Stranger Fruit

On Airlines and Safety

Posted by John Lynch on August 21, 2008
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With the recent tragic loss of over 150 lives in Madrid, the following strikes me …

American Airlines deliberately flew two planes 58 times in December that it knew had broken parts and thus could be unsafe in certain situations. For this – and improper drug and alcohol testing – the FAA fined the company $7.1M. That, frankly, is ridiculous.

American should have been put out of business. Yes, air travel is safer than any other form of travel, but when accidents happen they can, and do, have large death tolls. If a company puts its customers at risk, that company should not be allowed operate. It is really that simple.

(Incidentally, both the Madrid disaster and the AA incident involved MD-80 series aircraft.)

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Comments

  1. #1 Paul Hutch
    August 22, 2008

    Wow that is one tiny fine, they can shrug that off as just a cost of doing business. I think their fine should have been at least one order of magnitude higher that would give them a proper incentive to follow the rules.

  2. #2 G Lyn
    September 1, 2008

    They should not have fined the company – the shareholders were not at fault, they should have personally fined and jailed the responsible executives. That would stop this reocurring