Legislative Action Alert!

The House of Representatives recently passed HR 1507, the Whistleblower Protection Act of 2009, while the Senate version of this legislation, S.772, is still in work-up in committee. It is urgently requested that you please contact your senators requesting that they adopt the stronger language contained in the House bill in their final legislation.

Your senators may be contacted here.

Additionally, please contact your family members, friends, and neighbors, as well as your friends, associates, and followers on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and MySpace and direct them to this link by a copy/paste of the URL on your email/site.

As you fully realize, as has been reported in media recently, numerous whistleblowers, federal as well as airline aircrew members, have been wrongfully terminated or punished, suppressed and intimidated for speaking out on serious issues concerning deteriorating commercial air safety the past several years. As a result, passengers and aircrew members lives have been lost. This must be promptly corrected by appropriate and meaningful congressional legislation. The language of HR 1507 is a move in the right direction.

Also, the establishment of an independent whistleblower investigation office, as provided for in section 331 of HR 915 , is critical in ensuring that whistleblower safety disclosures are properly reviewed and not suppressed, as has been documented so many times in the past.

Members of the FAA Whistleblowers Alliance and our association have joined political hands with members of the Government Accountability Project in demanding accountability in government, while protecting the rights of whistle blowers through a fair and impartial justice system, which includes a jury trial. It should be noted that a full 98% of federal whistle blower cases that even reach the appelate level are dismissed. This stunning statistic alone gives cause for great alarm and hopefully will sound as your clarion call to politically respond by contacting your senators immediately.

During the fall 2006 congressional mid-term election cycle, the Democratic Party campaigned with a promise of 'draining the swamp' and 'ridding us of the culture of corruption'. Last year, President Obama ran on a platform that guaranteed us we would see a 'greater openness of government' during his term in office. During his the first day of his confirmation hearing, Attorney General Holder affirmed his full support of whistle blowers and the importance of guaranteeing imunity for reporting alleged wrongdoing.

Additionally, Attorney General Holder recently remarked that we have become a 'nation of cowards'. Whistle blowers must necessarily transcend the very real feelings of fear of speaking out without intimidation, and do so fully believing that the legal system will protect them, while the system of justice to uphold these laws are substantive and real. It is too late when whistle blowers realize that the illusory governmental systems of protection have abandoned and betrayed them, leaving these honest individuals to fend for themselves in a rigged judicial process.

In Closing...

It is once again asked that you help us promulate the existence of our website at http://www.airline-whistleblowers.org and our blog at http://airline-whistleblower.com to all your family, friends and neighbors. Thank you in advance for your support and cooperation.

FAA whistle-blower safety warnings found to have merit

FAA whistle-blower safety warnings found to have merit

July 2, 2009
FAA whistle-blower safety warnings found to have merit
Posted: 12:14 PM ET
American Morning - amFIX
Filed under: Airline safety

By Allan Chernoff
CNN Sr. Correspondent

A federal investigation into Federal Aviation Administration employee whistle-blower safety complaints has found more than two dozen to be on the mark, CNN has learned, potentially putting the public’s safety at risk.

The federal Office of Special Counsel, which investigates allegations of reprisal against whistle-blowers, tells CNN it has made a “positive determination” that the FAA improperly responded to 27 current cases of FAA employee whistle-blowers warning of safety violations ranging from airline maintenance concerns to runway and air traffic control issues.

“It means that FAA is a very sick agency,” said Tom Devine, legal director of the non-profit Government Accountability Project. “There’s never been an agency that’s had that large of a surge of whistle-blowers whose concerns were vindicated by the government’s official whistle-blower protection office.”

The Department of Transportation told CNN, “We acknowledge it’s a large number of cases.”

“We take whistle-blower complaints very seriously and we fully cooperate with all of the investigations,” said FAA spokesperson Laura J. Brown.

