Enabling Links Between Two
Great New York City Aviation Disasters

On December 16, 1960, a United Airlines DC-8 crashed into the Brooklyn section of New York City, and was the world's worst aviation disaster at that time as measured by the number of people killed. The disaster was caused by the poor piloting performance of that DC-8 crew, as was the underlying problem with almost all of the many other deadly crashes that the airline experienced. That disaster, and a series of others involving United Airlines aircraft caused the Federal Aviation Administration to ask one of its most experience inspector pilots to take the assignment to correct the known serious problems at that airline: Rodney Stich.

United Airlines Corrupt Safety Conduct:
Half of the Problems Resulting in
Long Series of Aviation Disasters and Deaths

This is what Stich discovered after examining the airline's operations:

• Key United Airlines personnel deprived the flight crews of the legally required recurrent training and competency checks.
   
• Falsified government-required records to cover up for the major safety violations. Those were criminal acts under federal criminal statutes.
   
• Deprived flight crews of the legally required yearly training in emergency evacuations and then falsified the government required records. Another series of criminal acts.
   
• United Airlines FAA-approved company check pilots routinely passed as satisfactory on periodic competency checks pilots who were dangerously unsafe, thereby saving the airline money and making themselves look good to company hierarchy for saving money.
   
• Flight engineer recurrent training and competency checks were a farce, resulting in flight engineers being poorly trained and unable to handle minor aircraft problems.
   
• United Airlines personnel routinely threatened to have inspectors transferred if they persisted in addressing these problems that were resulting in years of horrific aviation disasters.
   
• United Airlines had inspector Rodney Stich suspended for several weeks after he tactfully the dangerously high-sink-rate approach of a senior United Airlines pilot.
   
• The entire attitude of a senior element in the United Airlines training center was so far below industry standard and government a case could be made that many of the repeated deaths of passengers on United Airlines could be called the results of criminal acts.

The Other Half of the Deadly Scenario: Incompetence And Corruption in
Government Agency Responsible
for Aviation Safety

The other half of the problem resulting in many crashes and many deaths were key people in the Federal Aviation Agency personnel and their incompetence and corruption. Among these problems, which are detailed in Stich's book, History of Aviation Disasters: 1950 to 9/11, included the following examples:

• FAA top management knew of the falsification of major safety documents for years, and withheld this from investigations into the causes of numerous crashers conducted by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTS.
   
• FAA management frequently removed from the files, or destroyed, inspector reports on unsafe or illegal conduct involving United Airlines.
   
• FAA management retaliated against those few competent inspectors who were willing to defy FAA management and report the dangerous problems. Retaliation included transfer to undesirable locations, poor performance reports, and a host of other juvenile schemes.

These problems are similar what exists in other regulatory agencies, such as the agencies overlooking the housing and financial industry, that enabled repeated financial scandals to surface, including the 2008 implosion of the housing and financial industry that had massive financial and personal consequences for millions of people. The only difference is that with the FAA—the Tombstone agency—there is the additional problems of the horror faced by the people as they were about to die.

There is much more involved here then simply aviation disasters. For the full article, go to www.defraudingamerica.com/links_between_crashes.html.