WASHINGTON — After federal flight inspector Christopher J. Monteleon reported that pilots at Colgan Air were not ready to safely fly the Bombardier Dash 8 Q400, his bosses transferred him, in part “to immediately respond to the operator’s scheduling needs,” a Federal Aviation Administration official said in a memo obtained Friday by The Buffalo News.

After the transfer, the FAA approved Colgan to begin flying the Q400 on schedule — and less than a year later, on Feb. 12, a Colgan Q400 crashed in Clarence, killing 50 people.

Monteleon and other whistleblowers at the FAA said that experience was similar to what by-the-book inspectors at the agency have faced for years.

“The FAA has fostered an internal culture of non-accountability that continues to endanger the public,” the whistleblowers said in a letter to key senators.

Lawyers for Monteleon provided that FAA memo and the whistleblowers’ letter to The News.

And in an interview, Monteleon detailed the troubles he saw Colgan pilots having flying the Q400 — and said he was moved to a desk job in retaliation for reporting those troubles.

The March 17, 2008, memo from Nick Scarpentino, manager of the FAA’s Washington Flight Standards District Office, to Monteleon’s union representative said he was transferred because of “an incident regarding . . . Monteleon’s conduct.”

Monteleon denied the FAA’s allegation that he threatened another employee.

Instead, he pointed to this line in the memo: “The matter also required management to immediately respond to the operator’s scheduling needs, which was an issue at the time.”

Saying Scarpentino should have been fired for connecting a safety issue to Colgan’s scheduling needs, Monteleon said: “When the FAA looks at its regulated entities as customers, then FAA has a systemic problem.”

Laura J. Brown, a spokeswoman for the FAA, said she could not comment on why Monteleon was transferred because personnel matters are proprietary.

“Our position is that none of his moves were retaliatory,” she said.

In the interview, Monteleon elaborated on the flight-safety issues he described to National Transportation Safety Board officials after the Colgan crash.

On test flights he took with a Colgan crew on a Q400 on Jan. 19, 2008, the pilot exceeded the plane’s speed limitations, failed to recognize a communications system malfunction and mishandled the plane’s landing.

Monteleon said the test pilot acknowledged to being fatigued — a problem that, according to investigators, also may have been an issue with the crew of Flight 3407 that crashed in Clarence.

He also saw Colgan test pilots violating “sterile cockpit” rules that prohibit unnecessary conversation during key parts of the flight — just as the crew of Flight 3407 did.

Saying he had witnessed a “wink and a nod” attitude toward safety rules at Colgan dating as far back as 2004, Monteleon added: “No, I didn’t predict an accident. And I don’t know what caused it. But the trends point in a certain direction.”

Monteleon filed a complaint about those test-flight violations, but he said he was ordered to cease his investigation and that evidence of its existence was erased.

After he was transferred away from Colgan, he filed whistleblower complaints with the Office of Special Counsel and the inspector general of the U. S. Department of Transportation.

Monteleon’s case is by no means unique, the FAA Whistleblowers Alliance said in a letter to Sen. John. D. Rockefeller, the West Virginia Democrat who heads the Senate Commerce Committee, and other senators that oversee aviation.

“The evidence of FAA oversight failures has been a constant and troubling concern in fatal air carrier accidents over the past several years,” the group said.

Brown, of the FAA, said the agency had always taken whistleblower complaints seriously and followed up with changes when necessary.

But Monteleon, for one, doesn’t think that’s so.

He said that after Flight 3407 crashed, “I put my feelings to paper in a rather emotive letter” to investigators who were probing his whistleblower complaint against the FAA.

“It was something like: Please, do something,” he said.