George’s Point of View

Oversight is one of those words in the English language that bothers me because it means the opposite of itself.

An oversight is something that was missed. Something that is over-looked is something that was not seen. That smudge on my windshield after a car wash–that is an oversight. The Christmas bicycle that came without it’s assembly manual–that is an oversight.

Oversight means the unintentional failure to notice. It’s an “oops.”

But–oversight also means the act of supervision. It is frequently mentioned in terms of aircraft; the FAA and the NTSB are responsible for Aviation oversight. But when I read that, I read two completely opposite sentences. The FAA and the NTSB are responsible for supervising aviation. AND the FAA and the NTSB are responsible for what they missed.

When I read the usage of “oversight” (meaning supervision) I am waiting for the other shoe. What have they overlooked (missed) now? What’s the oversight (supervisor) oversight (missed)?

And now I see the oversight (missed) is the licensing of aircraft mechanics.

Apparently the procedure to qualify aircraft mechanics is poorly administered. Hundreds of aircraft mechanics may have been improperly licensed

The crisis comes down to faulty testing by FAA examiners who profit from testing in “diploma mills.” Apparently the FAA does not keep employment histories on the mechanics they license. There have even been programs where testing was delayed; and when the program was discontinued, the untested mechanics kept working.

So where do we look when there’s an accident like the Indonesian Air Force Lockheed L-100-30(P) Hercules whose wing fell off in flight on May 20th 2009? (Granted that this is NOT a US plane–but there are US incidents. This is just a recent one.) Did the pilot cause that wing to fall off? Of course not. The pilot climbed into that plane in good faith, with complete trust in the mechanics whose job it is to keep the plane in safe running order. The pilot relies on the integrity of the mechanics to maintain the integrity of the plane. As do we all.

Fortunately, integrity is a word in the English language that always means what it means:
The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness; the state of being whole and undivided; the condition of being unified, unimpaired, sound in construction : the structural integrity; lack of corruption.

Is it too much to ask of our FAA to require integrity in our mechanics and the planes they maintain? Integrity is not an oversight; but lack of integrity in oversight is.