The Bill Comes Due
Apr 10th, 2008 at 9:38 am by Susie
This is, of course, the logical outcome of the Republican philosophy of continued tax cuts, deregulation and self-reporting. And now it’s time to pay for it:
Air travelers, whose plans have already been disrupted by thousands of canceled flights recently, may face continued chaos in coming weeks as the Federal Aviation Administration and the airlines expand their scrutiny of passenger planes.
Passengers waited in lines at an American Airlines ticket counter at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago on Wednesday.
The groundings at airlines like American, Alaska, Delta and Southwest resulted from a broader round of inspections, ordered by the F.A.A., to determine whether the airlines have complied with past directives to check airplane structures, wires, electronics and other components.
A second wave of audits began on March 30 and will continue through June 30. Laura J. Brown, a spokeswoman for the F.A.A., said it could not rule out further groundings. “We don’t know,” she said. “We find what we find.”
Thanks to increased (read: Democratic) congressional scrutiny, the airlines are getting the kind of oversight they should have been getting all along.
A financial crises, airline crises, the war in Iraq.
Quite a record the Republicans have made, quite a record.