What are the safety issues causing airline cancellations?

An avionics mechanic for an MD-80 commercial passenger plane last April confessed to a mistake he made in servicing the wiring of a plane he was working on.

In a report to a database maintained by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, he offered an insight into how mistakes can occur when maintaining the safety of a machine as complex as a jet that conveys hundreds of people miles above the earth.

The mechanic reported that he “unintentionally misinterpreted” the instructions on how to handle wire bundles. It’s not known which airline was involved, and it doesn’t seem as if any danger followed from the work.

But it’s the sort of issue that is forcing airlines to pull hundreds of planes from the sky this week, stranding thousands of passengers and raising questions about the air safety system.

On Thursday, American Airlines canceled more flights to conduct wiring inspections demanded by the Federal Aviation Administration, which increasingly relies on airlines themselves to conduct safety inspections. Alaska Airlines and Midwest were also doing airplane inspections in this latest round.

The growing concern about airline maintenance was highlighted last year in an investigation by Consumer Reports in March 2007 that found two trends profoundly affecting the safety margins: outsourcing of maintenance work and a change in the way the FAA regulates air carriers.

In recent years, more and more heavy maintenance work has been conducted not by the airlines themselves, but by outside repair stations, some of them overseas. At the same time, the FAA is increasingly relying on airlines to police themselves. The FAA uses a statistical system to identify potential problems instead of on-the ground inspections, as in the past.

The issues found new voice today in congressional testimony by Calvin L. Scovel III, the inspector general for the Department of Transportation, which oversees the FAA.

Scovel said that an overly collaborative relationship between FAA inspectors and Southwest Airlines had created a situation in which depending on Southwest to disclose safety violations without coming up with a plan to solve the issues clearly didn’t work.

Scovel also said that the Southwest case revealed overall problems with the way the FAA oversaw safety: “We also found that the events at SWA demonstrate weaknesses in FAA’s national program for risk-based oversight—the Air Transportation Oversight System (ATOS). This allowed AD (airworthiness directive) compliance issues in SWA’s maintenance program to go undetected for several years"

“We previously identified system-wide problems with ATOS, " he continued. "In 2005, we found that inspectors did not complete 26 percent of planned ATOS inspections—half of these were in identified risk areas.”

Clearly, this is not any way to run an airline system. Using new technology to make inspections more efficient makes sense, but only if it really finds and fixes problems. And depending on airlines to police themselves runs the risk of complacency or even misunderstandings in an issue as critical as passenger safety.—Bob Tiernan

Comments

[Pete]

Let's face it, the FAA probably releases hundreds of inspection requirements every year, most for very minor issues on aircraft. The airline maintenance organizations have to comply with these requirements, no question, but I'm sure that many of these, such as the MD-80 wiring issue, are open to some interpretation, and sometimes common sense has to prevail. Unfortunately, the FAA doesn't have enough personnel to insure that every plane at every airline is inspected exactly the same way. They have to rely on the maintenance experts at the airlines, working in conjunction with the engineers at the airframers, to insure that the airplanes are safe to fly. I have no problem with that, because I really think no rational airline or airframer would purposely overlook a safety issue just to save a few bucks. The consequences of a major accident resulting from such actions would be so extreme, from the media and public backlash to financial ruin, that its just not worth it. Let's hope the FAA and the airlines can work out a reasonable compromise on maintenance and inspection programs so the U.S public can regain their trust in both organizations.

[joe]

"FAA grandstands to shift heat from itself to the airlines with this politically-motivated "safety surge"."

Maybe.

Apparently guidelines were relaxed and then stiffened. One lesson learned is follow the regulations rather than relaxing so the FAA can "grandstand".

Planes were not designed to crack. We fly them afterwards because we have learned some properties about the aircraft during operation. These are ad hoc lessons learned about aircraft. When commercial planes cracked, safety policies were established. Let's follow them. No one knows the margins since this cracking is a property not in the initial design.

Not following guidelines is taking on additional risk to save money. We'll eventually learn when it's necessary to deal with these cracks but that's a lesson for which I'm not willing to pay the tuition.

[Capt Tom Bunn]

The press, the public, and even Congress is missing the point - as the FAA grandstands to shift heat from itself to the airlines with this politically-motivated "safety surge".

It has nothing to do with safety. That is, the measures the FAA is taking will not improve safety. The discrepancies the FAA is causing havoc over are of no significance; it really doesn't matter whether the loops around a bundle of wires are sometimes spaced 1.2 inches rather than 1.0 inches!

What any smart airline exec is going to do as a result of this witch-hunt is to move all maintenance overseas where the FAA does almost no inspection at all.

Unless Congress acts to inspect overseas - at least SOME - what other impact can these extremely unreasonable inspections have?

Nothing, not even the cracks found at Southwest, have anything whatsoever to do with safety. All planes develop cracks, and mechanics find them and "stop-drill" them at the ends to keep the from progressing. The cracked areas are rarely replaced. So, the same cracks on planes that were being flown are the same cracks being found and are the same cracks that will there when the plane is flown in the future; only "stop-drilled".

What the FAA calls a danger to the public is a fraud. The real danger to the public is the FAA, itself, which simply never has done its job and never will.

It continues to say runway incursions are priority one; it has said that for dozens of years. Nothing is done as they "study" the problem. Why? England solved the problem fifty years ago. It doesn't need study, just action.

Pilots are so over-scheduled that they fall asleep and fly past their destination. The airline blames the pilots, but it is the airline that forces such schedules on pilots.

The FAA continues to do nothing. In other words, the FAA is not a safety organization but a political tool to pacify the public.

[Beth]

Is the wiring problem a design flaw? I haven't heard about anyone looking into this possibility.

[chris]

As I understand it - The FAA sends out schedules it expects to be kept. It gives the airlines every opportunity to fix and maintain on an ongoing basis. When an airline disregards the FAA then they (the FAA) grounds the planes and do not allow them to fly until the fix occurs. This has happened to me twice over the decades. Once in Puerto Rico, American Eagle had to cancel all of their flights because of maintenance that had to be done that had not been. They were able to resume the next day when they had completed the maintenance. AA has no regard for its customers at all. It has one thing in mind. Earning a profit. and during tough times the way it rewards its stockholders is by cutting corners. Fortunately for us they got caught at it this time.

[The Flying Critic]

I agree that the reports of FAA oversight issues and airline compliance requires action to correct. But not so drastic of action that we cripple the nation's transportation system for a week.

If the FAA felt that the issue with American's MD-80s could wait 18 months to be fixed before, why the need to displace hundreds of thousands of flyers this week?

Sure, American should have done the right thing and fixed these problems the first (or second) time and they also should have done the work during the first 18 month window. But is this really a safety concern worth grounding the fleet? It doesn't sound like it to me. American should have been given a short extension to get the work done in a less disruptive manner.