George’s Point of View

There’s a lot that is said in the world about gatekeepers. If you haven’t heard about them, you’ve run into them. They’re the low level filter that keeps the riff raff out, in positions that look plebeian but which wield far more authority than their level on the hierarchy would suggest. That’s the guy at the door who won’t let you in. If you’re hitting the trendy night spot, he’s the one whose thumbs up — or thumbs down–decides your fate. It’s the secretary that let’s your call go through. It’s the one at the ticket office who lets you in on the really good seats to the fight. Those are the gatekeepers you see.

The ones to watch out for, though, are higher on the feeding chain. They’re the ones who appoint the gatekeepers. Usually they have some kind of agenda, but you’re not going to see them, or their agendas, because the main thing about them is that they’re the part of the iceberg that you don’t see. They’re very good at staying underground, until something comes along like the Titanic.

So picture this:

Your job is inspecting planes. You’re sort of the gatekeeper for the plane. IF you say yes, it flies, then, well…it flies. If you say no, the plane goes back to the drawing board. Your whole purpose is to be discriminating–to keep out the riff raff. You keep the “plane” bakers from serving the planes before they’re “done.” You catch what problems there be, so there won’t be a disaster down the road. Imagine if you report a problem with a plane, and instead of getting commendations from the powers that be for your superlative discernment, you get shunted off to a desk, and the powers that be rule in favor of the airline. And then a year later, the plane you had issues with causes a disaster which you may have been able to prevent.

This is all under investigation, and it may all be smoke and mirrors and finger pointing.

It may be something more.

I’m talking about inspector Christopher J. Monteleon whose story is in the New York Times.

Monteleon got moved to a desk for doing his job. The situation seems to have been the catalyst for a whole lot of professional trouble for him. What if someone had paid attention to his concerns? Would the Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 been given more refinements? Would changes have been made that could have made it safer?

Then, Monteleon complained that the Office of Runway Safety “was using skewed methodology to understate the severity of safety concerns.” He wasn’t monitoring a flight that was subjected to dangerous icing that was being flown by a poorly trained and exhausted pilot. But maybe his is the kind of eye that would have made someone somewhere insert an extra page in the manual to cover the situation that would have saved 49 lives.

Maybe his contribution would have made no difference at all to the tragic Colgan/Buffalo NY flight.

But I’m looking past Monteleon and this particular incident to the bigger picture. I’m looking at his superiors who for some reason discounted the advice of their own expert. His bosses may not have liked the squeaky wheel, but his JOB was to do the squeaking. Apparently they wanted him to shut up, and stop getting in the way of the airline business. Apparently someone in the FAA forgot that the FAA does not work FOR the airlines. Their directive is to regulate civil aviation to promote safety–NOT commerce.

I am wondering if there is a part of the FAA iceberg that needs to be brought into the light. I suspect that Mr. Monteleon agrees with me.