April 14, 2008

Behind the American Airlines Crisis: Do You Want this Kind of Bureaucracy Running Health Care?

Now that American Airlines is getting its jets flying again, this is a good time to have a look at what grounded them in the first place.  It turns out to have been, in large part, a typical bureaucratic foul-up. From the LA Times:

As the airline struggled to get its planes flying again, new details emerged on the events that led to the massive flight cancellations and the Federal Aviation Administration's newly aggressive role in policing the nation's airlines.

While nervous airline executives refused to publicly criticize the FAA, they privately grumbled that the agency had been taking a harder line with airlines on complying with airworthiness directives. They said the extraordinary number of flight cancellations might not have been necessary if the FAA hadn't gotten "unreasonably" tougher in recent weeks.

"I'm not sure I would characterize it that way," a more cautious Gerard Arpey, chief executive of American Airlines, said. He stopped short of criticizing the agency for its role in one of the nation's worst air travel debacles but added, "It would be fair to say that the FAA is stepping up surveillance."

To recap: the FAA decided to change its procedures for clearing jets for flight. So far so good. The FAA tightened its requirements, in a laudable effort to make our skies safer. However, then a typical bureaucratic snafu occurred. The FAA forgot to give the airlines advance warning.  They sprung the changes on the airlines, and not surprisingly, this resulted in grounding 300 jets belonging to the world's largest airline. The cost to the airline is estimated in the tens of millions; additionally:

The financial pain suffered by the airline could be just the tip of the iceberg, experts say, when you take into account lost productivity for more than 300,000 displaced passengers, hotel costs, missed meetings and lost sales.

And that's just for the travelers themselves. There's also the time spent by travel agents, colleagues, family and friends trying to help all those travelers get home, or filling in for them while they can't.

And here's the kicker: this is the kind of bureaucracy that Hillary and Snob-ama want running the nation's health care. What a nightmare that would be.