11 Airlines Cited In FAA Audit On Safety Issues
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Saturday, September 6, 2008; Page D02
Eleven U.S. airlines face investigations and possible fines for not following safety directives, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
FAA audits found 17 cases in which the carriers, three of them major airlines, allegedly failed to meet directives, Acting Administrator Robert Sturgell said yesterday. No passengers were at risk, the FAA said, without naming the companies.
"Obviously the goal is 100 percent compliance," Sturgell said at a news conference in Washington. "You have to continually improve the system."
The agency's review was designed to find lapses in safety rules beyond those uncovered earlier this year at Southwest Airlines. Southwest may have to pay a record $10.2 million fine for operating 46 older Boeing 737s on 59,791 flights in 2006 and 2007 without full inspections for fuselage cracks.
The FAA, which controls the world's busiest airspace, has been trying to boost confidence in its oversight of airline maintenance after a U.S. House panel turned up safety flaws and omissions during an investigation of the Southwest case.
Airworthiness directives are issued routinely when the FAA concludes that airplane parts or airline procedures might produce a safety risk. Carriers are then responsible for ensuring that they meet the FAA's requirements.
On April 2, the FAA said that an initial audit conducted in March found seven cases of noncompliance involving four carriers, none of them big airlines. The FAA said yesterday that 15 airlines, three of them major carriers, are now under investigation for 24 cases of alleged non-compliance with safety directives.
"Major" airlines are defined as those ranked in the top 10 for U.S. market share by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, FAA spokesman Les Dorr said in an e-mailed statement.
"We can't point to an instance where passengers or people would have been put at risk," said James Ballough, the FAA's director of flight standards.
The two rounds of audits included more than 5,600 record checks at more than 100 airlines. The FAA said it found 88 cases of carriers not following directives, a 98 percent compliance rate.
The 88 cases were later narrowed to 24 that remain under investigation. The FAA eliminated others among the 88 after finding that some of the planes had been put out of service or that carriers had complied with directives through other means.
