"Leanne" wrote

You too??

Because I was the maintenance officer of a flying club, I was brought in to
be the squadron maintenance officer. I'm sure you know but, for the benifit
of non pilots, the FAA considers a pilot to be like the captain of a ship.
The buck stops there and the pilot is 100% responsible for the condition of
the aircraft when the wheels leave the ground. Sure, this makes the pilot
responsible for things that (s)he didn't necessarily have control over but
the idea is that the pilot should have reviewed all the maintenance logs and
be otherwise satisfied that the aircraft is physically and paperwork legal
and safe for flight. Even if I hadn't been maintenance officer, it would
have been my responsibility to review the aircraft logbooks and question
anything that didn't seem right.

Wow! It was so bad I didn't think anyone would believe me and it wasn't
just paperwork stuff. There were mechanic's recomendations about things
that could have brought a plane down ignored, lots of them. With the
approval of my C.O., who was tired of bucking the state brass, I took
advantage of the FAA rough equivelent of the CG Aux. safety inspections.
They encourage people to have their aircraft and logbooks inspected with the
guarantee that there will be no enforcement action. The FAA found that I
had just scratched the surface.

Part of my job was to sign the planes off as being legal, airworthy and
available for flight. I therefore had to go back and report that, no, they
weren't; not by a long shot. The FAA called me up the next day and said,
"You know, we have this program to help people find the few things they
might have missed and agree to keep enforcement out of it while they take
care of problems, but. when we see a mess like this, we need some assurance
beyond just program participation".

State Wing went ballistic. They came down that very night and met with the
pilots and told them they had talked with the FAA, the planes were
completely legal, I was alarmist and out of line, and put them back on the
line. Then they were quietly taken into the shop where thousands and
thousands were spent on them. I had independent contacts in the shop so I
heard the full story. I was told by wing that my job was simply to report to
the pilots that wing had found the planes were airworthy and had no business
looking in the maintenance records. Since every pilot is legally obligated
(although many don't) to go through the log books, they were saying that the
only pilot in the squadron who wasn't allowed to look in the logbooks was
the maintenance officer! Then, they had me fired.

It was a real learning experience in the ways of government and military
structured organizations. The really depressing thing was the realization
summed up by what I told someone after the dust had settled, "I thought that
I had uncovered a cesspit of corruption and negligence but I had actually
just discovered a pool of absolute normalcy."

--
Roger Long