Three FAA inspectors told a House of Representatives Transportation Committee on Thursday that agency’s supervisors overlooked the fact that Southwest Airlines didn’t carry out the required inspections as it should have. The carrier continued to use jets although they discovered cracks in some of them.

"FAA oversight lapses at the local and national level allowed weakness in Southwest's maintenance program to go undetected for years," said Calvin Scovel, inspector general of the Transportation Department.

Scovel said there were similar situations with other air carriers and added that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) didn’t do enough to protect the supervisors from retaliation.
He added that the agency is much too confident on the program that permits airlines to voluntarily report their safety issues. This "promotes a pattern of excessive leniency", said Scovel.

The inspector general said that the agency’s regional office located in Dallas, Texas, "developed an overly collaborative relationship" with Southwest oversight, which is under its responsibility.

According to Scovel, Southwest was allowed to report its violations of safety rules with the FAA doing nothing about it. Southwest disregarded four safety directives eight times over the past two years.

According to the three inspectors who addressed the lawmakers, their FAA supervisors tried to discourage them when they were reporting safety violation at the agency. Some have even threatened to fire them.

These scandalous declarations came after a series of flight cancellations and fines proposed by the FAA.
Southwest Airlines started the series of cancellations. The carrier had to ground dozens of 737s to carry out missed structural inspections. After inspectors found fuselage cracks on some aircrafts, the FAA proposed to fine the carrier with $10.2 million (5.1 million pounds).

US Airways Group was next in line and the company grounded six 757s for inspections.
American Airlines also canceled on March 26 nearly 10 percent of its air traffic, the equivalent of approximately 200 flights, to check on wiring bundles in its MD-80 planes.

Then Delta Air Lines then followed. The carrier also canceled flights to carry out inspections at wiring bundles on certain planes. Nearly 430 MD-80s were inspected by both carriers.