The Department of Transportation’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) recently completed an investigation into the alleged harassment of a Missouri pilot, Joseph Brinell, by the FAA. The report found that personnel at the Kansas City Flight Standards District Office (FSDO), including a supervisor, had indeed abused their authority in their dealings with Brinell. The OIG only initiated its investigation after it found that the FAA’s own probe into the affair was biased in favor of the FAA personnel involved and that it contained “troubling irregularities.”
While under normal circumstances the FAA’s alleged mistreatment of a pilot wouldn’t warrant headlines, in this case the pilot in question was at the controls of a Cessna CitationJet that crashed while on a GPS approach to a small airport in Point Lookout, Missouri, on December 9, 1999. Brinell died in the crash, along with five others.
