Air Chaos: Bushworld Strikes Again

Mathew L. Wald and Micheline Maynard, writing in The NYT this morning, lay out how the current air chaos followed from Bush's lack of governance. Like the crisis in the financial markets, Katrina, and so much else, the airline troubles resulted not so just from his personal incompetence but also from his attempt to implement conservative ideology. Randites like Alan Greenspan and their many fellow travelers in Bushworld believe in market magic - they think that government regulation isn't needed.

In the case of the airlines, things reached a critical point when whistleblowers pointed out that deregulation had reached the point where the law was being flouted.

What happened?

One answer is that some whistle-blower inspectors for the Federal Aviation Administration disclosed that they had been discouraged from cracking down on Southwest Airlines for maintenance problems, and they found a sympathetic audience with some Washington lawmakers.

That prodded the F.A.A. to order a national audit to check whether airlines were in compliance — and to propose a record penalty of $10.2 million against Southwest.

Then F.A.A. inspectors discovered the mistakes that prompted American to cancel more than 3,000 flights last week. Delta, United, Alaska and others also canceled hundreds of flights.

But more broadly, the turmoil is better understood as a reaction — or overreaction, in the eyes of some in the industry — to a long-term shift, over two presidencies, in the way the F.A.A. oversees the airlines.

In the 1990s, the agency was more of a cop on the beat, handing out penalties to those who broke the rules.

“You used to fear an F.A.A. inspector showing up,” said Joseph Tiberi, a spokesman with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. “They checked everything from the nuts and bolts in your tool kit to the paperwork in the cockpit.”

But then a different, more collaborative approach emerged that critics say went too far. After the 2001 terrorist attacks, which crippled the industry, the agency began “a creep away from their rigorous oversight of maintenance,” said Representative James L. Oberstar, Democrat of Minnesota and the chairman of the House committee that has pushed the issue.

Of course contempt for the law is standard in Bushworld, but airline passengers are heavily weighted to the powerful and influential, including Congress. A lot of those people weren't willing for for their broken bodies on a hillside to become the latest monument to right-wing folly.