FW: What is Charles going to say to this?

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Okay, as promised from another source, these are (ostensibly) the
pictures of the door from the UAL 737 referenced in the Forbes article.

Fair warning: it appears this site is very pro-union and anti-contract
maintenance.

http://www.the-mechanic.com/3rd_party_maint.html

-----Original Message-----
From: The Airline List [mailto:AIRLINE@LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU] On Behalf Of
Douglas Schnell
Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2002 10:26 PM
To: AIRLINE@LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
Subject: Re: What is Charles going to say to this?


Of course we want pictures!

-----Original Message-----
From: AMT@Delta Air Lines [mailto:Delta.AMT@verizon.net]
Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2002 10:10 PM
To: The Airline List; Douglas Schnell
Subject: Re: What is Charles going to say to this?


If you want pictures of this door, just let me know.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas Schnell" <dks28@cornell.edu>
To: <AIRLINE@LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2002 4:17 PM
Subject: What is Charles going to say to this?


> From Forbes ... http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2002/0401/052.html
>
>
> Are Airplanes Safe Enough?
> Mark Tatge, 04.01.02
>
>
> Mechanics are squawking that airlines are skimping on maintenance.
> Crash statistics don't bear out their complaints-yet. Gassed up and
> loaded with passengers, United flight 9921 was preparing to leave
> Dulles International for Boston on Sept. 4, 2001. But for some reason
> the front passenger door on the Boeing 737 wouldn't close. Called to
> the tarmac, the mechanic removed the inner door panel and found the
> answer: The door was falling off. "I saw all these faces looking out
> the little windows, and I thought, 'What if this thing had opened in
> flight?'" he recalls. One of UAL's maintenance subcontractors had
> forgotten to connect all the bolts when the jet was overhauled the
> week before. "It was something that slipped through that shouldn't
> have," says David Latimer, vice president at Triad International
> Maintenance Corp. Timco employees involved were disciplined, and
> controls were tightened.
>
>
>
> Both Timco and United (nyse: UAL - news - people), Latimer says, told
> the Federal Aviation Administration, charged with regulating airline
> safety, about the problem-no fines resulted. But the FAA did levy
> fines in other episodes of maintenance and safety oversight. A United
> 737 flew 17 flights from Mar. 25 to Apr. 3, 2001 with parts of its
> fuel system missing or improperly installed. The FAA fined UAL
> $200,000 for operating the jet in an "unairworthy condition." In
> another instance, in 1999, American Airlines (nyse: AMR - news -
> people) completed 198 flights with inoperable backup batteries to
> power the emergency aircraft lighting that guides passengers to the
> exits in a crash. That, coupled with broken chargers and defective
> battery cables uncovered in a 1999 FAA inspection of American
> facilities, resulted in penalties of $1 million. The FAA hit US
> Airways (nyse: U - news - people) last June with a $245,000 fine for
> flying an Airbus A330 hundreds of extra flights without inspecting the

> engines for defects (the law requires they be checked every 2,000
> flight hours). Alaska Airlines (nyse: ALK - news -
> people) incurred a $211,000 penalty in March 2001 for flying an MD-80
in
> what the FAA called "an unairworthy condition" after it sustained
damage
> to a strip on a landing-gear door. The jet made 47 flights before
being
> repaired.
>
> Are airlines getting sloppy with their maintenance? The mechanics say
> yes; the airlines say no. Such is the rarity of crashes that it's hard

> to pick up a trend in only a few years of data. For now, at least, the

> data suggest that air safety is improving. Excluding incidents of
> suicide and sabotage, U.S. carriers had 11 fatal accidents, killing
> 439, in the five years from 1983 to 1987, versus 14 fatal crashes from

> 1997 to 2001, which killed 634. This increase occurred as the number
> of departures more than doubled between the earlier and the later
> periods. Serious accidents, including fatalities-caused by weather,
> pilot error and maintenance slipups-have doubled over time: 102
> crashes from 1983 to 1987, versus 211 from 1997 to 2001.
>
> The last crash blamed on bad maintenance was the Jan. 31, 2000 Alaska
> Airlines flight 261, which plunged into the Pacific, killing 88
> people. Investigators are focused on a jackscrew that controlled the
> horizontal stabilizer. Reacting to the tragedy, the FAA conducted a
> review of maintenance at nine carriers. Released in late February, its

> report was delayed nearly a year, in part so the airlines could
> comment on it. Singled out for maintenance lapses were America West
> Airlines (nyse: AWA
> - news - people)and American Airlines, while United and Northwest
> Airlines were commended for their internal audits.
>
> Mary Schiavo, former inspector general of the U.S. Department of
> Transportation, doesn't take comfort in the FAA report. "Airlines are
> allowed an awful lot of leeway in what they can get away with," she
> says. "The FAA pretty much leaves it up to the carrier to decide what
> needs to be fixed." When the agency does levy a fine, the airline can
> appeal-often resulting in a reduced penalty or one that disappears.
> America West halved a $5 million levy for what the FAAcalled "serious"

