American Alleges FAA Reversal Led to Cancelled Flights

[tonyw]

What part of tentative in tentative agreement does AMR's management not understand?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1209...ys_us_page_one

American Airlines is set to allege in a report to the U.S. Transportation Department that its recent grounding of more than 3,300 flights -- disrupting travel for roughly 300,000 passengers -- could have been avoided if a tentative agreement between the airline and local Federal Aviation Administration officials hadn't been reversed, according to people familiar with the matter.

The report to be delivered Friday to Transportation Secretary Mary Peters is expected to indicate that the airline thought it had a handshake agreement with regional FAA managers intended to put repairs to wiring systems on its MD-80 aircraft on a schedule that would have kept the entire fleet in the air and avoided massive passenger disruptions.

FAA officials, slated to provide their own version of events, are expected to dispute such assertions, according to some of these people. Instead, the agency's chronology is expected to stress poor workmanship in securing and protecting electrical wires, resulting in significant safety hazards

According to people familiar with the issue, American will claim that FAA headquarters overruled local agency managers and insisted on a tougher enforcement plan literally overnight. The ruling from FAA headquarters came in the wake of a public uproar over maintenance lapses at Southwest Airlines Co. The tougher course came after the FAA's removal of Thomas Stuckey, who had been the head of the agency's flight-standards office for the southwestern U.S., overseeing both Southwest and AMR Corp.'s American.

[PatrickCPS]

Very interesting....