The difference between McSweeny and O’Neal was politics. O’Neal worked in a job that allowed him to be an aggressive regulator without much concern for the political realities of the FAA or the costs to the manufacturers. If he thought the FAA should do something, he would propose it, even if it was unlikely to get past the scrutiny of the FAA’s economists and top officials. But McSweeny was a political animal who had to be realistic about what could be done.
McSweeny often came across as a cautious bureaucrat rather than an aggressive regulator. When he talked about safety proposals, whether they were for the 737 or some other airplane, he was likely to sound like a spokesperson for the manufacturer. One reason for that was the FAA’s awkward position anytime someone questioned the safety of a plane. If the FAA failed to give a hearty endorsement that a plane was safe, the agency was essentially admitting it had done a lousy job. If the plane was unsafe, then the FAA must have screwed up by not spotting the problem first. McSweeny could have gotten around that easily enough if he’d just sounded as if he was tough on the companies he regulated, but in the view of NTSB officials, he often came across like a salesman for the companies. Even when the FAA mandated safety changes to the 737, he sounded like a booster of the plane.
“They are really not design defects,” he said during a press conference to announce rule changes for the 737. “They are improvements to the design.” Boeing engineers used the same language to explain any fixes to the 737, calling them “improvements to an already safe design.”
Relations between McSweeny and the NTSB were strained. That was no surprise, since the NTSB was the aviation watchdog. It needed to uncover problems at the FAA to justify its existence. Safety board officials liked to grouse about the bureaucratic sluggishness of the FAA and how protective the agency could be of the companies it was supposed to regulate. “McSweeny drives us nuts,” Haueter said. “It sounds like he’s speaking for Boeing.”
Likewise, many people at the FAA complained about the safety board’s political grandstanding and its holier-than-thou approach. Relations were further strained because the safety board got mountains of favorable press coverage and the FAA often got pummeled.
McSweeny seemed to have a strong dislike for the NTSB. He occasionally asked his staff to find out the agency’s next move so he could preempt the board with regulatory action. He told FAA staffers that one of his goals for the 737 Critical Design Review was to beat the NTSB to the punch. If everything worked out, McSweeny would get his report back long before the NTSB solved the case and the FAA would get the credit.
The review began two months after the Hopewell crash and took about six months. The result was an inch-thick report that made twenty-seven recommendations about the plane. It called for better pilot training, fixes to the 737’s erratic yaw damper, and clarifications for vague language in the federal air regulations. But when FAA officials described the findings in an executive summary, they made it sound as though the report was a ringing endorsement of the plane. They stressed that their review found no serious problems with the 737. “No safety issue has been found that requires immediate corrective action,” the executive summary said. The twenty-seven recommendations will “enhance an already safe design.”
As Brett walked into the thirteenth-floor conference room on September 23, 1996, to give a deposition, he thought about snubbing USAir lawyer Ann P. Goodman by refusing to shake her hand. After all, she represented the airline that had killed Joan, so it seemed perfectly reasonable that he didn’t have to be nice to her. Brett, wearing a tie that Joan had given him shortly before the crash, had come to the offices of McCullough, Campbell, and Lane in Chicago so the lawyers could determine how much Joan’s life was worth. USAir had the right to ask probing questions about their marriage, their income, even their sex life, to determine how big an award he was entitled to receive. Brett resented the whole process. “They killed my wife,” he said before the deposition, “and now they get to invade my privacy.”
It had been nearly two years since the crash, and Brett was finally showing the first major signs of healing. He had stopped wearing his wedding band, sold his house in Lisle, and moved into a lakefront condo in Chicago. For the first year and a half after the crash, he had worn his wedding ring every day. But he was afraid people were beginning to think he was a weirdo who could not let go of the past. He tried putting it on the chain around his neck with Joan’s battered engagement ring, but they kept clanking together. So he put the wedding band away and watched the tan line on his finger gradually fade.
He had done a few freelance jobs, writing ad copy to sell day planners, but it was not very inspiring work. He did not want to be hawking calendars the rest of his life. So he immersed himself in a plan to build a chain of restaurants. He knew that people wanted more than food when they dined out; they wanted an experience. A new chain called the Rainforest Cafe had taken an environmental theme and dazzled customers with life-size mechanical animals and a realistic jungle. He thought, Why not do the same thing with dinosaurs?
The appeal of dinosaurs was timeless. Every generation of kids seemed to be progressively more obsessed with them, yet no one had thought to franchise them. So Brett read everything he could about dinosaurs, the restaurant business, and the making of Jurassic Park. He called companies that made mechanical dinosaurs and asked them for pictures, videotapes, and prices. To avoid giving away his idea, he said he wanted to start “a small private collection of dinosaurs.”
He knew it was a long shot, but it was the perfect time to try something new. He had no dependents, few obligations, and little to lose. He visited prehistoric exhibits and dinosaur companies in Utah, Arizona, Kentucky, and Michigan. Some of the mechanical beasts looked surprisingly realistic. Others looked old and ratty. Back home in Chicago, he scoured the Internet for information about theme parks and entertainment companies. He had no experience in the restaurant business, but he got help from his father, who was an executive in a company that ran school cafeterias.
Brett came up with a name—T. Rex’s Dino World Cafe—and hired an artist to do a colorful logo of a tyrannosaurus with a mischievous grin. He also came up with a slogan (“The only restaurant where you’re not at the top of the food chain”) and designed a business plan and a presentation for investors. The centerpiece of each cafe would be a life-size T. Rex. Another area in the restaurant would have velociraptors, which were scary, long-legged dinosaurs that would periodically run out of the bushes and look as though they were about to attack customers at their tables. There also would be an area for families with small children that would have a tame brachiosaurus. The project consumed him. The more he worked, the less he thought of the crash.
In response to Brett’s lawsuit, Boeing and USAir had blamed God. The airline said it had made all the necessary inspections of the plane and had followed federal rules. It said the crash “resulted from an Act of God, unavoidable accident, sudden emergency or conditions or occurrences for which USAir is not liable or responsible.”
Boeing said essentially the same thing in its response. “Plaintiff’s damages, if any, were directly and proximately caused by an act of God for which Boeing is not liable.” It was boilerplate language used as a standard defense in many lawsuits, but when Brett heard about it, he was furious. How could they blame God for the crash? That made it sound like God willed the crash to happen. The companies seemed to be ducking any responsibility.