Here are letters we wrote to our Congressman, Representative E. Clay Shaw, Jr and to John Mica, Chairman of the House of Representatives Aviation Subcommittee. Both Congressmen asked the FAA to respond to our letter. The resulting (pathetic) letter from FAA Deputy Chief Counsel James W. Whitlow and our reaction is also included.

http://www.swissair111.org/scan.pdf

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Mark Fetherolf,

Of course this doesn't include the phone calls where individuals at certain agencies convince you they are actively pursuing your concerns when they really aren't.

Please let me know if you have any trouble downloading this. One person said it took them a while and I had the same experience but it seems to work.

Still waiting for a response to our last letter. I certainly hope that we get one.

Looks like it's time to follow up with a call in a couple of weeks. It's appalling to me personally having lost a wonderful daughter, that the IFEN situation doesn't appear to be taken seriously either here in the U.S. or in Switzerland. Interesting how both countries devote plenty of attention to business scandals that deal with money but have no interest in investigating something as terrible as swissair 111.

No response ever came.

Barbara and Mark,

I cannot begin to comprehend your utter anger and frustration over this bureaucratic response to your justified and imprative inquiry and issues raised in your letters.

Perhaps the death of a parent, wife, son, daughter, brother or sister of a member of congress or the senate would be the catalyst needed to prosecute those guilty of negligence, and allow for sweeping changes in civil aviation safety laws. I am truly sorry that the loss of Tara and the 228 others aboard SR111 fails to appear on the radar scope of these individuals - those who have the power and ability to implement said changes/revisions to the current laws/policies, or lack of.

Kindest regards,
J.O

J.O., Thanks so much for understanding how horribly frustrating this is. We knew going into this we would probably end up with no real answers but we could never forgive ourselves (Mark and I) if we didn't try.

I commend you both for your valiant efforts to get the U.S government to wake up and DO THEIR JOBS properly and effectively. I know first hand what it's like to deal with endless red tape, endless BS (pardon the lingo) and
ignorant, apathetic minds.

J.O., Thanks again for your kind understanding of this. I had a bad feeling from the start after speaking with the Transportation people when they told me to be patient because nothing would happen right away. My gut feeling was that it was a basic kiss-off but I was hoping that I was wrong. I wish there was another way to approach this but at the moment I'm fresh out of ideas. I think it's just awful knowing what we do about this terrible tragedy that these individuals who were responsible appear to be getting off totally scot-free. Again thanks for caring.

Barbara

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BF,

After all this time we received another unsatisfactory reply regarding why the FAA suspended SBA's (Santa Barbara Aerospace) license and reinstated it a couple of days later. I will post the letter soon and let you know how we are going to follow this up.

The letter:
Link to PDF

This answer is totally unsatisfactory. SBA had a constant stream of violations against them prior to having their license revoked. There is more to this seedy story and we plan to continue to try to get to the bottom of it.

Someone posed two good questions that the FAA has not answered in their response.

1. Why can't Whitlow (who is the #2 legal person at the FAA) find a record of why SBA had their certificate pulled? Those records DO exist.

2. Why was SBA allowed to continue their work on the IFEN during the time their license had been revoked?

We need real answers to these questions and not just one big runaround.

I will keep the site updated as we correspond with these govt. officials and hopefully someday get some real answers to questions that family members should be entitled to getting answers to. Maybe persistence will someday pay off.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BF,