ROCKVILLE — Montgomery County Councilmember Dawn Luedtke is demanding the FAA take a harder look at the Montgomery County Airpark, which is a fascinating development considering she sits on the County Council and chairs the committee overseeing the damn thing.

Nothing says “leadership” like discovering a crisis from the same chair you were supposed to be supervising it from.

Luedtke now wants federal regulators to examine Washington International Flight Academy after repeated incidents and safety concerns involving its aircraft.

Residents might reasonably ask:

Where the hell was this urgency before the planes started becoming lawn ornaments?

Critics around the airpark have complained for years about operations, noise, late-night flying and rule enforcement.

Yet somehow the system kept humming along until the problems became large enough to require a formal letter, a press release and the ceremonial summoning of the FAA.

The Canton Cat has reconstructed the apparent oversight process:

Flight school skirts a rule:
“Let’s work collaboratively.”

Residents complain:
“We hear your concerns.”

Residents complain again:
“We continue to monitor the situation.”

Plane crashes:
“WHY HAS THE FAA ALLOWED THIS?”

Beautiful.

Luedtke does not represent some distant county watching this unfold through binoculars.

She is on the council.

She heads the committee overseeing the airpark.

If the rules were being skirted, ignored, stretched, massaged, creatively interpreted or fed into a wood chipper, this was not exactly occurring on Neptune.

It was happening underneath the government structure she helps run.

That makes the sudden call for federal intervention feel less like accountability and more like the captain of the Titanic demanding Congress investigate the iceberg.

And yes, aviation safety is serious.

That is precisely why oversight should happen before the wreckage, not afterward with a sternly worded PDF.

At press time, Montgomery County was reportedly considering a new aviation rule:

“Please obey the existing rules we previously treated like guidelines.”

The Canton Cat called it a historic breakthrough in regulatory science.

Then went back to watching county officials investigate themselves for failing to notice the thing they were overseeing.