Mechanics Say Alaska Air Rushed Jets

During the ongoing criminal investigation of maintenance practices at Alaska Airlines, mechanics say, they informed the FBI and federal regulators that several jets were returned to service despite concerns that further repairs might be necessary.

No accidents resulted, and none of the allegations involved the Alaska plane that crashed off the Ventura County coast in January, killing 88 on board.

But some mechanics told The Times that in recent years at least three other Alaska jets went back into the air in potentially unsafe condition after receiving maintenance here.

In one instance, ice from a plane’s wings had damaged both of its engines, forcing an emergency landing, after inadequately trained personnel failed to properly de-ice the aircraft.

“I know planes have gone out in unsafe condition,” said John Young, a veteran Alaska mechanic who said he had been interviewed by the FBI.

A federal grand jury investigation of maintenance practices at Alaska’s Oakland facility spread to Seattle after 64 mechanics here wrote a letter in March to company officials, alleging that a supervisor pressured them to sign off on substandard maintenance work.

Over the past six weeks, The Times conducted dozens of interviews with Seattle-based Alaska mechanics, aviation safety consultants and federal aviation officials. Their accounts provided a window not only into federal investigations, but also into the hangars of a beleaguered airline that is one of the country’s 10 largest carriers.

They described a culture where mechanics are pressured by managers to get planes back in service and provided insights about the concerns that prompted so many mechanics to take the extraordinary step of petitioning their company’s officials just six weeks after the crash of Flight 261.

Though many mechanics contacted by The Times complained that they felt pressure to put planes back in service too soon, only a few said they were aware of any planes that had left an Alaska hangar in unsafe condition. Most would speak only anonymously, expressing concern for their jobs.

Company officials said incidents recounted by mechanics resulted from unclear written procedures and amounted to no more than sincere disagreements over how work should be done.

“We’re unaware of any incident in which a plane was returned to service in an unairworthy condition or in violation of any federal aviation regulation,” said Tom O’Grady, a vice president and deputy general counsel at the airline.

Citing ongoing investigations, the FBI, the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration declined official comment.

There is a basic, sometimes bitter, conflict in the industry between airline management and the mechanics who repair its planes.

Management knows that every plane on the ground isn’t making money. The longer a jetliner stays in the repair shop, the more it costs the company and the greater the likelihood of flight delays.

On the other hand, mechanics must affix their signatures, or “sign off,” on every piece of work they do. So, knowing their licenses are on the line, they want to ensure that time is taken to do the job thoroughly.

“There’s always been an adversarial relationship between management and us,” said one Alaska mechanic who said he was contacted by the FBI. “Recently, it’s been getting out of hand.”

The pressure on mechanics to move planes out swiftly was characterized by one top federal safety official as “an industrywide phenomenon that varies with intensity, largely on the amount of resources that a company has.”

The Alaska fleet has only 84 planes. So if one jetliner is grounded for prolonged maintenance, that has a greater impact than it would on a large carrier like American Airlines, which has 648 planes.

Bill Ayer, president of Alaska Airlines, acknowledged in an interview last week that such pressures exist but said the airline has controlled them with “an effective and efficient maintenance program.”

He said the airline is adding 50 mechanics to its force of about 900 to bolster customers’ confidence and improve on-time performance, which he said was set back by special federally ordered inspections of MD-80 series planes after the crash.

Grand Jury Examines Maintenance Record

Since 1998, a grand jury in San Francisco has been investigating allegations of records falsification and failure to complete required repairs at Alaska’s Oakland facility. And investigators recently subpoenaed maintenance records of the plane that crashed in January.

The company’s maintenance also figures in the National Transportation Safety Board’s continuing attempt to determine the cause of the crash.

Investigators became increasingly convinced that a worn jackscrew mechanism on the plane’s horizontal stabilizer had failed. The jackscrew raises and lowers the stabilizer, largely controlling the pitch of the jetliner’s nose.

Examination revealed no lubrication on the jackscrew, and threads on the gimbal nut that rides along the jackscrew were stripped. Sources close to the investigation say what little grease remained on the nut was dried and hard, indicating friction had generated extreme heat.

