cockpit collision warning systems. this is serious! very serious. the real question here is where was the supervision and where is the faa in terms of consequences? for example, everyone remembers the hudson river midair where a number of people were killed when two planes collided about a year and a half ago. in that case, one controller was talking to his girlfriend about a dead cat. they haven t been fired? really? they have not been fired? really. no. no. and the supervisor was missing from the tower so the faa has to ask not only what happened with the controller. after all the controller might have fallen very ill. hi a situation where controllers could have a heart attack. there could be something very, very wrong medically with the controller. but you have to ask where is the supervisor? so i think in a case like this and other situations, the supervisors have to take responsibility, too, because they are supposed to be running the place.
you and i wouldn t get a pass. no. i was just going to say that and ask you about the faa. what is the deal with them? why aren t they handing down harsher punishments? well, the problem with the faa this has been a problem, you know, for decades they do tend to circle the wagons. when somebody gets in trouble they tend to promote them up or out of the situation and then try to deal with the situation later. they have many instances. this is one of the things i investigated when i was inspector general is why is there no are there no consequences for off egregious behavior from pan am 103 where the persons responsible for not overseeing security properly didn t have serious consequences. two, air traffic control errors where there aren t consequences. you know, they are not underpaid. they are not low paid employees. they are traffic controllers in the busiest airport traffic control tower. i think we lost mary s skype signal. very abouting. thank you, mary, for joining us.