Airline Probe’s Paper Chase

Every airline and cargo pilot knows there’s a difference between an airworthy plane, as the Federal Aviation Administration defines it, and one in tiptop condition.

“Pilots want to know that the airplane they are flying is in top-quality shape. . . . [Maintenance] on everything from flaps, brakes and weather radar may be deferred for up to three days and the airplane will still be considered airworthy,” Paul Miller, safety committee chairman of the Independent Pilots Assn., said last August. “However, in three days many airlines will have flown such an airplane 18-21 [times] with passengers and cargo aboard.”

Now, four months after the crash of an Alaska Airlines jet in the waters off Port Hueneme killed all 88 aboard, the question of airworthiness takes center stage. Was there a false notation on a maintenance record for the aircraft and did that notation contribute to the tragedy? And does the Federal Aviation Administration have the means to discover a disaster in waiting that might be hidden in routine paperwork?

The cause of the crash of Alaska Airlines Flight 261 has not been officially nailed down, but most of the investigation’s focus has been on a worn jackscrew mechanism on the plane’s horizontal stabilizer. Federal investigators are now wondering whether the maintenance records were accurate or written to avoid rechecking the device.

Alaska Airlines, one of the nation’s 10 largest, has been the subject of a federal grand jury investigation of its Oakland maintenance facility since 1998. That probe, according to the publication Air Transport Intelligence, has now expanded to include Flight 261. A separate criminal investigation was launched in March.

Several mechanics say they were pressured to return aircraft to service more quickly than reasonable safety measures warranted. Alaska Airlines representatives deny that and say they are cooperating fully in the investigation.

The FAA has the gargantuan task of monitoring the safety of airlines large and small and the work of thousands of maintenance and repair facilities. If the agency lacks the wherewithal to do that, it must say so now.