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Quesada has also been hotly accused of being unnecessarily arbitrary and of failing to consult with the industry before he gavels out his dicta. Recently, he ordered airlines to install weather radar in all planes, had to back down and make an exception of obsolescent planes when some lines raised a ruckus. The Air Line Pilots Association, the exclusive A.F.L.-C.I.O. union (membership: 14,000) led by Militant Pilot Clarence Sayen, is Quesada's most vociferous critic. A.L.P.A.'s latest complaint: Quesada's new ruling requiring mandatory retirement of all transport pilots at 60. The union is bringing court action against Quesada for that.
Command Decision. Another recent incident that blew up a storm occurred last month, when a National Airlines pilot was rolling his 707 down a Miami runway. Suddenly one engine flamed out. Though the plane was within three or four knots of critical takeoff speed and thus technically should have aborted, it looked to the pilot as if such action would almost certainly lead to a crackup. Making his decision in an instant, the National pilot kept going, lifted the plane off the ground, circled around and landed safely. Still, an accompanying FAA flight inspector filed a complaint against the pilot for rule-book infringement. Though A.L.P.A. Boss Sayen hammered away at FAA's rigid judgment, Quesada had the last word: investigation showed that the pilot had failed to safety-catch a fuel-flow lever; it had slipped out of position to cut off the fuel to one engine on takeoff. The FAA rules on fuel-flow levers were tightened.
In spite of the noisy complaints by union brass, airline pilots, splendidly skilled and incessantly trained in their trade, realize and accept the necessity for top safety standards and sharp enforcement. While they are helpless to prevent demented passengers from lugging explosives aboard their planes, they remember too well the score of near misses in the air and the ballooning number of fatal crashes. The airlines carried 380 million passengers in the past ten years, and killed only 1,300. But the U.S. death toll alone since January 1958 is an alarming 378.
Chickens & Golf Balls. In the face of all the hazards, FAA, overall, is doing a first-rate job. Mechanically, the job is overwhelming. FAA alone has 41 volumes on rules and procedures, and airline-maintenance libraries run along yards of shelf space; there are even manuals on how to read other manuals. Research experts, for example, test windshields by shooting 4-lb. dead chickens at the cockpit (birds in flight are a big and dangerous nuisance), check jet engines for durability by lobbing golf balls into the intakes.
For the modern pilot, the stresses are just as great. He must absorb hundreds of rules and procedures, study graphs, maps and reports, even occasionally take off his jet on downwind runways because airport operators prefer him to fly over open areas and avoid householders' complaints about noise. A pilot has to be able to make as many as 100 visual "fixes" per minute on his instrument panel during his busiest moments—the landing approach. He must take extra precautions to keep his health during a long flight; pilots and copilots take their meals at alternate times; American Airlines forbids crews to eat seafood because of its perishability.