Among the warnings found to have merit are those of FAA inspector Christopher Monteleon, who flagged safety problems at Colgan Air for several years before a Colgan plane crashed near Buffalo in February killing 50 people. He told CNN he’s faced retaliation at the FAA for pointing out issues including faulty aircraft manuals and poor cockpit procedures he observed during in-flight aircraft testing.

“My supervisor called me into his office and said, ‘Stop your investigation.’ He said that these violations never occurred,” said Monteleon.

But Monteleon continued raising safety concerns about the airline. Eventually he was demoted and put on leave of absence.

“I had my aviation inspector credentials taken from me,” Monteleon told CNN. “It has just been humiliating. It’s been awful.”

The FAA says it does not believe any of Monteleon’s reassignments were retaliatory, and cannot comment further because this is a personnel issue covered by privacy laws.

While the Office of Special Counsel has found merit in Monteleon’s charges of safety violations, the Special Counsel continues to investigate his claim that he was the victim of retaliation for pressing his safety concerns.

Though passenger safety is at stake, the Office of Special Counsel found the FAA has repeatedly deferred to the airlines it regulates.

“That’s shocking, and it’s really unconscionable for a government agency that’s supposed to be about safety, not about witch hunts for those who find safety lacking,” said Mary Schiavo, inspector general of the Department of Transportation from 1990-1996, who is now an attorney representing families of accident victims.

What’s going on at FAA? Critics say it’s the culture.

In 2003, former FAA administrator Marion Blakey established a “Customer Service Initiative” that defined airlines as customers, rather than the flying public. The current Transportation Department inspector general Calvin Scovel, found, “FAA’s definition of its customer has had a pervasively negative, although unintended, impact on its oversight program.”

While there’s no evidence of illegal dealings, the FAA has an active revolving door. Agency managers regularly go on to work in the aviation industry while industry executives take top spots at FAA.

-Former FAA administrator Marion Blakey is now president and CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association.

-Former FAA chief operating officer Russell Chew moved on to become president of Jet Blue Airways, where he just stepped down and took on the role of Senior Adviser for the company.

-FAA’s chief operating officer of air traffic, Hank Krakowski, came from United Airlines where he held a number of senior management positions, including vice president of flight operations.

-Linda Daschle, wife of the former Senate Democratic leader, was the FAA’s acting administrator, and then became a lobbyist representing the airline industry.

“There’s a very cozy relationship between the lobbyists for the industry and the Department of Transportation and the FAA,” said Schiavo.

As in all federal agencies, senior executives leaving the FAA are subject to a one-year “cooling off” period that forbids them from representing a client before the FAA.

The new transportation secretary Ray LaHood and FAA administrator Randy BabbitT, who took office June 1, say they will make sure whistle-blowers are heard.

“We will pay attention to any kind of complaint or accusation or any concern expressed by an employee of FAA. It’s a new day at the FAA and at DOT,” LaHood told CNN.

FAA last year established a Safety Issues Reporting System for employees to raise safety concerns. FAA also tracks employee hotline complaints in its General Counsel Office.

But, the agency has resisted calls to establish an independent office to investigate whistle-blower safety claims. The pending House bill to reauthorize FAA would require the agency to establish such an office. The Senate still has to write its version of the bill.

The Office of Special Counsel has referred all 27 cases to the transportation secretary who is investigating and must tell the Special Counsel what steps will be taken to fix the safety problems.

UPDATE: FAA inspectors pounded for doing their job

UPDATE: FAA inspectors pounded for doing their job

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
Local Opinion Editor
07/09/09 12:05 AM EDT

A former FAA safety inspector has asked the Office of Special Counsel to refer a 2005 plane crash near Miami to the Department of Justice to file charges of criminal negligence, manslaughter and a coverup by officials in the Federal Aviation Administration.

