A simple analogy to clear up some misunderstandings, suspend some normal thought however:
You are driving down the road and a policeman stops you and looks at your inspection sticker.
He says your car is not properly inspected. You show him the certificate in which the State of (fill in the blank) has certified this store as passing all tests to give car inspections. He says, sorry, you're going to be fined.
You chose the inspection station because the state gave them a license to do inspections. While you are smart with cars, you can't do all of the work.
End of analogy.
The FAA certified depot maintenance shop used faulty subcontractors.
Is the FAA responsible? Absolutely.
Is SWA responsible? Absolutely.
Joint responsibility and if SWA is wise, we scratch off this depot site for future work. Who knows why the unapproved part was used but eventually the FAA and Boeing approved of the fix as temporary, no sacrifice to safety. That was the bottom line but wasn't properly reported.
SWA flew aircraft that came from FAA approved maintenance facilities. The FAA caught the problem later and was addressed by all parties to the mutual agreement of all without jeopardizing safety or significantly altering operations. A win-win-win for SWA, FAA and passengers. A fault sub-contractor is now either going to fix things or folks will be unemployed now (maybe your neighbors or family members).
If the FAA thought the place was bad they owed it to SWA to notify all parties. At the end of the day it wasn't SWA folks working on the airplane (unlike the AA MD airplanes as I understand it...those were AA paid employees if I recall...no slam intended...just pointing out the difference), it was an FAA approved maintenance facility subcontractor who made the decision.
As stated, SWA manned up and is doing the right thing and learning from it. Safety must always be tweaked for improvements. I believe SWA is still the safest operations out there but hopefully everyone is operating as safe as can be. I believe there are nearly 6000 pilots out there doing the right thing every day as there are at other carriers.
You are driving down the road and a policeman stops you and looks at your inspection sticker.
He says your car is not properly inspected. You show him the certificate in which the State of (fill in the blank) has certified this store as passing all tests to give car inspections. He says, sorry, you're going to be fined.
You chose the inspection station because the state gave them a license to do inspections. While you are smart with cars, you can't do all of the work.
End of analogy.
The FAA certified depot maintenance shop used faulty subcontractors.
Is the FAA responsible? Absolutely.
Is SWA responsible? Absolutely.
Joint responsibility and if SWA is wise, we scratch off this depot site for future work. Who knows why the unapproved part was used but eventually the FAA and Boeing approved of the fix as temporary, no sacrifice to safety. That was the bottom line but wasn't properly reported.
SWA flew aircraft that came from FAA approved maintenance facilities. The FAA caught the problem later and was addressed by all parties to the mutual agreement of all without jeopardizing safety or significantly altering operations. A win-win-win for SWA, FAA and passengers. A fault sub-contractor is now either going to fix things or folks will be unemployed now (maybe your neighbors or family members).
If the FAA thought the place was bad they owed it to SWA to notify all parties. At the end of the day it wasn't SWA folks working on the airplane (unlike the AA MD airplanes as I understand it...those were AA paid employees if I recall...no slam intended...just pointing out the difference), it was an FAA approved maintenance facility subcontractor who made the decision.
As stated, SWA manned up and is doing the right thing and learning from it. Safety must always be tweaked for improvements. I believe SWA is still the safest operations out there but hopefully everyone is operating as safe as can be. I believe there are nearly 6000 pilots out there doing the right thing every day as there are at other carriers.
:laugh:
