FAA chief on leave after drunken driving arrest

JOAN LOWY

MATTHEW BARAKAT

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — FAA Admin­is­tra­tor Randy Bab­bitt was placed on a leave of absence Mon­day as Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion offi­cials decide how to han­dle Babbitt’s week­end arrest on charges of drunken dri­ving in sub­ur­ban north­ern Virginia.

DOT offi­cials are in “dis­cus­sions with legal coun­sel about Admin­is­tra­tor Babbitt’s employ­ment sta­tus,” said a state­ment released by Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary Ray LaHood’s office Mon­day after­noon. The Fed­eral Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion is part of the Trans­porta­tion Department.

Bab­bitt, 65, was charged with dri­ving while intox­i­cated after a patrol offi­cer spot­ted him dri­ving on the wrong side of the street and pulled him over about 10:30 p.m. EST Sat­ur­day in Fair­fax City, Va., police in the Wash­ing­ton, D.C., sub­urb said.

Bab­bitt, who lives in nearby Reston, Va., was the only occu­pant in the vehi­cle, the state­ment said. Police said he coop­er­ated and was released on his own recognizance.

Bab­bitt appar­ently delayed telling admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials about the arrest. White House spokesman Jay Car­ney said Pres­i­dent Barack Obama and Trans­porta­tion Depart­ment offi­cials learned of the arrest Mon­day after­noon, about an hour before a state­ment was released say­ing Bab­bitt had been placed on leave at his request.

Fair­fax City police issued a state­ment on the arrest to the media at about noon Mon­day. They refused to dis­close the results of Babbitt’s blood alco­hol test. The legal limit is .08.

LaHood has aggres­sively cam­paigned against drunken dri­ving, and is work­ing with police agen­cies and safety advo­cates on an annual hol­i­day crack down on drink­ing and dri­ving later this month. Safety advo­cates credit LaHood with doing more to raise the vis­i­bil­ity of human fac­tors in high­way safety — includ­ing drunken dri­ving, dri­vers dis­tracted by cell phone use, and par­ents who fail to buckle in their chil­dren — than any pre­vi­ous trans­porta­tion secretary.

Deputy FAA Admin­is­tra­tor Michael Huerta will serve as act­ing admin­is­tra­tor, the DOT state­ment said. In recent months Huerta has been lead­ing the FAA’s trou­bled NextGen effort to tran­si­tion from an air traf­fic con­trol sys­tem based on World War II-era radar tech­nol­ogy to one based on satel­lite technology.

Bab­bitt was a for­mer air­line cap­tain and inter­na­tion­ally rec­og­nized expert in avi­a­tion and labor rela­tions when Obama tapped him in 2009 to head the FAA. He was a pilot for the now-defunct East­ern Air­lines for 25 years, and had served as pres­i­dent of the Air Line Pilots Asso­ci­a­tion. As head of ALPA in late 1990s, he cham­pi­oned the “one level of safety” ini­tia­tive imple­mented in 1995 to improve safety stan­dards across the air­line industry.

Babbitt’s nom­i­na­tion in 2009 was warmly received by both indus­try offi­cials and air­line unions. His easy man­ner and insider’s knowl­edge of the air­line indus­try gen­er­ated respect in Con­gress, where he reg­u­larly tes­ti­fied on safety issues and in sup­port of NextGen.

Bab­bitt took over at the FAA when the agency was still reel­ing from the expo­sure of wide­spread safety gaps in the regional air­line indus­try. The prob­lems were revealed by a National Trans­porta­tion Safety Board inves­ti­ga­tion of the Feb­ru­ary 2009 crash of a regional air­liner near Buf­falo, N.Y., that killed 50 people.

Bab­bitt and LaHood promised to imme­di­ately imple­ment a series of safety ini­tia­tives. At Babbitt’s urg­ing air­lines adopted a series of vol­un­tary safety mea­sures. But safety advo­cates say vol­un­tary mea­sures aren’t enough. The FAA under Bab­bitt has also ini­ti­ated sev­eral efforts to craft major new safety reg­u­la­tions, rang­ing from pre­vent­ing pilot fatigue to boost­ing expe­ri­ence lev­els and train­ing of air­line pilots.

But sev­eral of those efforts have stalled as indus­try oppo­nents lob­bied White House offi­cials against the pro­posed reg­u­la­tions, say­ing they would cost too much or be too burdensome.

Posted by AP News on Dec 5 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.