Gabe Bruno says that at least one mechanic with phony certification worked on Chalks Ocean Airway’s 58-year-old Grumman G-73T Mallard, which lost a wing and crashed off the coast of Miami shortly after takeoff, killing all 20 people aboard. The mechanic was tested and licensed by Anthony St. George, who was convicted and sentenced to two and a half years in jail FAA for basically selling mechanics licenses without making sure they knew what they were doing.

In 2002, Bruno says, he instituted a retesting program for the 2,000 or so mechanics that were certified by St. George. “The failure rate for the 300 people we retested was between 75 and 80 percent,” he told me.

But former FAA assistant administrator Nicholas Sabatini cancelled the program over Bruno’s strong objections. When retesting was finally reinstated, Bruno says, “it was a rubber-stamp sham, with nobody assigned to monitor the results.”

http://www.whistleblower.org/content/press_detail.cfm?press_id=1625

Three days after the Chalks accident, a mechanic certified by St. George failed the new “dumbed down” exam, and also failed a second exam – even after being given a month to study. “We would have had this guy out of the system three years before” if the FAA’s aviation safety standards were actually being enforced, Bruno pointed out. But in the FAA’s current “culture of non accountability,” mechanics with fraudulent licenses from St. George are still working on aircraft today, endangering the flying public.

And since 2001, Bruno added, a “culture of cronyism” has pervaded the FAA, diminishing the agency’s effectiveness, compromising its ability to protect air passengers and violating the public trust.

“At one time, FAA was the gold standard in the world,” Bruno told me. “But for the past several years, there’s been a lot of disregard for the standards” of aviation safety. Worse, when conscientious FAA employees point out instances in which the agency is caught violating its own standards, they often face harsh retaliation from their own supervisors.

FAA is supposed to make sure that all aircraft meet stringent safety requirements. However, in the past few years, Bruno says, shutting down investigations and retaliating against the very people trying to protect the public has become “the normal way of doing business” at FAA.

Bruno, a 28-year employee and current head of the FAA Whistleblowers Alliance, says he was forced out of his job as a safety manager by Sabatini - who retired after he was caught making “misleading’ statements to Congress - after Bruno handled the merger between troubled Value Jet and Air Tran. “I delivered an operational airline in full compliance [with FAA standards], but FAA refused to approve the application,” Bruno told me. He believes he was forced out of his job because of Sabatini’s personal involvement in fast-tracking the FAA certification of Jet Blue – Air Tran’s major competitor on the East Coast.

“FAA was supposed to be cleaned out top to bottom,” Bruno says. “That hasn’t happened. FAA is supposed to be a safety agency, not a political agency, but their number one product now is office politics.” And many managers who compromised public safety in the past are still ensconced there.

Bruno cited the case of Christopher Monteleon, another FAA safety inspector who brought up pilot training problems and other serious safety concerns at Colgan Air – the subject of two Senate Aviation Subcommittee hearings in June - at least a year before the crash in Buffalo that killed 50 people.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/06042009/news/nationalnews/buffalo_crash_whistleblower_silenced_172543.htm

But instead of requiring Colgan to fix the problems he cited, Monteleon’s inspector credential were revoked, he was taken off the case, reassigned three times and is now on administrative leave. He reportedly is even barred from entering FAA or Dept. of Transportation headquarters in Washington even though, as Bruno points out, “everything he said would happen happened.”

“FAA inspectors who are trying to do their job are getting pounded,” Bruno says. Which should greatly alarm anybody who plans on boarding an airplane anytime soon.

Senate panel misses the point on aviation safety delays by FAA

Senate panel misses the point on aviation safety delays by FAA

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
Examiner Columnist | 6/22/09 5:46 AM

Leave it to Congress to hold not one, but two public hearings and still not get to the heart of the matter: For at least six years, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has failed to heed warnings by airline pilots who reported serious safety concerns that put the public at risk. And the very same safety issues are still not being adequately addressed now.

