice president for airworthiness at Airbus, who is now a consultant to the air safety authority of the United Arab Emirates, told the Times he doesn't understand the recent uproar over the FAA -- saying the agency's recent bad press looks to outsiders like an "overreaction.

"I don’t think the FAA’s image has suffered from this, but I do think everybody feels a bit sorry for them," he said.

Well, OK... everybody except NATCA, PASS, AOPA, NBAA, 300,000 stranded American Airlines passengers...

FMI: www.faa.gov