Work cards reviewed by investigators showed that during a routine check in Oakland on Sept. 29, 1997, a mechanic had found 0.0040 of an inch of play between the jackscrew and the nut. If the play is more than 0.0034 of an inch, the jackscrew assembly must be reinspected every 1,000 hours of flight time.

On the next day, the jackscrew was rechecked five times. Each time, according to the records, the play was measured at 0.0033--just 0.0001 of an inch less than the measurement that would have mandated another check in 1,000 hours.

The plane logged an additional 5,000 hours or more, and the jackscrew was not checked again before the crash.

“The question is those numbers on that work card,” said a top federal official familiar with the investigation. “Were they based on reality, or were they written down to avoid rechecking? How do you determine that?”

As part of the grand jury probe, federal agents started asking questions in Seattle after 64 mechanics wrote a letter March 15 to Ayer and company Chairman John F. Kelly complaining that “many amongst us have been pressured, threatened and intimidated” by an Alaska manager to follow unauthorized maintenance procedures “specifically contradicted” by federal regulations.

The FBI and the Department of Transportation’s inspector general’s office, which is responsible for determining whether any criminal activity contributed to the crash, have asked some of these mechanics about Alaska’s maintenance practices, as well as about the quality of FAA oversight of repairs.

The agents asked questions about the letter and about at least six instances in which mechanics believe a plane was returned to service before it should have been, mechanics said.

Alaska officials confirmed that they heard about several of these instances during their own interviews conducted after receiving the letter. But they said they found no safety-related issues.

Mechanics Work Around the Clock

About 450 mechanics work in shifts around the clock at the hulking Alaska repair hangar at the south end of SeaTac airport, about 15 miles from downtown Seattle. They tend to be a tight group, loyal to one another and the company.

They talk among themselves about the work they do and about repair procedures that have engendered controversy, but they are reluctant to discuss such matters with outsiders. Those who do are guarded, expressing concerns about reprisals from the company and co-workers and the possibility--however remote--of criminal prosecution.

Young is a notable exception. “I don’t have a wife and family,” he said. “So I’m not afraid to speak out.”

Young and two mechanics who spoke on condition of anonymity said that in 1996, a passenger-laden MD-80 had to return for an emergency landing at SeaTac after ice from its wings broke off, disabling one of its rear-mounted engines and damaging the other.

“One engine seized up and they had to shut it down,” one of the mechanics said. “We later checked the one they made it back on, and we found it was almost as damaged as the one they had had to shut down. They came really close to losing an airplane that day.”

He said a subsequent investigation revealed that a supervisor had doctored records to show that mechanics responsible for de-icing the plane had received proper training when in fact they had not. He said the supervisor was fired.

Despite Alaska’s assurances that no plane was ever released for flight in unsafe condition, company attorney O’Grady said the mechanic’s account was essentially correct, although he said he could not recall whether the record-doctoring had been specifically related to the plane that was disabled.

Another Alaska mechanic who spoke on condition of anonymity said he worked on an MD-80 jetliner in April 1999, checking one of the plane’s two engines for possible wear or damage.

“We found two cracks on . . . the casing that surrounds the compressor,” he said. “The maintenance manual tells you what cracks you can have and how close they can be to each other, and these were too close together.”

Nonetheless, he said, a supervisor decided that one of the cracks “had no depth or definition,” and therefore wasn’t a crack. Although the mechanic objected, the plane was returned to service, with replacement of the casing deferred until the jetliner had flown another 250 hours.

“By then, there were three cracks,” the mechanic said. “That was unsafe.” He explained that a piece of broken casing could have been sucked into the engine.

The mechanic said he filed an official complaint and was told that his concerns “had been misplaced” about the incident, which also was recounted to The Times by three other mechanics.

A year ago, Young and two other mechanics said, a Boeing 737-400 took off on a test flight although dozens of maintenance items had been “left open.” That means they lacked the signature of a mechanic or inspector indicating that the work had been completed and checked.

