Ben Mutzabaugh, a USA Today blogger, reported today that American Airlines has 35 Airbus A-300 aircraft with wiring that is not in compliance with FAA regulations. Since the last time an issue like this arose (with American Airlines' MD-80 aircraft) the entire US air transport system fell into chaos for about a week, the FAA has approved an "alternative compliance timetable" for the airline to get these fixes done. (The aircraft will keep flying, while a couple jets at a time cycle through the maintenance facility.)

Now, using common sense as a filter, this seems to indicate that if these jets haven't fallen out of the sky by now, a few more days probably won't result in catastrophe. Common sense would also seem to say that it is better to allow this extremely small risk to passengers rather than disrupt the national air transport system again. (I'm sure American Airlines would prefer to not lose the profits from a lot of canceled flights too.)

Watch out though American! The last time an airline was upfront with the FAA about blowing a deadline and took measures to fix the problem quickly without canceling a lot of flights the FAA hit them with a $10.2 million fine.

This says two things to me:

1) The fine placed on Southwest by the FAA was outrageous. Either the FAA should admit they were wrong and repeal Southwest's fine, or American should get the same thing.

2) Commentary and investigations that followed the issuing of Southwest's fine repeated long-standing allegations that the FAA and the airlines are too cozy. This sure seems to lend support to those allegations, though it adds the caveat that the FAA plays favorites among it's airline corporation patrons. Either way, that doesn't sit well with me.

Congressman James Oberstar's investigation into these issues found a lot of problems with the FAA, but I haven't seen any news about Oberstar and aviation in about a month. What happened? Where is the fervor and the outrage?

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting editorial complaining that Oberstar's actions were just a power play. I hope that's not the case. I hope Congress is still worried about these issues because this example with American shows that no problems have been fixed so far. What do the rest of you think? Am I off-base or are we drowning in double-standards here? How about you Congressman Oberstar?