Attention All Passengers (21 page)

Five years ago the Teamsters Aviation Mechanics Coalition was formed to “go on the offensive” over maintenance outsourcing. Chris Moore, a veteran mechanic for Continental, chairs the TAMC, which solicits input through Outsourcing Defect Reports, chronicling problems mechanics find on aircraft serviced by outside MROs. He says, “We've seen the airplanes coming back and we've been griping about the bad shape they're in.”

Recently United mechanics investigated complaints that several flight attendants experienced watery eyes, scratchy throats, and respiratory symptoms on board a Boeing 747 and a Boeing 777 that had just been overhauled in China. Further investigation found that the personnel in Beijing had used solvents to remove adhesive tape residue on the airplanes' interior panels and carpeting; they mistakenly oversaturated the cabins, causing
off-gassing,
a term for chemical fumes. It was unknown if any passengers fell ill as well. A similar situation occurred with US Airways aircraft serviced by ST Aerospace in Mobile, Alabama; in April 2011 pilots and flight attendants sued the facility. United mechanic David Saucedo points out: “People think when a plane comes back from China it goes through a check flight. Well, it doesn't. Instead passengers get on that plane.”

Shortly after I arrived in San Francisco to conduct research for this book, I eased my rental car past the mammoth United Airlines maintenance center on the perimeter of the airport. The airline's site describes it as a “2.9 million square foot facility that is home to more than 5,000 technicians, management, and support personnel.” But Saucedo, a twenty-four-year veteran at United, disagrees: “It's a ghost town for us now. We used to have twelve thousand mechanics there and now it's just over two thousand.”

Saucedo has been tracking the work done by outside MROs for several years now—and logging quite a few problems. For example, he notes that outside maintenance companies bid on jobs based on a predetermined number of man-hours, so their price is locked in regardless of the actual work required. Imagine asking your local gas station to repair your brakes for a cost you determine up front, regardless of whether you simply need new pads or a complete overhaul. Saucedo explains the second most intensive FAA-mandated airplane maintenance procedure—known as a C-check—has become a cause for concern: “They're finding out that two hundred man-hours isn't enough for a C-check and now it takes two hundred and forty man-hours. But they've already set a determined amount of time. They don't adjust the price, so the vendors cut corners, like not taking out all the panels during inspections. A lot of this stuff seems minor—until something happens.”

Connecting the Dots

Of course, occasionally an incident will occur that crystallizes this issue so dramatically it can't be ignored. Like in 2006, when a particularly grisly accident occurred in El Paso, Texas. An outsourced mechanic from Julie's Aircraft Services was troubleshooting a Continental 737 at the gate, while 114 passengers were settling in on board. He instructed a pilot to start an engine with the cowling open, in direct violation of Boeing's warnings in a manual he had not read. The mechanic was ingested into the engine and suffered a horrific death as traumatized passengers watched.

Unfortunately, as a nation we are not “big-picturing” the severity of the threat of outsourced maintenance. Government white papers emerge. Congressional hearings are held. Investigations evolve from
Consumer Reports
,
USA Today
, PBS. But there's been no drumbeat, no clarion call. Aviation safety is deteriorating in full view, yet the country seems largely unconcerned. “Sooner or later,” says FAA whistle-blower Ed Jeszka, “a lot of folks are going to die because of this.”

So how are repair stations responding? ARSA has launched the Positive Publicity Campaign Plan (Southwest and Delta have contributed). When I asked Sarah MacLeod why ARSA is seeking positive publicity, she replied, “Negative publicity!” And she cited my own work on this topic: “Mr. McGee, you helped force me into lobbying.”

But not all aviation experts are worried by outsourcing. “If the maintenance really was slipshod, we'd know it by now,” says Arnold Barnett of MIT. “We should be seeing precursors to accidents.” He takes it a step further and questions whether spending more money to provide further protections in an already safe industry is the best use of public resources: “We can even ask, could a billion dollars be used instead on something like cancer research?”

Gordon Bethune is a rare executive. He's an FAA-licensed mechanic, and he uniquely sums up the dangers: “If charlatans can run airlines, they can run repair stations.” But Bethune unequivocally states that he is not at all concerned about outside maintenance. He believes the emphasis should be on the total reliability of the operation and says, “I really don't think having an airline uniform and a union will do shit for you with maintenance.”

