Airlines’ Maintenance Practices Probed

The Federal Aviation Administration has launched a massive program to investigate within the next year the maintenance practices at every major U.S. air carrier in the wake of large fines against American and Continental airlines.

The crackdown is intended to determine how well the airlines are maintaining their fleets, a question that has become increasingly pressing after a seven-year period of deregulation that has fostered cost-cutting and an urgency to keep planes flying.

Already this year, FAA investigations have resulted in a $1.5-million fine against American Airlines, the second largest U.S. carrier, for poor maintenance practices, and a proposed $284,000 fine against Continental--a leader among carriers trying to save money under deregulation--for violating pilot-training and maintenance rules.

Airlines Evaluated

During the last year, a special evaluation at Northwest Orient turned up a long list of record-keeping and other paper-work problems. A United Airlines audit has been completed with criticisms of the carrier’s practice of delaying repairs, and evaluations at Western and Eastern airlines are under way.

Anthony Broderick, the associate FAA administrator in charge of aviation standards, said that the Eastern and Western audits are part of the overall maintenance investigation.

“What we have done is decided that we are going to make a formal attempt to schedule all airlines through and coordinate those inspections across the board,” he said.

The airline industry is adamant in defending its maintenance programs. Thomas Tripp, a spokesman for the Air Transport Assn., which represents the 30 largest U.S. airlines, said that none of the companies have compromised maintenance to save money.

‘Same Level of Maintenance’

“We have not seen evidence that our maintenance systems and programs have any major faults or systemic disorders,” Tripp said. “Even during the worst times, the deepest parts of the recession a few years ago, we had the same level of maintenance as we have today.”

But, even within the industry, there is controversy over maintenance.

Dick Anderson, a power plant supervisor at Northwest Orient’s maintenance base in Minneapolis, said he believes that cost-cutting measures have reduced maintenance, based on the condition of used planes his company has bought from other airlines.

“I don’t want to be pointing fingers or anything like that, but we’ve bought a couple of airplanes--and we get those engines in here, and it’s, ‘Holy cow, how could they let those things fly?’ The maintenance has not been there.”

The new special audits are a response to the agency’s admission that it might not have enough inspectors to ensure through routine inspections that airlines are properly maintaining their planes, and to concern at the FAA that the airlines were not being monitored intensively, Broderick said.