Posted 5-13-08

FAA Misses 3rd Deadline in Airline Mechanics Probe

By Fred Lucas
CNSNews.com Staff Writer

(CNSNews.com) - The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has failed for the third time to provide records to federal investigators conducting a probe into how the agency tracked falsely certified airplane mechanics.

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC), which investigates alleged government wrongdoing, gave the FAA its third 30-day extension last week to provide answers about how many falsely certified mechanics are working for the nation's airlines and how well the FAA retested those who were falsely certified but subsequently located. The OSC's investigation has been ongoing since October 2007.

Nearly 2,000 people obtained mechanics' certificates as part of a major fraud scam in the 1990s. Though the owners of the Florida-based St. George Aviation were convicted, many of the mechanics who went on to work for various airline companies were never retested. Others were only partially retested -- meaning a written but not hands-on test was administered - according to the FAA. (See Previous Story)

While the FAA is dealing with the St. George investigation, the agency, charged with the nation's aviation safety, has run into a string of other problems recently. One of the most well-known problems concerned the grounding of Southwest Airlines' flights that stemmed, in part, from insufficient FAA safety inspections.

"They can't adequately answer questions at hand because they're not fulfilling their responsibility to the public that they've been called to fulfill," said Gabriel Bruno, the former FAA director of flight standards, in an interview. Bruno prompted first an internal investigation of the FAA by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), and later a probe by the OSC.

FAA spokesman Les Dorr explained the delay in a written statement to Cybercast News Service regarding the OSC's investigation.

"An extension was needed to complete the FAA's investigation and issue a final report, as well as time to coordinate with the DOT IG (Inspector General) prior to submitting to the OSC," the statement said. "Once the report is submitted to OSC, OSC will be responsible for releasing the report to the public."

An extension was reasonable, given that the agency is dealing with other issues, such as the grounded flights issue and recent congressional hearings, OSC spokesman James Mitchell told Cybercast News Service .

Federal prosecutors determined that at least 1,800 mechanics received false certification from St. George Aviation, which operated near Orlando, Fla., between October 1995 and January 1999. At the trial of company owner Anthony R. St. George and examiner George E. Allen, employees and mechanics reportedly testified that the certification tests, which were supposed to take up to eight hours, took only a few minutes. In some cases the company provided answers to test-takers, and in other cases issued certificates even when major portions of the test weren't taken.

St. George and Allen were convicted in May 1999 of fraud and conspiracy. That August, they were sentenced to a combined 40 months in prison.

The FAA began a retesting program shortly after the discovery of the certification fraud in 2000. But agency management abruptly stopped the program in spring 2001 after only 130 mechanics took the test, federal investigators found. Testing was restarted at the order of the Department of Transportation, after a previous DOT Inspector General investigation.

In June 2005, the OSC repeated the DOT's call for the FAA to reinstate testing. The FAA disputes the findings of investigators that the testing was ever stopped, but maintained it was just postponed.

So far, more than 700 mechanics have been retested since the convictions; about 64 percent passed the written and oral exams and 36 percent failed, according to the FAA.

Airline mechanics must normally pass three components before they are certified, Bruno said: a written exam, an oral exam, and a practical or hands-on exam. But since the retesting was started, Bruno said, the hands-on component has been missing. The FAA, which doesn't dispute that, told Cybercast News Service last fall that a hands-on exam was not necessary.

Bruno said the "abbreviated" testing is nothing more than a shortcut way for the FAA to more quickly say it was able to test the mechanics.

"The FAA is perpetuating a fraud by doing that and I think that's every bit as criminal as what St. George did," Bruno said.