Like the first hearing held a week earlier, last Wednesday’s inquiry by the Senate Aviation Subcommittee focused on the crash of Colgan Air Flight 3407 in Buffalo, which killed all 50 people aboard and one on the ground. The lack of adequate training and pilot fatigue were cited as the two major contributing factors by FAA administrator Randy Babbitt and National Transportation Safety Board acting chairman Mark Rosenker.

However, neither Babbit nor Rosenker mentioned the fact that FAA had been warned about these same issues six years prior to the Colgan crash by commercial pilots with sterling cockpit credentials and decades of flying experience. Instead of being commended for their candor, these pilots were medically grounded in retaliation for speaking up. Instead of defending their own members, the Airline Pilots Association looked the other way as their lives and careers were ruined.

Yet not one of these former pilots were called to testify before the subcommittee, even though several offered to do so and even traveled to Washington at their own expense. Consequently, none of the senators, including chairman Byron Dorgan, D-ND, asked Mr. Babbitt exactly how he planned to prevent future suppression of mandated safety warnings by airline and FAA officials.

Former United captain Dan Hanley, head of the Whistleblowing United Pilots Association, wasn’t allowed to tell subcommittee members that he was forced out of the cockpit after complaining about pilot fatigue – the same issue the subcommittee is now investigating - and that the same kind of legal and economic pressures the airlines experienced after 9/11 still prevent pilots from voicing their concerns.

A former Continental pilot said that a physician who fabricated a medical diagnosis that permanently grounded him after he filed a safety complaint now works for the FAA, so those who muster the courage to speak out are still being threatened with losing their jobs. But because he wasn’t allowed to testify either, Babbitt wasn’t questioned about it.

An overworked young pilot told me that calling in to report excessive fatigue means he will not only lose his own pay, but his entire flight crew would also be docked as well. This policy puts added pressure on sleep-deprived pilots to fly even when physically impaired.

Why didn’t the FAA address the pilot fatigue issue before 51 people died? Babbitt should have been asked, but wasn’t.

Airline passengers literally put their lives in the hands of airline pilots every day. They should be appalled to learn that the federal agency with direct responsibility for aviation safety has ignored safety warnings by pilots and allowed airline management to interfere with its mission to protect the flying public. And that members of Congress are still letting them get away with it.

Barbara F. Hollingsworth is the Examiner’s local opinion editor.

FAA is still ignoring the warnings

FAA is still ignoring the warnings

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
Examiner Columnist | 6/11/09 3:52 PM

Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials have failed to act on some 450 recommendations from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to improve aviation safety, acting NTSB chairman Mark Rosenker told members of the Senate Aviation Subcommittee yesterday.

The panel is investigating the fatal crash of Colgan Air Flight 3407 in Buffalo.

"Some have been ignored for as many as 10 to 15 years," Rosenker added.

The list includes two recommendations specifically designed to prevent mid-air collisions with gliders. During the last two decades, nine people died and three were injured in preventable mid-air collisions between motorized aircraft and gliders. There have been dozens of near-misses that could have taken many more lives.

But that's not all the FAA has been ignoring. The agency charged with ensuring the public's safety in the skies has not heeded warnings by highly qualified and experienced pilots, some of whom were forced out of the cockpit in retaliation for reporting their concerns.

Rosenker cited the problem of pilot fatigue as a major contributing factor in what Dorgan called a "stunning set of failures" in the Colgan crash. But in 2003, when former United Airlines captain Dan Hanley filed a federally mandated Airline Safety Action Report (ASAP) after listening to overworked pilots talking in a London bar about falling asleep on transatlantic flights and letting the aircraft basically fly itself, he was "immediately taken out of the schedule" and medically grounded on trumped-up psychiatric grounds in retaliation, ending an unblemished 35-year career as a naval and commercial aviator.

Pilots who are still flying told The Examiner that they have heard of similar medical groundings, which they admit have a chilling effect on their willingness to report serious safety problems they encounter in the air. But so far, no pilots have been called to testify before the Senate subcommittee.

