Eastern Says FAA Found No Maintenance Errors

The Federal Aviation Administration said Monday it was still monitoring maintenance practices at strikebound Eastern Airlines, although the company and an FAA spokesman say the agency told Eastern informally that it had turned up no irregularities in maintenance paper work.

In a recording played since Friday on its toll-free telephone “hot line” for employees, Eastern said the FAA has advised it that recent inspections at maintenance hubs in Miami and Atlanta uncovered no evidence of a systemwide problem.

FAA spokesman Fred Farrar in Washington said he couldn’t confirm that the agency told Eastern that no paper-work irregularities had been found. He said the final report on a record-keeping investigation that ended May 12 had not yet been submitted to acting FAA Administrator Robert E. Whittington.

Jack Barker, an FAA spokesman in Atlanta, later confirmed that the agency had given Eastern the information in question. He also noted that the final report hasn’t yet been given to Whittington.

Eastern’s unions and others have raised questions about maintenance and safety at the airline, which has weathered a crippling strike that began March 4.

Rep. Cardiss Collins (D-Ill.), chairwoman of the House subcommittee on government activities and transportation, recently wrote Whittington that she was concerned that shortages of staff and spare parts could be hampering Eastern’s ability to properly maintain its fleet.

Farrar said the FAA undertook a “special surveillance” of Eastern’s overall safety after the strike began, although, he said, “there is no separate, distinct inspection currently going on vis-a-vis Eastern’s maintenance.”

Robin Matell, a spokesman for Eastern in Miami, said the telephone recording was made by Eastern spokesman Jim Ashlock on Friday.

“FAA informally advised us today that the Miami and Atlanta maintenance inspections turned up no irregularities in paper work or gaps in missing records,” the recording said.

“The FAA concluded that it could not discover any evidence showing a systemwide maintenance problem (at Eastern) with improper record entries or missing documents,” Ashlock said on the tape, which still was being played Monday.

‘No Action Against Individuals’

Eastern’s recording also said the FAA had reinstated eight Eastern maintenance supervisors at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, who had been temporarily suspended.

Early last month, Eastern temporarily surrendered its repair station certificate at JFK after the FAA determined the carrier had failed to follow its system for recording and inspecting maintenance work.

But Kathleen Bergen, a spokeswoman in the FAA’s Eastern Region office at Kennedy Airport, said Monday that any suspensions or reinstatements of Eastern personnel would have been made by the airline itself, not the agency.

“We never took any action against any individuals,” she said.

The suspension of the JFK certificate was for actions that predated the March 4 start of the strike, which pushed Eastern into bankruptcy court five days later.