you all were just talking about, when daylight comes we will be able to see a lot more, what the damage really is. but we know that we have the airport, we have a corner of our building where the roofs kind of was blown away. we have a little water fall inside the terminal building, and we have had a lot of signs that were blown off and around. we had one airline, southwest airlines actually, the plane kind of moved and was blown into a jet bridge, so it has sustained a little bit of damage. we had a ups aircraft that basically was just kind of flipped around. i mean, it was flipped around about 90 degrees. i think they have to replace tires, but amazingly the aircraft was not hurt. so we are starting to get these reports. we have several maintenance
maintenance facilities and of course, the top crash fire and rescue there because it s been an airport for a major airplane, t.w.a. and hubs there, no question a great decision to go there. megyn: at this point would you assume that they know exactly how many passengers are on board this plane and what the flight plan was and they re in constant communication, you would assume, with the pilot. sure, in an emergency situation the pilot is going to give souls on board, fuel endurance, and they have a whole laundry list of items you have to give to air traffic control in an emergency situation. megyn: do they bring somebody in? i was asking you this earlier. is it just the air traffic controller who would be advising the pilot on this or do they bring in some sort of a flight expert? well, actually, they have time, they could actually be on another line and talking to their maintenance facility, to the company who owns the aircraft. so, they could be talking to maintenance people
including the mechanics and, yes, experts say that this smacks of deliberately taking these seats and loosening them or, yes, sabotage. but, look, the faa and a lot of experts have said there is absolutely no evidence of sabotage, and they cite a couple reasons. one, because the seats were removed and replaced at different maintenance facilities, and all of these 757s in question have the very same configuration. but everyone agrees if it s not sabotage, it is certainly sloppy because it wasn t just a few rows. after the faa checked this out, maintenance investigators checked this out, they found more than a dozen rows that were loose. here s what a pilot said to air traffic control after he took off, and i m quote withing here: reporter: and now listen to what one of the passengers whose son was in the seat said.
we have two types of inspection problems. the first is the assumption that we can let planes fly forever if they are properly maintained. many airlines use third party outsourced maintenance facilities. i believe southwest was cited for one in seattle where they didn t follow proper procedure in the stripping away of the aircraft. one of your guests talked about how that alone can create its own problems with cracks. so the existing system has to be carefully enforced. now we have another factor. planes actually can t fly forever. in november the f.a.a. announced a widespread fatigue damage rule. in effect putting the lingo aside, it says that sometimes tiny cracks propagate so quickly on an aircraft that in between repair cycles they can cause catastrophic loss. the faa has given the airline industry five years. i don t know if passengers feel it s too much time. the manufacturers like it because they can sell more
the unannounced inspections seem to be a little bit more lax in the gulf? that s a great question. we don t really have a great answer for that. we know that the agency was not particularly well funded. and i would have to say i think it s because mostly taste really a matter of experience. in the airline industry they ve just come to the type of accidents can be so catastrophic and so deadly that the public demanded essentially there are surprise inspections of maintenance facilities, et cetera. even in the coal mines they ve come to learn by experience that surprise inspections matter. in fact, just a few days ago at the end of september there was a surprise inspection of a coal mine in west virginia, only six months after the big explosion in the upper big branch mine. and this surprise inspection found some very serious safety flaws. three people were fired because of it. really it s just a matter that in the offshore oil and gas industry, i don t think there really ever was a