Newly appointed FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt told senators that his agency is upgrading training standards for pilots and plans to require all commercial carriers to have ASAP programs in place.

But Babbitt also defended the FAA's past treatment of whistleblowers. "I am convinced the FAA took appropriate action," he said, even though experienced pilots like Hanley, with decades of flying experience, were forced out of their jobs for raising exactly the same safety concerns Babbitt now promises to address.

Department of Transportation inspector general Calvin Scovel disagreed with Babbitt, telling subcommittee members that he has "concerns regarding FAA's failure to protect employees who report safety issues from retaliation from other FAA employees."

In other words, instead of rewarding airline pilots and even its own employees for speaking up about aviation safety issues, the FAA punishes them. This kind of culture is poisonous in an agency whose mission is to safeguard the flying public.

It was also quite surprising that during Wednesday's hearing, neither Rosenker nor Babbitt mentioned a 2007 Airworthiness Directive the FAA issued on the Bombardier Model DHC-8 series that warned of "erroneous/misleading altitude and airspeed information" from pitot static probes, devices that measure airspeed. If the probes malfunctioned on the Colgan DHC-8, Capt. Marvin Renslow may not have known his correct airspeed.

"Pilots learn on the second day of flight training not to get too slow," Keith Karnofsky, a former Eastern Airlines pilot and flight instructor. Karnofsky, who lives in Buffalo and runs the www.airline-crash-analysis.com blog, told The Examiner:

"The [Colgan flight's] speed degraded from 180 to 130 knots in 25 seconds. Unless [Capt. Renslow] wanted to die, it couldn't have been him. There are characteristics of this airplane that would have made rapid speed loss highly probable" - characteristics the FAA was aware of more than two years ago.

Aviation "is a business in which one mistake is one too many," Babbitt told subcommittee members. But if that's the case, the FAA is well over the acceptable limit.

Blocked Whistleblower Protections Put Obama Transparency Promises at Risk; Intvw with Whistleblower advocate Tom Devine

Promoted to Headline (H3) on 7/10/09:
Blocked Whistleblower Protections Put Obama Transparency Promises at Risk; Intvw with Whistleblower advocate Tom Devine

by Rob Kall

www.opednews.com

Toxic plane air sickens flight attendant, suit says

Toxic plane air sickens flight attendant, suit says

* Story Highlights
* A flight attendant claims a cabin 'fume event' on a plane left her chronically ill
* Product liability suit blames Boeing for not having filters, sensors in place
* Since April 2007, she's suffered from chronic migraines, tremors and vision loss
* Suit follows years of recommendations about 'bleed air," which Boeing says is safe

By Jessica Ravitz
CNN

(CNN) -- The last time Terry Williams can remember being headache-free was in December. A chronic migraine has plagued her ever since. So have balance and vision problems, a tremor in her left arm, a prickly sensation in her feet and a loss of childhood memories.

The ailments, she says, began April 11, 2007. Williams, then a veteran American Airlines flight attendant of 17 years, noticed a "misty haze type of smoke" on Flight 843 as it taxied toward a gate in Dallas, Texas.

That "fume event," as it is known, and the physical maladies she felt afterward drove Williams, 40, to file a product liability lawsuit late Tuesday in Seattle, Washington, against Boeing and McDonnell Douglas, aircraft manufacturers linked to the MD-82 aircraft she was on. Her claim: Toxins in the cabin's air made her sick, and a design flaw -- the lack of filters and sensors -- left her unprotected.

They "knew or should have known that toxic nerve agents, contaminates, and dangerous fumes could bleed into the plane's ventilation system, causing serious and irreversible health effects," her attorneys said in a written statement.

Boeing spokesman Todd Blecher said he was "aware of the lawsuit" but couldn't "discuss details of it at this time."

