Airline Safety Isn’t Optional

When it comes to keeping terrorists off airplanes, pilots have near-dictatorial power to follow their instincts. Why second-guess them in equally grave safety emergencies? That’s one unanswered question in a scathing report issued Tuesday on the crash nearly three years ago of a twin-engine Alaska Airlines jet off the Ventura County coast that killed 88 people.

The report by the National Transportation Safety Board showed precisely how shoddy maintenance and lax regulation contributed to the crash. Clearly, concrete corrective steps on those points are due, but Alaska Airlines and the Federal Aviation Administration have been reacting to the report with inexcusable evasion.

The airline said that though it agreed with many of the board’s findings, it “respectfully questions” others. It did not specify which safety fixes it disagreed with, insisting “this is a time to move on.” On the contrary. Now is the time for the airline to either explain its objections candidly or comply fully with the board’s recommendations. The airline also should let the world know why its ground personnel initially pressured the captain not to make an emergency landing in the Los Angeles area and instead to continue flying toward San Francisco.

The crew had struggled with an erratic horizontal stabilizer, a tail surface that controls the up-and-down movement of the nose, since shortly after taking off from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, en route to San Francisco. The NTSB concluded that the stabilizer failed because one of its large, threaded bolts had not been lubricated in months, after the FAA allowed Alaska to extend the lubricating intervals.

The cockpit voice recorder showed that when the pilot asked for permission to land in the L.A. area, he was rebuffed at least twice. First, an Alaska Airlines dispatcher in Seattle told him there might be problems getting the plane back into the air if it was diverted to Los Angeles International Airport -- applying the kind of pressure that the captain said “just drives me nuts.” At another point, an air traffic controller told the crew the plane might have trouble getting permission to land in Los Angeles because the flight was international and thus required Customs Service approval for landing.

For its part, the FAA should stop reflexively defending itself and take action. Though the FAA and Alaska say the airline’s maintenance program has improved since the Jan. 31, 2000, disaster, the safety board uncovered maintenance failures this spring similar to the ones that led to the crash. In particular, the FAA should require better procedures for lubricating the tail bolts and take more control away from the airlines regarding maintenance intervals. The FAA should also order another major inspection of Alaska’s maintenance operations.

Some officials at the FAA and NTSB say the airline industry, in financial peril since 9/11, can’t afford to implement new and nettlesome inspections. That argument doesn’t fly. There should be no debate about the need to put passenger safety first.