World's Worst Aviation-Related Corruption

This page addresses the corruption and resulting airline disasters that federal aviation safety agents discovered at United Airlines many years ago, the evidence of which has been withheld from the public, and from the families of those who died as a result of the corruption. The details of this corruption are found in the book, History of Aviation Disasters: 1950 to 9/11. This serious misconduct was combined with corruption within the government's aviation safety offices, the FAA and fed on each other.

Few corporations exist that have a documented history of corruption, documented criminal acts, related to a history of aviation disasters and deaths in an earlier period of time, as United Airlines. Because of the many key people in government that were complicit in these documented acts of corruption, the information has been kept from the American people. And if these matters were understood, the ripple effects could be seen in such great American aviation disasters as the hijackings of four airliners on September 11, 2001.

The continuing misconduct of certain people at United Airlines was made possible by an even worse culture and corruption within the government's aviation safety offices, primarily certain segments of the FAA. Typical of the culture in government, that misconduct was covered up by the political board members of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

Many people died in horrible ways in United Airlines crashes due to the arrogant conduct of certain key people at United Airlines, who were named in official reports filed by FAA inspector Rodney Stich.

It is believed that today, the corruption at the airline does not exist. But it did exist for many years, and it was the great number of fatal crashes of United Airlines aircraft that the FAA asked Rodney Stich, an inspector in the Los Angeles office, to accept the assignment to correct the conditions that ere resulting in the worst series of airline disasters in the nation's history. None of the guilty have ever paid the price for this corruption; only the victims, their families, and the few government agents who sought to expose the deadly corruption.

None of the guilty have ever suffered for their deadly misconduct.

Classic Example of Documented
Corruption and Deaths

United Airlines Boeing 727 crash at the Salt Lake City airport,  another crash in which many of the passengers were cremated alive. The official report by the NTSB on the causes of the crash and deaths included:

• Dangerous high-sink-rate approach by the captain.
   
• Poor performance of the flight engineer for failure to shut off the fuel pumps and the fuel supply valves, which resulted in fuel being poured outside the aircraft when one of the fuel lines broke.
   
• Poor performance of the crew in evacuating the passengers after the aircraft had come to a stop. At that time, none of the occupants were injured.

What the NTSB political board members deliberately withheld from that report included the following:

• FAA safety inspector-investigator Rodney Stich had repeatedly reported the dangerous high-sink-rate practices by pilots at United Airlines.
   
• Stich had made an official report of that same captain as having a dangerous high-sink-rate approach practice, which Stich observed on an enroute flight check from Chicago to Denver via Omaha. 
   
• The FAA suspension of federal safety investigator Stich from all inspection duties after Stich had reported an even more dangerous high-sink-rate approach by a senior United Airlines captain and senior union member while landing at Los Angeles International Airport. The pilot's union and the airline put pressure on to remove Stich from his safety functions, a common practice at that airline that had unusual control over the government's aviation safety personnel.
   
• That NTSB members had been repeatedly told by that FAA inspector about the massive safety violations, some of which were felonies involving falsified records on major safety requirement that were never accomplished.

The overall safety problems involved in a long line of airline disasters involving United Airlines and the culture within the FAA included:

• Unlawful refusal by United Airlines to provide legally required training and competency checks to the cockpit crew members.
   
• Falsification of federally required safety records.
   
• Threats by key United Airlines personnel to get inspectors transferred if they continued to report the safety problems and safety violations at that airline.
   
• Harassment against inspectors by FAA management personnel for having make the required reports on the safety problems and serious violations..

As a result, 42 people were cremated alive in that crash. None of the guilty were ever identified. Instead, most continued to receive the benefits of the misconduct that directly saved United Airlines considerable money (while the insurance companies paid for the crashes).

Stich appeared as guest on over 3,000 radio and TV programs, and over 30,000 books were sold for the various editions of Unfriendly Skies, making it probable that many of the next-of-kin knew about these problems. Not a single one ever made any effort to have these matters investigated. The only known reaction was to sue the airline for money.

FAA inspector Rodney Stich had written several reports on the dangerous high sink rate approaches used by senior captains. In one instance, as described in the book, Unfriendly Skies, the pilots union and the airline pressured the FAA to remove Stich from air safety duties after one of the senior captains objected to the tactfully stated comment that his high sink rate approach was not considered a good practice. FAA management then suspended Stich from conducting any competency checks for several weeks.

More information about the deadly corruption that existed and was documented at United Airlines is found in the book, History of Aviation Disasters: 1950 to 9/11, which is the latest version of the books formerly called Unfriendly Skies by Rodney Stich.

Series of Catastrophic Airline Disasters
Motivated Extreme Measures

The catastrophic consequences from the corruption that federal agent Rodney Stich discovered and documented caused him to become an activist and engage in an unprecedented numbers of efforts to expose and bring a halt to the corruption and tragedies. These unprecedented efforts included, for instance:

• Acting similar to an independent prosecutor, conducting several months of court-like administrative law proceedings. Part of his final closing brief warned of the consequences of a cover-up. During the proceedings, there were three more major airline disasters, each one caused by the same safety problems that FAA inspector Rodney Stich had repeatedly reported in writing, which was followed by the standard FAA rejection.
   
• At the urging of the FAA official in charge of the FAA Sky Marshal program, Stich sent a quickly prepared report to the FAA administrator detailing the corruption and the related crashes and deaths.
   
  • Cover letter to that report. (MS Word) (Adobe PDF)
     
  • Part One of the report (Adobe PDF format)
     
  • Part Two of the Report. (Adobe PDF format)
     
  • Part Three of the Report. (Adobe PDF format)
     
• Letters and phone calls to members of Congress, reporting the ongoing corruption in in the government's aviation safety offices; at United Airlines; the continuing airline disasters resulting from the safety problems, safety violations, and even criminal falsification of government required records by key people at United Airlines, and FAA management's criminal destruction of official reports on serious safety matters. Members of Congress replied, admitting the gravity of the charges, and then falsely claiming they had no responsibilities in that area.
   
• Reports to various offices of the U.S. Department of Justice, with repeated blocks to reporting the ongoing federal crimes.
   
• Refusing to work under the criminal environment, Stich resigned from government and then published books and appeared on hundreds of radio and TV shows, seeking to inform and motivate the American people to help halt the ongoing deadly corruption.
   
• Filing a series of lawsuits against the FAA and NTSB, seeking to report the federal offenses, as required under the federal crime reporting statute and another statute. Federal judges blocked every attempt to report the federal crimes related to the ongoing aviation disasters.
   
• Final lawsuit before the ongoing culture of corruption would play a major role on September 11, 2001.
   
• Lawsuit filed in the federal courts in New York City immediately after the 9/11 hijackings. That lawsuit sought to report:
   
  • The corrupt actions by key people in the FAA that were responsible for the conditions that enabled the 19 terrorists to so easily hijack four airliners on 9/11.
     
  • The corruption of key people in the FBI-DOJ that blocked the misconduct in the government's aviation safety offices to be reported and halt; that covered up for advance information from a key al Qaeda cell about the planned terrorist attacks.
     
  • The series of corrupt acts by federal judges that blocked the reporting of the corrupt activities in the government's aviation safety offices; the corrupt activities of Department of Justice employees.
     
  • The series of sham lawsuits filed by lawyers that knowingly interfered with the efforts to expose the ongoing deadly corruption, and which were parallel efforts to the obstruction of justice tactics by federal judges and Department of Justice employees.
     
• The multiple efforts to halt reporting the deadly corruption. See also sequence of events.