Reply #44: My, you DO bounce around. I'll try to clarify.

[MercutioATC]

1) When I joined the FAA, there was only one school, the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City. That's where I went.

2) While it's true that most of the major airlines were having financial difficulties before 9/11, the loss of passengers after 9/11 only exacerbated the situation. The "bailouts" received by the airlines simply kept them afloat for a little longer, they were not the cash cows that you seem to believe. The airlines' failure to retire the registrations with the FAA makes no difference to them financially, so I don't know what you mean by "Which is yet another reason why we cannot understand why NEITHER airline managed to report the loss of said planes to the FAA." What do registrations have to do with finances?

3) I never stated that the FAA doesn't enforce registration or airworthiness regulations. I didn't speak of airworthiness certificates at all and I made a point of explaining that there's a difference between making sure that flying planes were registered and making sure that registered planes were flying. The FAA is primarily concerned with the former.

4) What do the dangerous actions of a Russian pilot have to do with U.S. ATC or the safety of U.S. airlines? That's like saying that we have a cannibalism problem in the U.S. because guerrilas are eating villagers in the Congo. The former Soviet states have long been recognized as having one of the worst aviation safety records in the world. That has nothing to do with the safety of the American flying public (unless they're dumb enough to get on an Aeroflot plane).

The simple fact is that we had 4500 planes in the air on the morning of 9/11. We lost 4. That's four more than we usually lose, but damn good odds, nonetheless. Flying in this country was and is the safest mode of travel. The public's fear of flying after 9/11 was (and is) unfounded.