Unusual Attitudes: What the FAA Lady Said

Gallipolis is a town in extreme southeastern Ohio—not to be confused with the World War I battle site on the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey. This one got its name in 1790, when some Frenchmen (“Gallia”) established a village or city (“polis”) across from where West Virginia’s Kanawha River joins the mighty Ohio. They’d been discovered as stowaways on an Ohio riverboat and unceremoniously put ashore in what was then Native American territory. It’s probably most famous today as the site of the first Bob Evans restaurant on his farm in nearby Rio Grande.

I’m not sure if this is a history lecture, or if it’s a lesson on how—and how not—to deal with betrayed friendships, how insurance claims can work and the importance of discretion. Maybe, as my letter of reprimand stated, it’s about why FAA inspectors cannot allow “private negotiations…or personal economic experiences [to] influence their professional responsibilities.”

I did—and stirred up a hornet’s nest.

In the grand tradition of putting aerodromes in picturesque but inappropriate places, the Gallia-Meigs Regional Airport (KGAS) sits down on the river. Landing west means crossing a big highway and bridge over the Ohio River, and with 11-foot crops and brush growing up to the edge of the runway—not to mention all that water—it’s a favorite hangout for deer and birds. Lots of birds.

In the mid-1990s, when I was an FAA inspector, our office was notified that a Piper Twin Comanche landing at Gallipolis had tangled with a flock of birds. On short final, the pilot, suddenly attacked by a squadron of geese, amazingly opted to go around. And more amazingly, he got the goose-riddled twin around the patch and back onto the goose-riddled runway. Nobody was injured, but the airplane was substantially damaged, and the National Transportation Safety Board delegated it to our office for investigation. Gallipolis is a 3-hour drive away, but I wangled permission to fly an airworthiness inspector over—and have a chance to visit with my friend Lou Manyak.

Lou—an Ohio University “Bobcats” grad—had a maintenance and Part 135 air-taxi operation called Appalachian Aviation at Gallia-Meigs Airport, the eastern limit of the FAA’s Cincinnati Flight Standards District. Since encountering him years ago on a Part 135 check ride in his Piper Navajo (memorable because his dog Gertie rode on my lap throughout the flight), Louie’s been one of my heroes and friends—a resourceful, intelligent, funny, good guy who can build, fix and fly just about anything, anywhere.

When we arrived, there were geese all over the place—in the grass and embedded in the Twin Comanche, which had been moved to a hangar. I was in the FAA’s safety program but filled in as an operations inspector, so I interviewed witnesses and took pictures of large dents, bloodstains, and goose pieces and feathers embedded in the engines, wings and tail leading edges. Then, in the back of the hangar, I shot the breeze with Louie while our airworthiness inspector peered at the airplane and made notes on his ubiquitous “FAA clipboard.” Eventually, the young airport manager came by and said a shop from Cincinnati had already visited, bid on and been awarded the repair. They would trailer the airplane to Lunken Airport when we released the “remains.”

My ears perked up at the name of the repair facility and, in what I thought was a low mutter, told Louie, “Damn, I wouldn’t let those guys within 100 feet of my airplane.”

But the airport manager evidently overheard my remark because, later that day, he called the owner-pilot: “Hey, the FAA lady said…”

See, that Cincinnati shop had been purchased from a previous owner about the time I bought my 1956 Cessna 180. I knew the guys who worked there, so I talked to the new owner about installing some mods—inertial-reel shoulder harnesses, Rosen sunshades—and rerouting the fuel vent from atop the wing to behind the strut (as Cessna did on all subsequent 180/185 models).

Read More from Martha Lunken: Unusual Attitudes

This guy had a curious personality; he was intelligent and funny but temperamental, much married and cynical. But we became friends, and he’d sometimes stop by after work, drink my scotch and talk about the business. Their success depended heavily on insurance jobs, so he needed to travel to look at damaged airplanes and submit estimates. He said he was licensed but hadn’t flown in years; serendipitously, I was looking for excuses to put time on my 180.

“Hey, you buy the gas, and I’ll fly you where you need to go,” I said.

We flew 72B all over—Cleveland, Atlanta, northern Indiana—looking at wrecks until, eventually, he checked out in an airplane. But in the process, I had a “crash” course in the intricacies (and potential skulduggery) associated with accidents, claims, insurance companies and adjusters. You know I wasn’t the FAA’s poster-child inspector, but I scrupulously avoided any hint of “quid pro quo” with entities we regulated; I paid bills promptly. So when I didn’t get one for the Air Wolf filter installation, I talked to the secretary. The owner was away, but she found the invoice.

Gulping, I wrote a check for a figure far higher than what he’d quoted. When I asked his right-hand man, the shop foreman, he laughed: “Oh, that’s just for the books; you don’t owe that much. Talk to the boss tomorrow when he gets back.”

So I did, and he responded: “No, of course that’s not the right amount. But, hey, you already wrote a check, so consider it a done deal.”

I knew he was mercurial, but this was so weird that I decided to steer clear and find another shop. And I would find out the shoulder harnesses had been carelessly and incorrectly installed.

Back to Gallipolis…

So the airport manager called the airplane’s owner—who then called the adjuster, who called the repair facility—with “what the FAA lady said.” The repair-station owner called, wrote and visited my boss at the FAA. And, probably in an attempt to have me fired, he complained to Ohio Sen. Rob Portman’s office about “what the FAA lady said.” I don’t remember a formal inquiry, but maybe it got “lost” (years before, I had taught the senator’s father to fly).

I just put on my most contrite face, acknowledged the error of my ways and added the letter of reprimand to my growing file.

No, I didn’t know my comment had been overheard in the hangar at Gallipolis, but I can’t say I was ever sorry that the airport manager, airplane owner, adjuster and repair-station owner heard “what the FAA lady said.”

This story appeared in the May 2020 issue of Flying Magazine