Did the Federal Aviation Administration rush certification of the Eclipse 500 very light jet in 2006 in order to “save the company”?

That’s the subject of a House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hearing next week. Both the committee staff and the Inspector General’s Office of the Department of Transportation have done studies of the FAA certification process, and the outcomes prompted this hearing, according to a report in the New Mexico Business Weekly.

“The investigations raised enough questions about the certification process to warrant a hearing,” [committee spokesperson] Berard said. “It’s safe to say that something really has to grab our attention in terms of the seriousness of the issue to spend the time and energy on a hearing. It has to reach critical mass of seriousness for us to do that.”

A grievance filed by the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, the union which represents FAA certification engineers, led to the inquiry. Union representative Tomaso DiPaolo told the New Mexico Business Weekly that FAA managers put “immense pressure” on FAA engineers in 2002 to prematurely approve the jet:

“When working with a new aircraft design, they need to approve a minimal level of safety, but in this case, for some reason, managers were actually yelling at the employees and putting an unbelievable amount of pressure on them to approve certification,” DiPaolo said. “At one point they were screaming at the employees, saying ‘We’re here to save this company.’”

 

DiPaolo said about 15 FAA employees were working on the Eclipse certification at various times. All of them corroborated the accounts of undue pressure.

 

“They all said they were under real pressure and stress,” DiPaolo said. “They were told they were being too hard. [FAA] management was basically asking the employees to look the other way … They were asked to think outside the box to figure out a way to approve the plane, and that’s not our role. We’re there to test it adequately to assure safety.”

 

DiPaolo told the biz weekly that the FAA managers certified the jet over FAA engineer’s objections, who said they weren’t ready to approve it yet. He also said that the managers themselves might have been under pressure to approve the jet because FAA’s “business plan” for fiscal year 2006 called for certification of a very light jet.

As to Eclipse Aviation itself, which is headquartered in Albuquerque, company spokeswoman Alana McCarraher told the Weekly the hearing is about the FAA not Eclipse. DiPaolo, agreed, telling the Weekly that the union grievance is about the FAA, not Eclipse.
 

Regardless, now we know the reasons for the hearing that Gov. Bill Richardson thought important enough to make a trip to Washington about a couple of weeks ago. He made a point of telling the chairman of the Transportation committee that Eclipse is “pivotal” to high wage jobs in New Mexico. From the KOAT Channel 7 report:
 

“We will emphasize the State of New Mexico’s commitment to Eclipse Aviation and highlight the pivotal role that Eclipse has played in our efforts to create high-wage jobs,” Richardson said. “As a former Congressman, I know how important it is to hear directly from communities that benefit from the presence of companies like Eclipse.”