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Flying well over half a million miles a year with AA, I couldn't agree with you more about their public relations and customer service. It stinks and it's an embarrassment for an airline that claims itself to be the de facto national airline of the U.S. In short, as a customer-oriented business, they are a disaster and deserve the pummeling they are currently receiving in the market.

However, as a licensed A&P mechanic for better than 30 years, I take great issue with your characterization of AMR's failure to properly maintain their aircraft. You're simply regurgitating all the wrong info as misrepresented by the idiot media. I won't go into the technical nature of the issue, but suffice it to say that AA had implemented the AD addressing the aux hyd pump wire bundle well before the deadline specified in the AD. The issue with the FAA was AA's EOC used to implement the Directive - even though AA was the prime airline working with the manufacturer to develop the inspection criteria and the fix.

That the FAA would then turn around more than two years after completion of the AD and threaten AA with the grounding of their fleet, after the FAA was summarily accused by whistle blowers of pandering to the the very airlines they were supposed to be regulating, speaks volumes about the despicable effort to save face in front of Congress by the FAA.

I'm all for holding AA accountable for their vast failings as a major air carrier - and there are many - but shoddy maintenance ain't one of them. This episode with American was nothing more than a failing gov't regulatory bureaucracy run amok at the expense of a private business. And they're not done yet; there's plenty of pain to spread around to the other airlines in order to save face at the expense of the confidence of the traveling public.

Reagan was right: government is the problem.