Safety
Comair ruling threat to safety, says RAA
A U.S.

A U.S. District Court’s ruling requiring Comair to release confidential employee filings into evidence in the dozens of civil lawsuits stemming from the Aug. 27, 2006 crash of a Bombardier CRJ in Lexington, Ky., threatens the integrity of one of the FAA’s most important safety mandates, according to the Regional Airline Association. Comair last month handed over the reports, filed under the FAA’s Aviation Safety Action Program (ASAP), after lawyers for the plaintiffs filed a motion to force the airline to admit that lax safety practices contributed to the crash.

The RAA filed an amicus curiae brief with the U.S. District Court for eastern Kentucky in support of Comair’s previous motion to overturn the ruling. “The central objective of ASAP is to ‘encourage air carrier employees to voluntarily report safety information that may be critical to identifying potential precursors to accidents,’” the RAA wrote in its brief. “It is this reliance on the voluntary nature of ASAP submissions that is critical to the program’s success.”