ValuJet Gets OK to Resume Some Flights

ValuJet Airlines won final approval to return to the skies Thursday, a little more than three months after it was forced to shut down following a crash in the Florida Everglades that killed all 110 people aboard.

The return was authorized by the Transportation Department after the low-fare airline agreed to a major shake-up of its safety and maintenance programs. The Federal Aviation Administration gave its initial approval in August, and Thursday’s action was the final step.

In Atlanta, ValuJet executives said the airline will begin flying again Monday, albeit on a much smaller scale. The carrier, which had been operating 51 planes when it was shut down, will be restricted to a maximum of 15 without further FAA approval.

ValuJet President Lewis Jordan told reporters that the initial flights will go from Atlanta to Washington and three Florida cities: Fort Lauderdale, Orlando and Tampa. The airline had been pressing regulators to end the shutdown quickly to prevent further financial drain on the company.

Although federal investigators still have not formally identified the cause of the crash in May, officials have indicated that they believe the DC-9 was downed by a fire resulting from a cargo of unauthorized and mislabeled chemical oxygen generators.

The crash heightened concerns about the performance of federal regulators in overseeing fast-growing, low-fare airlines, leading not only to the grounding of ValuJet but to a tightening of FAA scrutiny nationwide.

ValuJet’s operating license was returned by the agency Aug. 29 after the carrier passed an intensive, 58-day review of its safety and maintenance procedures. Earlier, a post-crash review by the FAA had turned up “serious deficiencies” in those areas.

Under the new FAA restrictions, ValuJet will be limited to flying no more than nine airplanes to four cities at first, with permission to increase that to 15 aircraft and 18 cities within four weeks. Any further expansion would require regulators’ approval.

Thursday’s final order by the Transportation Department had been delayed while officials reviewed a challenge by the Assn. of Flight Attendants that questioned the airline’s financial soundness and the qualifications of its management.

One uncertainty facing the airline is whether it will be able to regain substantial numbers of passengers. Industry analysts said they believe the carrier should be able to rebuild and that it must perform impeccably to succeed.

“They’ve got to keep out of trouble,” Morten Beyer, an airline industry consultant in McLean, Va., told Associated Press. “The feds are going to follow them like a pack of basset hounds.”

FAA officials said ValuJet had been forced to revamp much of its maintenance and safety procedures, including reducing the number of outside contractors who service its jets, standardizing its cockpit configurations and revising its organizational structure.

It also took steps to strengthen its management team. The Transportation Department said the carrier had “demonstrated a positive disposition to comply with all applicable laws and regulations.”

It also said its review had found that the airline improved its procedures and was sufficiently funded to resume operations “at a scaled-back level.”