FAA’s failure to cull bad pilots cited in fatal Atlas crash

The fatal crash of a cargo plane last year was caused in part by the failure of the US federal government to establish a reliable system of weeding out unqualified airline pilots, investigators concluded. The FAA came under heavy criticism Tuesday as the NTSB issued its findings in the fatal crash of a cargo jet carrying Amazon.com Inc. packages near Houston. The lack of an improved system for tracking pilot records -- despite a decade-long congressional mandate -- has created “holes in the safety net,” NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt said at a video hearing. “The FAA has dragged their feet on implementing a sufficiently robust pilot-records database.” The copilot of an Atlas Air cargo plane who inadvertently added full power during a routine approach to land in Houston became disoriented and pushed the Boeing Co. 767-300 into a steep dive, NTSB found. He had repeatedly panicked during training exercises and shown other deficiencies and those systemic issued hadn’t been addressed, NTSB found. His failures while training with at least two prior airlines weren’t known to Atlas, a division of Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings, because he hadn’t disclosed that and there was no FAA system for checking. He died in the crash.<br/>