The Unfriendly Republican Skies

Republicans love to boast about how much safer America is under their rule.  Of course that claim is all hat, no cattle.  One can hardly blame them.  If they told the truth only millionaires, criminal corporate executives, and the most rabid hypocrites from the American Taliban would vote for them.  9/11 is a perfect example of Republican safety.  However, Republicans don’t even need terrorist help to make us less safe.  They want to weaken flight safety rules, relegating US air travel to the unfriendly Republican skies.

In March, Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA) introduced a brief amendment to an aviation bill that will fund the Federal Aviation Administration for the next several years. Shuster’s seemingly innocuous amendment called on the FAA to draw up separate flight safety rules for commercial, charter, and cargo airlines, and imposed several procedures the agency must follow in crafting those rules.

The measure, which narrowly passed the Republican House of Representatives on April 1 and might soon be made part of the final aviation legislation, is actually far from harmless. If enacted it will slow down or stop some common-sense flight safety rules from being created through the various stringent procedures it places on the regulatory process. While it’s not as dramatic as recent GOP attempts to gut environmental protection or regulation of Wall Street, Shuster’s amendment is a telling example of how far the current GOP will go to protect industry interests.

The new flight safety rules that Shuster is trying to slow down would create tougher guidelines for how pilots are trained, and how much rest they must get before flying. The rules are a product of a lengthy campaign from families of a recent crash in Buffalo, NY that proved the dangers of lax federal regulation in airline safety.

On February 12, 2009, Continental Flight 3407, operated by the smaller carrier Colgan Air, crashed into a suburb of Buffalo. The young co-pilot had taken an overnight, cross-country flight the day before the crash and slept briefly in an airport lounge in Newark, NJ before piloting Flight 3407.

When the plane encountered an ice storm as it attempted to land, the pilots made some critical errors in judgment and lost control of the flight, sending it plummeting downwards. The National Transportation Safety Board found that their “performance was likely impaired because of fatigue.” Both pilots were heard yawning on the cockpit voice recorder.

The families of the crash victims channeled their grief into an effort to toughen federal regulations on pilot fatigue, and other safety measures. After 15 months of lobbying, they got a bill passed last summer that required the FAA to create an array of new pilot safety and training rules.

The families gathered in Washington yesterday to urge a conference committee working on the final aviation bill not to include Shuster’s amendment… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <The Nation>

Do you want yourself or anyone you love put in danger, so Republicans can trade your potential dealt or grief for more profit for millionaires?  If not, will you stay home or vote for candidates who cannot win next time?