FAA’s sloppy inspections draw denials, not change
The National Transportation Safety Board issued a chilling finding Tuesday: The failure to grease a single jackscrew on the tail of Alaska Airlines Flight 261 caused the jetliner to plunge into the Pacific Ocean on Jan. 31, 2000, killing all 88 aboard.The airline’s laxity was not the only cause of the tragedy. The Federal Aviation Administration, charged with policing airline-maintenance programs, had allowed the airline to grease and check the part less frequently. By doing so, the FAA ‘’failed miserably,'’ NTSB acting chairwoman Carol Carmody said.
Add that indictment to a history of failure to hold airlines to strict safety standards, and the obvious conclusion is that the agency isn’t performing its primary mission — ensuring the safety of the flying public. Yet the FAA’s complicity in the Alaska crash comes as it is pushing to expand its role in inspecting older aircraft.
Certainly, potential safety problems with an aging fleet of commercial planes need to be addressed. Even more pressing, though, is the inadequacy of the FAA’s current inspection programs. Not until that problem is solved can the agency consider taking on more duties.
Troubling signs of shoddy maintenance are distressingly common. Last week, the FAA proposed a fine against United Airlines for using tape to repair holes in a panel on a jetliner’s wing. The same day, it sought a fine against American Eagle for lax maintenance after it flew a jet 88 times with a broken windshield-defogger system. Those lapses, coming at a time when a slump in air travel has airlines fighting for their lives, point to the need for a reliable program to ensure maintenance corners aren’t being cut.
Yet the FAA has repeatedly failed to meet that goal. Instead, it has a history of making ambitious promises after airline disasters that it doesn’t keep.
In 1996, for example, a ValuJet airliner crashed in Florida when oxygen canisters that should never have been on board ignited a catastrophic fire. A chastened FAA, which had ignored warnings from its own workers that ValuJet was unsafe, promised more vigorous inspections. But a program it set up in 1998 failed to catch mounting signs that Alaska’s maintenance was lax and required greater scrutiny.
Even now, nearly three years after the Alaska crash, the FAA has failed to follow through on failings highlighted after the crash, including the lack of systematic analysis of maintenance data.
This week, despite the NTSB’s rebuke, the FAA is still in denial. Letting Alaska lubricate and check a crucial mechanism less frequently ‘’was well within industry norms,'’ an FAA spokesman said. In reality, the FAA coddled the airline by giving it more leeway in handling maintenance of the jackscrew.
The FAA’s failure to learn from its mistakes raises serious questions about its ability to police routine airline maintenance, much less take on the job of inspecting the more than one in five jetliners built before 1987 that the major carriers still fly.
Airlines have proved that they can’t be trusted to police maintenance on their own. That’s why the FAA has to fill that role. But first it needs to face up to its shortcomings, rather than deny them even in the face of actions that contributed to 88 deaths.
As the NTSB’s Carmody said, ‘’The public trusts the government to ensure the safety of flight.'’ Many changes are needed before the FAA earns that trust.Today’s debate: Aircraft safetyReport on 2000 Alaska Air crash yields fresh evidence of problem.