> maintenance problems in 1998.
>
>
>
> Even without an FAA, carriers would invest in safety. They have
> reputations to protect and liability insurance to buy. But since they
> lost $6 billion last year, they are desperately looking to cut costs.
> Airlines spend on average 12.3% of operating expenses to keep planes
> flying, the third-highest noncapital cost after labor and fuel.
>
> Nowhere is the heat more intense than at the number two carrier, UAL.
> Dogged by fractious labor relations and poor on-time performance, it
> is struggling to get its planes turned around quickly and employment
> down. In the last year it has shed 20% of its mechanics, to 12,587-but

> has cut departures by 25%, to 1,800 a day.
>
> What do United mechanics say? FORBES spoke with more than a dozen in
> Denver, Portland, San Francisco, Chicago and Washington, D.C., who
> complain they face disciplinary action for writing up maintenance
> problems when doing so would interfere with UAL's on-time performance.

> As one United supervisor in Portland, Ore. told his mechanics, "I want

> you to be blind and on quaaludes when you go into that cockpit." UAL
> says the complaints are from "disgruntled mechanics" trying to win
> concessions in the recently settled five-year contract. They received
> a 37% raise, the first pay increase since taking salary cuts in
> exchange for stock since 1994.
>
> A pay raise isn't much solace for Denver mechanic George T. Davis.
> United fired him after he wrote up two aircraft for mechanical
> problems in 2000. In a whistle-blower complaint he filed with the U.S.

> Department of Labor, Davis told the captain of a flight headed for
> Ontario that his plane had a hydraulic leak that could have busted the

> line, impairing the pilot's ability to control the jet. Davis'
> supervisor disagreed and tried to clear the plane for takeoff. The
> captain intervened, refusing to fly until the leak was fixed. Davis'
> complaint says he also wrote up a tire on an Airbus A320 after finding

> a 1-to-2-inch gash in it. His manager insisted the tire was fit for
> takeoff; the pilot demanded the tire be changed. (Davis has since been

> reinstated but is fighting for lost wages.)
>
> According to testimony before the General Accounting Office by members

> of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association-which represents
> mechanics at Northwest, among others-"managers' income at many
> airlines is now directly tied to the level of maintenance delays." The

> GAO is investigating the effect of a decline in the number of
> mechanics' jobs.
>
> It's impossible to say how widespread supervisory lapses may be.
> Internal maintenance records suggest that managers at United's O'Hare
> hub have signed off on planes as airworthy, when they were not. In one

> case a Boeing 727 had problems with its aileron, the small hinged
> sections on the outside of the wing that permit a jet to bank on a
> turn. Records show the 727 left Chicago on July 16, 2001 for
> Charlotte, N.C.-despite a report by the flight crew claiming the right

> aileron jerked to the right while airborne. The maintenance supervisor

> signed off on the plane before it left, saying he had been "unable to
> duplicate" the problem on the ground; he suspected moisture had caused

> the aileron to stick. He had mechanics lube the assembly and sent the
> jet on its way. But en route to Charlotte, the 727 crew had the same
> trouble. Once on the ground they refused to fly the plane until it was

> fixed and taken on a test flight. Mechanics tore apart the wing and
> found cables were jamming in the pulleys that operate the aileron.
>
> A 727-200 flew for a month-May 24 to June 20, 2001-before repairs were

> made to its horizontal stabilizer. Located on the tail of the
> aircraft, the stabilizer allows a pilot to control the tendency of the

> plane to pitch up or down. The motors that activate the stabilizer
> weren't working, and the pilot had to use a hand crank. Mechanics
> wrote up the defect on four occasions; within a few days, according to

> one mechanic, the plane was finally repaired. (United denies these
> episodes occurred.)
>
>
> "Do we make errors? You bet," says Ronald Utecht, United's senior vice

> president of engineering and maintenance. But, he says, United does
> not put unsafe airplanes in the air. "We do everything we can to fix a

> plane-99% of the writeups get fixed the first time."
>
> United is by no means the only carrier with maintenance problems.
> Testimony before the GAO claims that mechanics at all major airlines
> are frequently threatened by supervisors that "the discovery of 'too
> many' maintenance discrepancies" will result in more work shifting to
> subcontractors-even though managers "generally concede that these
> subcontractors are notorious for their inferior workmanship and use of

> unlicensed staff." The testimony cites the arbitration case of a
> Northwest Airlines mechanic fired for excessive writeups; it goes on
> to say that Northwest's own managers confirmed that planes were
> allowed to fly "in an unairworthy condition" while carrying
> passengers.
>
> Additional reporting by Megan Johnston
>

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