Originally Posted by
jmmoric
Are you saying a report like this one..... could be.... a question of politics?
What kind of report would then be needed to get something you can actually put a bit of trust in?
The second question is the easier one to address. The U.S. Dep't of Transportation Inspector General has begun an investigation and reporting process and issued its initial report, with more to follow. Having read much of it, I do not think it pulls any punches or (alternatively) uses inflammatory language just for effect (a known favorite device of lawyers of all stripes). A small caveat to add is that the entire set of processes, regulations and other guidelines applied or followed by FAA are creatures of the legislative process, and are supposed to be adhered to in accordance with law. At least in a country like the United States legal matters are tied to political processes as a background factor, as a matter of awareness.
As for the House Committee report, the first thing to note is that the Committee's investigation did a whale of a job in unearthing and collecting very highly relevant information. No Congressional committee report could possibly be intended or designed to trigger meaningful change in and of itself but -- there will be legislative efforts to reconfigure parts, possibly significant parts, of the FAA's safety oversight processes and methods. Obviously it will be an overtly political process especially after an election year when polarization has gone mad, but nevertheless I'd wager the legal guy equivalent of tea and biscuits that the reform legislation will be a bipartisan effort. The facts and what went wrong are just too obvious for either side of the aisle to get leverage let alone dominance over the other on either the content of the eventual reform measure or the process by which it will be reached.
Not least, the JATR report was a reliable one, not infected with politics - wasn't that a widely shared view among
cognoscenti and SLFs alike? Though it hadn't drilled widely or deeply into factual matters within Boeing, that wasn't JATR's purpose. Count me as one SLF-poster who still hopes the FOIA litigation will get accelerated and require FAA to locate and disgorge the full documentary record on the basis of which the FAA proposes to base its decision to return the aircraft to flight operations, even if that requires Boeing's proprietary information to be turned over to the FOIA plaintiffs' panel of authoritative reviewers and experts. Do the lawyers in the FOIA case not have experience with tight and stringent Protective Orders to prevent further disclosure? Does the American public and indeed the international public within the aviation safety ecosystem not have a sufficiently high level of respect for Capt. Sullenberger (who is on the FOIA plaintiffs' panel) to constitute a reason for over-riding the proprietary interest factor? And come on now, we're talking about the proprietary interest of the Boeing company, you know, they could just . . . give us all some Jedi mind-trick vibes and thus any top-drawer confidential design secrets which conceivably could leak out will just flow on by, flow on by and away, like an airplane nose wildly oscillating back downward again and again.