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Regulating the Regulations. His no-nonsense attitude about the job was loudly evident from the start of Quesada's service with FAA. Right off, he told a black-tie dinner at the National Aviation Club in Washington about his plans for the Air Age and his awareness of the dangers. "There is a lot to learn in Washington about cannibals," he informed a big audience packed with Congressmen, Senators and blue-ribbon aviation-industry executives, "but I don't intend to be chewed . . . I don't intend to get caught in Washington like the girl with the Gleem in her eye."*
Pete Quesada moved too fast to get caught. The biggest barrier to positive federal control of aviation, he found, was bureaucratic inertia, in which "the regulator was regulating to meet the needs of the regulated, and without due regard to the needs of the public." He solved that with a personnel shakedown and then began his massive attack. In quick time, Quesada:
¶ Arranged for a coordinated military-civilian air-traffic-control setup with the help of military's $2 billion radar network, within a few months established complete ground radar control on all major high-altitude routes in the U.S.
¶ Got an agreement from Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Curt LeMay that permits FAA civilian flight inspectors to take the Strategic Air Force's big-plane jet training at Castle AFB in California. Result: 14 have become qualified, a dozen more are in training. (Quesada himself has been checked out in the Air Force's KC-135, military version of the 707; on business flights, however, he usually pilots one of FAA's T-33 jets or borrows a fighter from the Air Force or the Navy.)
¶ Wangled thousands of miles of "restricted" airspace from the military to provide more room for commercial traffic.
¶ Set up a reorganized National Aviation Facilities Experimental Center (NAFEC) in Atlantic City, N.J., where FAA scientists develop and test new control and safety systems.
¶ Appropriated, after a bitter dispute—which President Eisenhower himself settled in Quesada's favor—five radio frequencies from the Air Force and industry, for use in new navigational systems now being designed at NAFEC.
Going Like 60. With all this welcome overhaul for the safety cocoon, the airlines and pilots still find plenty to squawk about. Pilots charge that FAA inspectors are harassing them. Indeed, the inspectors, backed heartily by Quesada, seem to materialize in cockpits like eager gremlins, ready to slap a fine on a pilot for the slightest infraction of the rule book. With each infraction, Quesada gets tougher. After a Pan American Boeing 707 started into a near fatal dive while its pilot was back chinning with the passengers, Quesada enforced a long-disregarded regulation requiring all pilots to stay in their cockpits except for good and sufficient reason.