Update

PHI INC. HELICOPTER CRASHES IN HOUSTON TEXAS, 4 DEAD

EXCLUSIVE

COLLISION COURSE:
FIRED FROM THE FAA

AN FAA INSPECTOR SPEAKS OUT
WHAT COMES FIRST:

(June 5th, 2008 9:00AM PST)

BY Eric Longabardi

On May 11, 2007, FAA Aviation Safety Inspector Darrin Wargacki lost his job with the FAA at the Flight Standards District office in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  Why Inspector Wargacki lost his job is now the subject of no less than three ongoing US government investigations.

ERSNews.com has learned exclusively that the FAA and the Dept. of Transportation Inspector General, as well as Congressional investigators are looking into the case.

 

The air operator is a company named PHI Inc. The company dominates the helicopter transportation business in the United States.  According to its own reports, the company transported nearly a million passengers in 2007 and owns over 230 helicopters it operates in the US and worldwide.  It has over 600 pilots on its payroll.  Most of the company’s business is in transport for the oil and gas industry based in the US Gulf-coast and as a major player in hospital medi-vac helicopter operations throughout the US.

Both the FAA and Wargacki claim that PHI Inc. requested that he stay away from PHI, after the company complained about him.  Wargacki claims his FAA superiors ignored his pleas for help in bringing his concerns to the highest levels of Federal Aviation Administration. Instead Wargacki says he was fired, ignored and told to get out and not come back.

 

NICHOLAS SABATINI
FAA Associate Administrator for Aviation Safety

The FAA, of course doesn’t agree with Darrin Wargacki's view of what happened to him.  The FAA claims Darrin Wargacki just didn’t have the kind of customer friendly people skills they were looking for in an FAA aviation safety inspector.  

This past April, some of the same kinds of charges were leveled at the FAA when a long line of current and former FAA inspectors testified before Congressional hearings of the powerful James Oberstar (D-MN)  House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.   The hearings and the stories of FAA indifference and neglect received widespread national media attention.  In those cases the FAA had ignored warnings from their own inspectors about Southwest Airlines violating safety inspections requirements for its fleet of 737 passenger jets.

Additional FAA inspectors testified at the hearings telling similar stories of how the FAA had ignored safety and had become much to “cozy” with airline and aviation operators.   That culture of “coziness” was what led to a routine FAA culture of allowing violations of FAA air safety rules with little if any consequence.  All the April stories had one reoccurring point -- passenger safety was being put at risk for the sake of financial benefit to the companies.

Although the FAA inspectors and their stories last April received widespread media, Darrin Wargacki case hasn’t been so lucky -- until now.  ERSNews sought comment on this story from the FAA, but at time of publication, has not yet received a response.  

The FAA, in documents obtained exclusively by ERSNews claims that this is a very simple case of an employee who didn't have the kind of personal customer service skills and ability to get along with co-workers that the FAA was looking for from one of their own.   

The FAA's response to Mr. Waracki's claims, among many other issues at the heart of the case can be seen here:

ERSNews will be following this case closely, so sit back, put your tray tables up and enjoy your flight on "ERS Enterprise Air." ERSNews will keep you posted as this story develops.  Here at The Enterprise Report we just get stories "off the ground."

 

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