He then added, "Regarding the issue that the suit appears to raise, I can say that we believe that the air in airplane cabins is safe." VideoWatch Williams discuss her suit »

McDonnell Douglas is no longer in business. It merged with Boeing in the late 1990s to form the Boeing Co., so Blecher said he spoke on behalf of both entities.

"Since we're not named in the suit and it was just filed, we have no comment at this time," said Tim Wagner, a spokesman for American Airlines. "We'll watch the lawsuit as it progresses."

The 'same color as antifreeze'

Between a tickle in her throat, cough and headache, Williams thought she had the start of a common cold when she stepped off the flight in question. But she says the symptoms grew worse and included a nasal discharge she described as "neon green, the same color as antifreeze."

Within several weeks, Williams says, she had to make repeated visits to emergency rooms before a neurologist told her she'd been the victim of toxic exposure.

Since the early 1960s, air in passenger jets has typically combined re-circulated existing cabin air with air bled off the engines. The air pulled into the engines is cooled and compressed before it is pumped into the the plane. It is this "bleed air" that Williams' suit claims was contaminated. See how "bleed air" enters a plane's ventilation system »

Leaks in the seals that keep engine oil in place could cause chemically laden fumes to enter the air stream, said William Nazaroff, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at University of California, Berkeley.

"A specific chemical of concern is tricresyl phosphate," he said, a chemical compound used in nerve agents and pesticides. "Historically, there have been some neurotoxic health consequences from high human exposures to [tricresyl phosphate]."

How often "fume events" happen, and how often they are reported, is disputed.

A National Research Council report in 2002, using data from three Canadian airlines, said that on one aircraft model, nearly four out of 1,000 flights had a fume event.

The Committee on Toxicity in the United Kingdom, a group made up of independent experts who advise government agencies, said in September 2007 that pilots reported events in 1 percent of flights and that maintenance inspected and confirmed incidents in 0.05 percent of flights.

"These frequency estimates may all sound low, but consider that there were 10.65 million flights on U.S. registered aircraft in 2008. Even 0.05 percent of flights translates into about 14 events per day," said Judith Murawski, an industrial hygienist with the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, who has studied the issue for more than nine years.

Most of the flying public has never heard of "fume events," and employees, especially in this economy, may stay mum for job security reasons, Murawski said. Flight attendants who become too sick to work -- and Murawski estimates that there have been hundreds -- usually file a workers' compensation claim, which Williams has also done.

'Bleed air' research spans decades

The Federal Aviation Administration does not dismiss the possibility of fume events and the potential health dangers.

"The concerns are reasonable and are being investigated," the agency said in a written response to CNN's questions about the issue.

"These symptoms" -- including memory loss, vision impairment, tremors, headaches and vomiting -- "have been attributed to exposure to tricresyl phosphate (TCP) and other breakdown products of hydraulic fluid, fuel, deicing fluid and engine oil," it said.

The statement also said, however, that the same symptoms occur as a result of other neurological conditions. The FAA said researchers at seven universities involved in Airliner Cabin Environment Research are trying "to assess the level of exposure to toxic chemicals in aircraft and to correlate any verified exposures with crew and passenger symptoms."

The first known written report about exposure to toxins on airplanes -- entitled "Human Intoxication Following Inhalation Exposure to Synthetic Jet Lubricating Oil" -- was submitted in 1977 by a team of doctors, including those affiliated with a pulmonary-toxicology lab at a VA Hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Their investigation focused on a case of a "previously healthy" 34-year-old military pilot who became "acutely incapacitated" while flying after being exposed to "aerosolized or vaporized synthetic lubricating oil," the doctors wrote in the report. They said further investigation was "definitely warranted."

In 1986, the National Research Council, an operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, conducted -- at the request of Congress -- an independent study and produced a report entitled "The Airliner Cabin Environment: Air Quality and Safety." In this, the council raised myriad concerns about air quality in cabins, including exposure to contaminants.

