'You have my pledge'

0 Comments | USA TODAY, April, 2008 | by Robert Sturgell

There is no excuse for the Federal Aviation Administration's part in the Southwest Airlines incident. The failures of a few do tremendous injustice to the hard work and dedication of the thousands of FAA safety inspectors, mechanics, and other industry and government safety professionals who keep our skies safe every day.

These dedicated professionals are part of a rigorous safety system that we're making even better. We are taking aggressive steps to improve our oversight, ethics, communication, accountability and reporting of incidents. We're updating our personnel rules, for example, to provide for mandatory cooling-off periods before inspectors can work for airlines. We're holding airline executives, instead of their staff, accountable for quickly and accurately...