“There was a hot-air leak in an auxiliary power unit on the tail of the aircraft,” one of the mechanics said. “It was a huge air leak, most of it in the pit--the cargo bay. It could have started a fire.”

Fortunately, the mechanics said, the plane weathered the test flight without incident, and all the open items were fixed.

Company officials said records indicated that the malfunctioning power unit had been shut down before the flight and that there was no fire hazard. They said they could not determine whether the plane had left with numerous unaddressed maintenance items.

‘It Was a Contest of Wills’

The struggle between mechanics and their supervisors is perhaps best illustrated by an incident in Spokane in February 1997.

After working a full shift in Seattle, John Gustafson and another mechanic were flown to Spokane to repair an MD-80 that had suffered a fuel control failure in one of its two engines. After several hours of work, he and the other mechanic were unable to synchronize the engines properly.

During a phone call to supervisors at maintenance control in Seattle, the other mechanic “was told that they wanted us to sign off the aircraft so they could return it to Seattle,” Gustafson wrote four months later in a letter to Kelly, then Alaska’s president and chief executive. “This required literally falsifying records and was not an acceptable choice for us.”

During ensuing conversations that day, “we explained that we didn’t feel the engine was safe to [fly] and asked them to think about the crew, or loss of life on the ground” should the other engine fail, Gustafson wrote.

“It went on for seven more hours,” Gustafson said in a recent interview. “They must have called me every 20 minutes. Sometimes there was a conference call. . . . Sometimes they talked to me one at a time. They kept trying to get me to sign. I kept saying no.”

“It was a contest of wills,” said Alaska spokesman Jack Evans.

Finally, Alaska management sent other mechanics to Spokane, who signed off on the plane and it was flown back to Seattle. Gustafson and his partner took another flight.

The next day, Gustafson said, he was summoned to a supervisor’s office for a “counseling session.”

“They told me I was wrong,” he said. “They told me that they would have taken care of me if I had signed off and something had gone wrong. I told them I was proud of what I had done.”

Gustafson’s account of the incident was confirmed by the other mechanic.

Six months after the incident, John Fowler, Alaska’s senior vice president for technical operations, answered Gustafson’s letter to Kelly. Fowler said he had been “well aware of the extended activity in Spokane as it unfolded,” but said the company “could find no evidence of undue pressure or illegal paperwork requests.”

By then, Gustafson--who had gotten into a dust-up with another employee--had quit Alaska and gone to work for Boeing Co.

Manager Involved in Three Incidents

Three other incidents led the 64 mechanics to send their letter to Alaska officials in March. All three involved John Falla, then the manager of base maintenance in Seattle.

The first was a dispute last year over a minor leak in the power control unit on the rudder of a Boeing 737--the same unit implicated in the 1994 crash of USAir 737 in Pittsburgh.

“Falla grabs the [repair] manual, marches across the floor with it, gets up there with the inspector, rolls up his sleeves and sticks his hands in that plane,” said Evans, the company spokesman. “It kinda sent a shock wave through the hangar. They were thinking: ‘Who does he think he is, telling us how to do our job?’ ”

After the mechanic responsible for approving the repair job refused to sign the work card, Falla signed it. “It was the seminal event involving Falla,” said O’Grady, the Alaska attorney.

Mechanics said a second event occurred the day after the crash and involved a dispute between Falla and some of them over repairs on the landing gear of a Boeing 737-400. The mechanics wanted to replace one of the main attach points for the right main gear, but Falla thought that was unnecessary. “The mechanics felt they had to fight him to do the job adequately,” said one mechanic who was there.

The third incident occurred in February. Mechanics said the tail of an MD-80 was being worked on at the Seattle shop when a mishap caused the entire stabilizer to flip up, damaging it.

“It weighs a ton, and that tore up the center spar,” another mechanic said. “So now, the whole tail has to come off. The mechanics figure that while they’re there, they should replace the [pivot] bearings.”

Falla disagreed.

