Texas Coverup Is Latest FAA Black Eye

Still, Krakowski could not guarantee that managers at other air traffic control centers were not playing similar statistical games. "I am not sure I am confident that it can't happen elsewhere," he said in announcing a series of steps designed to thwart such efforts.

Krakowski said that the FAA had removed the manager and assistant manager of the Dallas-Fort Worth facility and placed them in administrative jobs. The FAA has also stepped up audits at that center, he added.

To reduce the chance of managers altering statistics for their own benefit, they will no longer have the authority to assess and assign the causes of errors, FAA officials said. Instead, they said, officials outside a facility's chain of command will be given that responsibility.

Meanwhile, the FAA has launched a "complete review" of how it operates and holds controllers and managers accountable in its air traffic division, Krakowski said, adding that the agency was also deploying computer software that will automatically detect errors by controllers.

However, lawmakers and Bloch said those measures might not be enough to change the FAA's culture. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who had tough questions for FAA officials during an April 10 hearing on oversight of maintenance practices, said that "there isn't anything in this incident that should reassure people that we are managing this agency competently."

Bloch said he worried that the misreporting of errors and recent lapses in FAA oversight of airline maintenance are "part and parcel of a culture of complacency and coverup."

The special counsel also questioned the FAA's commitment to fixing its reporting issues, noting that nearly identical allegations were raised by the same whistleblower at the same facility in 2004.

In the earlier instance, the whistleblower -- a controller -- alleged that managers were improperly investigating and underreporting operational errors. By 2005, the Department of Transportation's inspector general had determined that the allegations were true and that the facility's managers had been underreporting mistakes for seven years.

The FAA pledged to take steps to address the problems. It removed one manager, placed others on "performance improvement plans," retrained controllers and launched a nationwide audit to ensure such problems are not widespread, according to the inspector general.

But it appears some of those actions were not completed or fell far short of their goals.

"We failed as an organization," Krakowski said. "We were supposed to go down there and monitor and audit and do quality assurance on what was going on down there. It is clear to us that that was not taken seriously by some of those people who were charged with that."

The air traffic controller who exposed the 2004 situation and the most recent incidents said that she remains frustrated by the pace of change at the FAA. She also said she was skeptical that anything will change.

"They have to regenerate faith in me and a lot of people," the controller, Anne Whiteman, said in an interview. "I may be the most vocal, but people have lost faith in the system and the FAA."