Another factor—albeit misunderstood—is the age of the airplane. A common metaphor is that planes are like cars or even people, and it's all about care and upkeep. In fact, an old industry adage is that there is no such thing as an airplane, only a collection of interchangeable parts all moving in the same direction simultaneously. But like cars and people, older aircraft experience problems specific to their age, particularly with corrosion and metal fatigue. AirSafe.com prominently posts updates on the average age of domestic carriers' fleets, but founder Todd Curtis warns that such information should be taken in context: “It's a half-written story if you just give the age and walk away from it. It's still true that it's about the maintenance and not the age.”

Apologists claim there has always been maintenance outsourcing. True, but only to an extent. Before the recent rush, such work traditionally fell into three distinct categories. First, smaller second-tier carriers often relied on outside contractors to perform their work. Second, many carriers have turned to world-class aircraft manufacturers, engine makers, and other suppliers of key parts to service their own products, undoubtedly a sound policy. And third, larger carriers that operate infrequently into “spoke” airports have long contracted with other airlines for “line maintenance” servicing, often on a reciprocal basis.

While some of those smaller airlines may have generated red flags occasionally, none of these trends affected the overall commercial aviation safety picture. But what's occurred over the last decade is much different. I spoke to dozens of frontline airline mechanics and dozens of frontline FAA inspectors based all over America, and it's striking how they sing from the same hymnbooks. As one FAA safety inspector based in the South told me: “We've become complacent. We fall back on ‘Our accident record speaks for itself.' ”

Of course, all these maintenance issues have generated residual problems such as flight delays and cancellations, as the dreaded “mechanical failure” cannot be classified an “act of God” like so many other flight disruptions, including labor actions.

One longtime employee of a major U.S. carrier says the joke used to be that whenever employees passed a sign that read
SAFETY IS #1
, they would alter it to read
$AFETY IS #1

The Airline Formerly Known as ValuJet

The first wake-up call for the dangers of airline maintenance outsourcing occurred on May 11, 1996, with the crash of ValuJet Flight 592 in the Florida Everglades, killing all 110 aboard. Once again, the NTSB found three parties were to blame: ValuJet; its outside “heavy maintenance” vendor, SabreTech; and the FAA itself. SabreTech had the distinction of being the first U.S. aviation firm to be criminally prosecuted for a fatal airline crash. In fact, a Florida grand jury indicted the company on 110 counts each of manslaughter and third-degree murder. SabreTech pleaded no contest, paid a fine, and soon went out of business. But dozens of other SabreTechs have sprung up in the years since.

In 1997, ValuJet initiated a “reverse merger” by acquiring AirTran Airways and officially changed its name to AirTran, which has since been absorbed into Southwest. (ValuJet, SabreTech, AirTran: maybe the real threat is from corporations that “mid-cap” by imbedding upper-case letters into their names?)

Southwest, of course, has been experiencing maintenance problems of its own. But there is a history of 737s and skin corrosion. On April 28, 1988, Aloha Airlines Flight 243, en route from Hilo to Honolulu, suddenly executed an emergency landing in Maui. Personnel on the ground were shocked to see that an eighteen-foot section of the fuselage skin over the entire forward cabin of the Boeing 737 was missing, and several rows of passengers were effectively sitting in a convertible. What the NTSB termed an “explosive decompression and structural failure” at twenty-four thousand feet meant a small crack near the cabin entrance door had suddenly ruptured, causing the cabin skin and structure to peel away, depressurizing the airplane and disabling one of the two engines. A flight attendant in the forward section was sucked out over the Pacific Ocean and her body was never recovered. The NTSB later noted the nineteen-year-old island-hopping plane had accumulated nearly ninety thousand pressurized takeoff-and-landing flight cycles, the second-highest total of all 737s worldwide (behind an Aloha 737 sister ship).

Twenty years later, in 2008, a congressional hearing brought to light that Southwest operated at least 117 aircraft without performing critical required inspections on hydraulic systems and cracks in the fuselage, a situation one congressman called “the most egregious lapse of safety I have seen in twenty-three years.” Scott J. Bloch, special counsel for the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, testified that two FAA inspectors who became whistle-blowers disclosed that the FAA principal maintenance inspector for Southwest knowingly permitted aircraft to operate approximately 1,400 flights with those fuselage cracks, putting passengers at risk.

