American Accused of Shoddy Maintenance

By Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 17, 2008

Maintenance work by American Airlines on hundreds of jets was so sloppy that it posed a safety risk -- a lapse that forced the carrier to ground many of its planes and strand hundreds of thousands of passengers last month, according to a report by federal regulators released yesterday.

"Left uncorrected, the workmanship errors would have increased the odds that [a plane] would have experienced arcing, smoke, or fire problems that have caused serious incidents and fatal accidents in the past," the Federal Aviation Administration said in the report.

Regulators added that the poor quality of the work on bundles of wires in the airline's 367 MD-80 jets "raised the specter of a cumulative safety risk."

American Airlines, in its own assessment of the situation, said that "at no time was there a safety-of-flight issue." It blamed the four days of groundings that ended April 12 on "a communication failure within the FAA and between the FAA and American."

A spokesman for the carrier took exception yesterday to the FAA's characterization of the repair work and said American's mechanics "are some of the finest in the industry."

The reports by the FAA and American represent the most thorough explanations yet of what led the airline to park its fleet of MD-80s. The groundings led to more than 3,000 flight cancellations and the stranding of about 350,000 passengers, becoming the highest-profile problem in a two-month tempest over the FAA's oversight of airline maintenance practices.

The reports were delivered on May 2 to Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, who last month requested more information about the groundings.

Peters said yesterday that she was going to ask the FAA and airlines to examine how they communicate in such situations to prevent similar debacles.

American grounded its MD-80s in mid-April in response to questions by FAA inspectors about whether the airline had properly inspected and repaired wire bundles in the planes' right-wheel wells. That work had been required by a safety rule that sought to mitigate the chances of sparking, fires and explosions.

The MD-80, a twin-engine jet that seats about 140 people, was manufactured by McDonnell Douglas, which later merged with Boeing.

The groundings came as the FAA was being criticized over lax oversight of airlines' compliance with safety mandates. Last year, the FAA improperly allowed Southwest Airlines to continue flying dozens of jets that were in need of safety checks. Members of Congress and outside experts have criticized the FAA over becoming too cozy with the airlines.

By late March, embarrassed by the publicity over the Southwest lapses, the FAA launched an audit of carriers' compliance with safety mandates. Inspectors chose to examine the rule requiring inspections and repairs of the MD-80s' wire bundles as part of that investigation, the FAA said.

In its report, the FAA blamed American's groundings on the carrier, saying that the airline did not do a thorough job of complying with the mandate despite an 18-month window to finish the work. The FAA said its inspectors found "serious and unacceptable failures" in complying with the requirement: Bundles were not properly tied, and insulation was not properly installed. The inspectors also discovered "instances of chafing between wire bundles and other surfaces," a problem that could lead to arcing and sparking, the FAA said.

The carrier grounded its planes and cancelled 457 flights over two days to inspect and repair the bundles.

By March 27, the airline told regulators that it had fixed the problems and had started flying the jets again, the FAA said.

Two weeks later, inspectors rechecked the work. "The revelations of the subsequent inspections were totally unexpected," the FAA said.

FAA inspectors found that 16 of 17 MD-80s were not in compliance with the safety mandate, regulators wrote.

American, which characterized the problems as technical in nature, and Boeing immediately proposed fixing several problems with the bundles but taking 60 days to fix everything else, the FAA reported.

FAA inspectors did not support that plan because "American had failed to demonstrate its ability to comply . . . on several occasions," the regulators said in their report. American then parked the planes.

During the four days of groundings, FAA inspectors found that 207 of 351 jets did not comply with safety rules, the FAA noted.

Although it criticized American's work on the wire bundles, the FAA said the carrier "was able to demonstrate" compliance with 59 other safety mandates that were audited by inspectors.

For its part, American said the bundle issue was never a safety hazard and accused the FAA of miscommunication. Regulators, the airline argued, initially supported a plan to gradually fix the wiring to limit the potential impact on customers.

FAA officials "expressed appreciation for American's prompt action to address these new issues," the carrier's chief executive, Gerard J. Arpey, wrote to Peters.

But FAA officials quickly changed their position, Arpey said. FAA officials later told a lawyer and an executive of the carrier that they considered the compliance problems so extensive that the carrier would have to ground the jets, Arpey wrote.

Arpey then grounded the jets, even though he and other executives believed that "the safety of our MD-80 fleet was never at issue," he said.