Such a statement could be considered heretical, especially amongst airlines. Schiavo is not just disliked by most industry officials. She is vilified in backroom harangues that describe her - often in sexist terms - as an ex-prosecutor bent on finding the spotlight and taking it for herself. Indeed, the most favoured adjective for Schiavo in press quotes seems to be 'shrill', a demeaning term that is usually used in a tone of patronising nonchalance.
Schiavo has not helped her own cause. She has spoken cryptically of unsubstantiated safety problems, especially regarding commuter carriers. She inappropriately had the FBI investigate FAA associate administrator Anthony Broderick during an investigation on bogus aircraft parts. On the day of the ValuJet crash she re-wrote a Newsweek article she had written to make it seem as though she was prescient about safety problems at the airline. Most recently, she quit her job not only to have a second child but also to write a book on the FAA for which some reports say she will receive a $300,000 advance.
Some may say, cynically, that one of Schiavo's biggest achievements is knowing how to play the game in Washington, where perception is usually as good as or better than reality. The latter point is probably true. But self-aggrandisement is not necessarily incompatible with public service - in fact, it is often a key quality for Washington political appointees like Schiavo.
Her highly public performance forced out testimony that the FAA had long harboured concerns about Atlanta-based ValuJet, and that the agency's confused dual mission as industry watchdog and cheerleader had come into tragic alignment during events leading up to and subsequent to 11 May. She was not only the most significant reason the ValuJet crash received such prolonged media attention, but she was also the reason that a long-complacent FAA is now in the midst of a fully fledged restructuring. It is hard to deny that the deistic image the US aviation system has possessed and promulgated needed bringing down to earth.
Of more interest is how the Department of Transportation responded to the publicity. Initially, transportation secretary Federico Peña and FAA administrator David Hinson rashly defended ValuJet when their department's own internal analyses showed the carrier had grown too fast. Then, they sought to show the public that the FAA is serious about regulating airlines.
First the FAA grounded ValuJet - politically, a no-brainer. Then it forced Kiwi International, the Newark-based low-fare carrier that hubs in Atlanta, to cut its schedule by 25 per cent. Later it fined home-town giant Delta Air Lines for not conducting a thrust-reverser inspection on a B757s. The joke going around in early July was that the FAA was doing its utmost to reduce congestion in Atlanta for the Olympic Games by scaring off passengers.
The real shocker for airline industry safety officials was the resignation of Broderick. For all practical purposes, Broderick was made a scapegoat. Sources say he knew there had to be a high-profile resignation, and that ultimately he would have been unwilling to continue at the FAA if a colleague had taken the blame. Personally and professionally, Broderick probably made the right decision - he is liked and respected in the aviation community even though he could have left under better external circumstances. His departure added another level of disingenuousness to the affair: shouldn't Hinson or Peña be falling on their swords?
They probably will in due course. Hinson is planning to resign at the end of the year (he insists that he'd already planned this). Many believe Peña will quit no later than that if the Clinton administration gets another four years in office. Both have endured the enmity not only of Schiavo, but of their own political backers.
To be fair, Peña and Hinson were following a DOT mandate to support new-entrant airlines, particularly those that would have high consumer acceptance. But the White House is still furious with their inability to distinguish between a policy mandate and a politically appropriate position of distancing the president from such tragedy. There are winners here. Following ValuJet's grounding, the major US carriers have been able to increase prices and yields. The other beneficiary is, of course, Schiavo, who, with such strong public recognition, is unlikely to leave the airline industry alone for a long while.
If Schiavo has a weakness, it is her decision to cash in some chips. With her potential book deal, everything she has done in the past two months to humiliate the FAA and force its hidden practices into the open is now suspect. Before she announced that she was shopping her story around to publishers, she may have invited criticism for the public nature of her derisory comments about the FAA. Nonetheless, it was impossible for anyone to take umbrage with what appeared to be her laudable intent of making air travel safer. Now, however, it is all too easy to believe that she simply saw a vehicle for personal gain.
This may not be the case and Schiavo could probably achieve more outside the system as an industry gadfly than she can presiding over the criminal investigation of FAA's relations with ValuJet that she herself launched. Yet he maintains that opting out and taking a lucrative book advance does not matter. She's wrong: what matters is that she has created a reason for not believing anything she says.
This is, after all, Washington, where reality, whatever that is, is what is perceived.
Mead Jennings
Source: Airline Business