I asked Gary Kelly, the CEO of Southwest, about this and he responded that the well-publicized rupture in the fuselage of a Boeing 737 in April 2011 was a manufacturing defect and not a maintenance issue. He added, “The word
outsourcing
is irrelevant. Southwest Airlines is completely, one-hundred-percent responsible for the maintenance of our aircraft, whether we use employees or contract maintenance and repair organizations.”

Mary Schiavo, the DOT's inspector general from 1990 to 1996, made national headlines when she fought for the shutdown of ValuJet and assailed the FAA for its lack of oversight. Ten years after leaving office, she told me that not only had the maintenance outsourcing situation not improved, but in fact “the playing field is tilting the other way.”

North by Northworst

Like ValuJet, Northwest Airlines doesn't exist anymore; in January 2010 it was completely absorbed by Delta. However, the lessons of Northwest's maintenance program will persist for years to come, and have not been lost on airline executives, labor negotiators, or federal regulators. Basically, the entire industry watched a major airline break its mechanics union and then proceed to openly operate aircraft in what was unquestionably a much more dangerous manner—while the FAA watched and did next to nothing. All of us live with this legacy every time we board a domestic flight.

The nation's fourth-largest airline, Northwest, had a fleet of 369 airplanes when the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association went on strike in 2005. The in-house maintenance staff was reduced from a reported figure of 3,600 to just 900 overnight, and the FAA publicly stated it would increase oversight of the Minneapolis-based airline. So here is the total amount of maintenance fines levied by the FAA against Northwest during the strike: $0.00. Zero dollars, zero cents. A major U.S. carrier operating worldwide reportedly lost 75 percent of its maintenance force and yet the FAA asserted that no corners were cut. Eventually management won, of course, and the strike was settled after 444 days (the exact number of days American hostages were held in Iran).

Not surprisingly, all evidence clearly suggests there were multiple violations, and news reports documented dozens of issues. In early 2006, a Northwest aircraft en route to Japan suffered a hydraulic problem and was forced to execute an emergency landing in San Francisco, an event an official termed a “normal emergency landing.” That launched a satiric blog titled
Weekly Normal Emergency Landing,
though that satire was rendered impotent when Northwest suffered
two
emergency landings in as many days. But even that paled beside the Northwest plane that executed two
back-to-back
emergency landings in Springfield, Missouri, because of smoke warnings, both of which were false.

A former Northwest mechanic who was stationed for a time at the airline's hub in MSP recalls two DC-10s that returned from heavy maintenance service at SASCO in Singapore needing critical repairs before reentering service: “The pilots would go pick up a plane, and before they landed the [maintenance] log book was filled.”

According to former FAA employees, a pattern emerged. Allegations were officially denied; inspectors were browbeaten, harassed, and transferred; lives were ruined; and potentially life-threatening conditions were ignored. One FAA inspector claimed almost
five hundred reports
on Northwest in the first eleven days of the strike were never entered into the FAA's database. He also asserted between 58 percent and 90 percent of those reports noted “defects” in Northwest's operations; an airline's defect rate is usually below 5 percent, and a defect rate of just 9 percent automatically triggers an FAA audit.

An FAA inspector named Mark Lund became a whistle-blower after his claims about the agency's lax treatment of Northwest went unaddressed. When he received official satisfaction, it was a cold dish indeed: in 2010, a report from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel substantiated Lund's allegations that an FAA office “failed to provide effective oversight of Northwest's [FAA Airworthiness Directives, or AD] process, resulting in the carrier's continued systemic AD non-compliance.” The report acknowledged that Northwest had not complied with ADs for more than a decade and the status of more than one thousand outstanding ADs was unknown. The FAA responded by forming an Internal Assistance Capability review team. But by 2010, of course, many of Northwest's mechanics had moved on to other jobs, FAA inspectors had seen their careers threatened, and the airline itself was absorbed into Delta. And Richard Anderson, the former Northwest CEO, had become Delta's CEO.