The research council was enlisted again by Congress about 15 years later. The result was the 2002 report "The Airliner Cabin Environment and the Health of Passengers and Crews." In its own language responding to the NRC's recommendation regarding air quality and ventilation, the FAA said it "has not kept pace with public expectation and concern about air quality" and cannot guarantee protection from contamination "because no airplane design incorporates an air contaminant monitoring system."

In its statement to CNN, the FAA said it "supports all of the NRC's recommendations and continues to monitor the development of data on cabin air contamination to ensure the health of the flying public."

Christiaan van Netten, an environmental toxicologist in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, devised a simple device to measure air quality on planes. Seventy-five of the hand-held monitors were used in a study conducted by the Occupational Health Research Consortium in Aviation, a project that was funded by the FAA.

Van Netten says he's not at liberty to talk about the results because this report was submitted last month and is being reviewed by the FAA. But he said more comprehensive and transparent air-quality testing would only help the industry.

"When you don't have access to real information, people go from one extreme to another," he said. "By not addressing the facts, you open yourself up to all sorts of wild speculation."

Others also report exposure

Tristan Loraine, an English pilot who said he was forced to retire because contaminated bleed air made him sick, thinks the airline industry is more concerned about profits than protecting passengers and employees. His experience drove him to create a documentary titled "Welcome Aboard Toxic Airlines."

He and others say it's difficult for doctors to diagnose exposure and that the effect on individuals -- based on differing immune systems, enzyme levels, medications -- varies dramatically. For this reason, there's a chance Williams alone may have reported a reaction to the fume event on her flight.

Clement Furlong, a research professor in the departments of medicine and genome sciences at the University of Washington, has worked since 2005 to develop a simple blood test to determine whether a person has been exposed to contaminated bleed air. He says he's getting close.

"If we have 10 boxes to check to be there, we've checked off nine," he said.

Terry Williams is not the only person claiming ill effects of bad cabin air. Her attorneys also represent twin sisters, 45, who say they were sickened on a Southwest Airlines flight in January -- one that was diverted for what they called an "unexplained malfunction."

A spokeswoman for Southwest Airlines, Brandy King, confirmed that the flight had been diverted but would not say why and would add only, "We are actively collecting information and reviewing the sequence of events."

Another aviation attorney out of Chicago, Illinois, represents 20 U.K. passengers who say they became sick two years ago on a charter flight to Orlando, Florida.

"There's been enough research to show that indeed this is a problem, and it's now time to implement solutions," said Christopher Witkowski, director of air safety, health and security for the union AFA-CWA.

The issue gained traction in the mid-1990s, Murawski says, because by then most airlines had banned in-flight smoking and people began noticing other smells and hazes. But after September 11, she says the industry's priorities turned full-throttle to an entirely different safety issue.

Changes on the horizon

Those concerned about fume events point to recent developments that give them hope.

The new Boeing 787 Dreamliner, set to roll out soon, does not use bleed air and instead compresses atmospheric air from outside the plane. Blecher, the Boeing spokesman, said electrical system advances that improve efficiency -- and not concerns over bleed air -- inspired the change.

Meanwhile, the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2009, which passed in the House and is now in a Senate committee, calls for research and development of sensor and air cleaning technology to remove "oil-based contaminants from the bleed air."

The Australian government's Civil Aviation Safety Authority set up an Expert Panel on Aircraft Air Quality to review this issue. And on Wednesday, the United Kingdom Parliament held a debate about aircraft air quality, specifically discussing design flaws that might expose people to toxic fumes.

Williams, who lives outside Seattle and has 3- and 4-year-old boys, said she's pursuing the lawsuit because she doesn't want others to suffer.

"I'm often unable to play with my children. I feel like I'm depriving my kids of a mom and my husband of a wife," she said, her voice cracking. "I walked off that plane and have never been the same. ... If I can educate anyone and help raise public awareness to stop this from happening, hopefully changes can be made to keep people healthy."