Sir - The way James Weber blows his country's own horn, is in bad taste (Flight International, Letters, 8-14 February, P41). His arguments about safe air travel in the USA are invalid. Need we remind him about the way the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 was allowed to keep flying, despite accidents in the 1970s and 1980s? Why was the US Federal Aviation Administration not as stringent with the DC-10 as it was with the ATR turboprops?
I am not defending the French Directorate General of Civil Aviation. Rather, I am asking, are certification standards really what they should be?
Are certification authorities, on both sides of the Atlantic, doing their job, or are political pressures and national pride forcing them to turn a blind eye to aviation's first rule: honesty?
A Papadakis
Macedonia, Greece
Source: Flight International
