Eastern Pilots Are Failing to Inspect Jets, Union Says; Airline Denies Charges

Firing another salvo in the war between Eastern Airlines and its striking unions, the Air Line Pilots Assn. charged Tuesday that the few pilots who are reporting for work at Eastern are not performing proper safety inspections on their airliners.

Eastern immediately responded by saying that since March 4, when the airline’s machinists walked out, it had been operating under a microscope and that the allegations are untrue.

“Every Eastern flight is being operated in strict accordance with regulations and very often under greater-than-normal Federal Aviation Administration observation,” Robin Matell, an Eastern spokesman, said angrily. “The safety standards being applied at Eastern right now are the most rigid in the airline industry.”

Members of the pilots union, most of whom have not crossed the machinists’ picket lines, have been monitoring Eastern flights from a ninth-floor motel room overlooking New York’s LaGuardia Airport. Most of the flights that Eastern has been able to keep operating during the strike are using LaGuardia.

ALPA said it has been conducting similar clandestine observations from hotels, campers and office and apartment buildings in various cities, including Miami and Atlanta. At LaGuardia, where the Eastern shuttle makes 62 flights daily, ALPA claims that there have been 1,100 violations since the strike began. Statistics for the other airports were not given.

Eastern, a subsidiary of the Texas Air holding company that also owns Continental Airlines, filed for protection from creditors under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code on March 9, claiming that the walkout was causing large losses.

The airline, which operated 1,040 flights a day before the strike, is flying only a skeleton schedule now. It is operating most of its 62 daily shuttle flights between New York and Washington and New York and Boston, as well as a few flights between Miami and Latin America and between Miami and New York.

The pilots union says the pilots now working--many from the ranks of Eastern management--have not been conducting the preflight exterior inspections under and around the planes that federal regulations require.

“We’ve been observing the takeoffs and landings (at LaGuardia) . . ., and we’ve noticed that the pilots weren’t making the preflight inspections that the federal air regulations require them to,” Henry A. Duffy, president of the pilots union, said Tuesday on CBS Television’s “This Morning.”

“Ever since the strike started, there’s been at LaGuardia something like 1,100 arrivals and departures, and only four times did they observe preflight inspection being made. We’ve reported it to the Federal Aviation Administration, and they’ve done nothing about it.”

Such walk-around inspections are designed to find any damage done on a previous flight and include inspection of tires, nose wheels and landing lights. Damage from collisions with birds is a special concern.

According to ALPA, the Eastern pilots’ manual requires that the inspection be made by the flight engineer for planes with three crew members in the cockpit and by the pilot or co-pilot for two-person crews. As a result of the alleged infractions, Duffy said, proper provision for safety is “obviously” not being made by Eastern.

Dan Ashby, an Eastern pilot and spokesman for the strikers, said the observations were being conducted 24 hours a day, using videotape and still cameras. The movement of every plane is being monitored, he added, and the surveillance is also identifying pilots who are not observing the picket lines.

Richard Stafford, an FAA spokesman, asked about safety at Eastern, said: “We are monitoring every Eastern flight.” He declined to elaborate.

Meanwhile, there was a controversy over whether a separate strike that began Monday by flight attendants at Continental, Eastern’s sister airline, was a success.

Myra Clayton, a spokeswoman for Continental’s Union of Flight Attendants, said 1,207 attendants had not reported for work Monday, the first day of the walkout. Late Tuesday, she said she had reports from only two of Continental’s major terminals: 132 attendants at Houston and another 130 at Newark had failed to show up for work Tuesday, she said. Many flights had been delayed, she said, adding that the airline had been putting incorrect information on flight information screens.

But the airline disputed the union’s claims. Continental Chairman D. Joseph Corr said only about 2% of the airline’s 6,500 attendants (about 130) had not shown up for work and that Continental on Monday had completed 99.6% of its scheduled flights, most of which were on time within minutes.

Separately, Eastern proposed that both its union and its non-contract supervisory employees be represented on the committee of creditors scheduled to be formed this week as part of Chapter 11 proceedings. A hearing to set up the committee will be held today in New York. The airline said its unions should be represented “to assure that union interests are adequately represented in an efficient, orderly and less costly manner.” It added that its 13,000 non-contract workers and supervisors also deserve representation.