FAA vs. Air Trek

This may be really old news, but I couldn't find a previous thread on it.

135 Operator grounded for almost 15 months by an Emergency Revocation of their 135 Certificate for Air Ambulance operations. NTSB makes FAA pay $120,169.35 in 2010.

http://www.amtonline.com/article/article.jsp?siteSection=1&id=10439

That's shocking enough, but the really interesting part is the deposition of the FAA Inspector.

No qualifications to do the job (he's former law enforcement, is all, according to a note I found somewhere) and has basically has nothing to say throughout the deposition as the Attorney asks him why he issued the Emergency Revocation in the first place.

He alludes to the idea that the person in charge of Maintenance for Air Trek "isn't sharp", as he's deposed on his own rules and can't list them, name them, or tell anyone why he did what he did.

Part 1

Part 2

As he states at the beginning of part 1, he's not only an Aviation Safety Inspector, but his specialty is Avionics. No A&P, no Avionics training. Nothing.

Makes one feel good to study the FARs, keep current, and do the right things -- when the FAA themselves can't hire people worthy of the title "Inspector", doesn't it?

And not to send this straight to SZ, but I'm deadly serious (and yes, the pun is intended)... these people want to run healthcare.

Apparently this guy is out of the Scottsdale FSDO, according to other various sources. Google turns up quite a bit of this, and I don't remember ever hearing jack about it.

No wonder more businesses don't start up in Aviation these days, eh? Some doofus with no qualifications can just slap them with an Emergency Revocation and put them out of business the next day, and it'll take over a year to straighten it out. Note also that the article says the NTSB's action to override these shenanigans was "unprecedented". That give you a warm fuzzy that they've never seen anything like this nor had to do this before? (Somehow I'm not believing they've never seen it.)

He has a very nice American Flag necktie though -- that makes everything all better, right?

We can all only pray we never run into someone this clueless on the ramp, clipboard in hand, I guess.
 
alaskaflyer said:
I did a search of the NTSB aviation accident database (http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/index.aspx) and entered "Air Trek" into the arbitrary keyword search field in the Event Details section. Others may wish to verify whether I located all relevant records and whether their interpretations match mine.

Just 4 accidents listed, one of which resulted in fatalities. The two in the U.S. had NTSB probable causes. Neither of those were due to the fault of poor maintenance of the aircraft or suggestive of any systemic problem at Air Trek. The cause of the Panama crash isn't clear. Poor maintenance is one possible cause for the Bahamas crash - this is the only one in which an Air Trek plane exhibited a clear mechanical failure.

I don't see how the accident record shows any systemic problem with Air Trek.
 
Everskyward said:
Don't you think 4 accidents in 4 years, one with fatalities, is quite a few?
That's a subjective determination.

Did you read the Air Trek accident in which the NTSB basically ripped into the FAA and secondarily Cessna for their actions? It placed the probable cause smack dab on the FAA! That's rare. Who knows - maybe somebody at the FAA is disgruntled about that and is taking it out on Air Trek:

http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief.aspx?ev_id=20070415X00413&key=1

One could make a case about the timing - half way into the NTSB's investigation the FAA starts getting uncomfortable and nasty queries from NTSB and some people start to look bad - they can't do much to another government agency, so being petty they decide to take it out on the next target in line: Air Trek.
 
Back
Top