Airframe
Chapter One
Airframe
LAX
5:57 a.m.
Daniel Greene was the duty officer at the FAA Flight Standards
District Office on Imperial Highway, half a mile from LAX. The local
FSDOs-or Fizdos, as they were called-supervised the flight
operations of commercial carriers, checking everything from aircraft
maintenance to pilot training. Greene had come in early to clear the
paper off his desk; his secretary had quit the week before, and the
office manager refused to replace her, citing orders from Washington
to absorb attrition. So now Greene went to work, muttering. Congress
was slashing the FAA budget, telling them to do more with less,
pretending the problem was productivity and not workload. But
passenger traffic was up four percent a year, and the commercial
fleet wasn't getting younger. The combination made for a lot more
work on the ground. Of course, the FSDOs weren't the only ones who
were strapped. Even the NTSB was broke; the Safety Board only got a
million dollars a year for aircraft accidents, and-
The red phone on his desk rang, the emergency line. He picked it up;
it was a woman at ... read full excerpt from: Airframe ebook
