Federal Aviation Administration officials failed to hold Northwest Airlines accountable for what may have been more than 1,000 safety violations committed over more than a decade, a government report says.
The report by the Transportation Department’s inspector general backs the allegations of whistleblower Mark Lund, a FAA inspector who in 2005 and 2008 accused FAA managers of being too cozy with airline companies, The Associated Press reports. When airlines disclosed their safety failures, Lund said, FAA managers rarely forced the companies to correct their violations.
In response to Lund’s 2008 allegations, FAA conducted a review of safety compliance at major airlines. In a four-month period in that year, Northwest failed to follow safety orders 14 times — one of the highest rates of noncompliance of all the airlines, the report said.
But even after the FAA’s review, Northwest continued to operate without correcting safety violations in eight instances, and the FAA closed five of the cases without imposing penalties or fines.
“FAA inspectors continued to work collaboratively with Northwest to resolve deficiencies, and closing enforcement cases primarily by issuing letters of correction rather than seeking civil penalties,” the Office of Special Counsel, which handles federal whistleblower complaints, said in a news release Thursday.
Based on this pattern, the Office of Special Counsel said, it was “unknown” whether Northwest had complied with more than 1,000 orders to fix safety problems in the last decade.
Northwest merged with Delta Air Lines last year, and now flies as Delta. A Delta spokesman said the company is reviewing the documents and plans to fully cooperate with government officials.
In response to the report, the FAA established an internal review team to adopt the inspector’s general recommended changes, and has proposed disciplinary action against two FAA managers.