The subsequent letter from the 64 mechanics to Alaska officials came “as a 911 call,” Ayer said. And it soon became clear in interviews with the mechanics that they were concerned about more than just management style.

“It was both a matter of personality and a matter of different people having probably honestly held, closely held beliefs,” Ayer said. “It was getting to a point where 64 of them wrote a letter. And that’s something that we need to address.”

Ayer denied that safety was in any way compromised, saying the issues instead involved poor internal communications and a lack of “clarity of procedures.”

Falla was placed on administrative leave and the FAA announced plans for a “white glove” inspection of the airline. The company interviewed the mechanics who signed the letter. The FAA sat in on the interviews.

Falla, who has insisted through his attorney, Scott Engelhard, that he has done nothing wrong, later was reassigned and now oversees maintenance done by outside contractors.

“The mechanics are angered by reductions in overtime and by Falla’s demands that they follow appropriate procedures,” Engelhard said last week.

The company said that nothing cropped up in the interviews with mechanics to suggest that any planes had left the Seattle shop in unsafe condition.

FAA Objectivity Is Questioned

Then the FBI and Department of Transportation agents showed up and started asking questions, many focusing on how well the FAA oversees Alaska maintenance.

Many mechanics, along with some top federal safety and investigative officials, question the thoroughness and objectivity of the aviation agency. Similar criticisms have been voiced repeatedly since the NTSB decided that the 1996 ValuJet crash in the Florida Everglades had probably been caused, in part, by the FAA’s failure to impose stringent fire safety rules on airlines.

The mechanics said they discussed several of the maintenance controversies and other maintenance issues with the agents, but most of the questions centered on FAA oversight.

FAA notes taken during Alaska’s interviews with mechanics did not accurately reflect what they had actually said, several of those mechanics complained.

“When I’d brought up specifics--things like planes that were technically unairworthy--that wasn’t reflected anywhere” in the FAA’s notes, the mechanic said. “One of the questions was, why had I signed the letter. The notes said I’d replied, ‘In support of the mechanics.’ But what I’d really said was, ‘I had my own personal concerns.’ ”

FAA officials said the mechanics would be re-interviewed, and the company said it would not be present.

Jim Burnett, a former NTSB chairman now working as a consultant for litigants in the Flight 261 accident, said current FAA oversight “is woefully inadequate in terms of pro-consumer, pro-passenger attitude.”

“They have a very defensive attitude about the industry they surveil,” he said. “There sometimes is political pressure.”

Nick Lacey, the FAA’s director of flight standards service, defended the agency, saying that its oversight of commercial carriers “has never been stronger.”

Since ValuJet, he said, the agency “has redesigned the way it oversees large carriers. . . .

“The agency has increased its inspector work force and revamped its inspection process,” Lacey said. “The FAA does not hesitate to take action against major carriers, when warranted.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Maintenance Spending by Airlines

Below are amounts spent by major airlines for repair and maintenance in 1998. Alaska Airlines has the smallest fleet and budget, and the company ranks seventh in maintenance dollars spent per passenger seat per mile.

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Maintenance 1,000 available Airline (in millions) Aircraft seat-miles* Northwest Airlines $761 409 $8.33 US Airways $448 388 $7.90 Continental Airlines $582 363 $7.79 America West Airlines $183 111 $7.52 Southwest Airlines $302 208 $6.36 American Airlines $803 648 $5.22 Alaska Airlines $78 84 $4.62 Delta Air Lines $561 584 $3.90 Trans World Airlines $130 185 $3.76 United Airlines $624 577 $3.59

Maintenance dollars per Airline Northwest Airlines US Airways Continental Airlines America West Airlines Southwest Airlines American Airlines Alaska Airlines Delta Air Lines Trans World Airlines United Airlines

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Analysis by Richard O’Reilly, Times director of computer analysis, of 1998 financial data (latest available) filed by airlines with the Securities and Exchange Commission. *Data are listed in descending order by amount spent per 1,000 available seat-miles. Available seat-miles means total passenger capacity of each plane times total number of miles it flew, regardless of whether seats were sold.