AA Grounds MD-8os; A Vivid Oversight Contrast

The Associated Press today broke a story regarding American Airlines cancelling some 200 flights at ORD and DFW to ensure wiring bundles on its MD-80s were installed and secured according to an airworthiness directive. It is not known if the wiring results left American out of compliance.

This joint FAA / American exercise is how the oversight system is supposed to work. Consider two examples: the March 20 grounding of United’s 747s and today’s grounding of American’s MD-80s.

UNITED AIRLINES

The FAA and the carrier had relatively little access to the Ameco maintenance facility in Korea until after the problem was discovered.

AMERICAN AIRLINES

American was able to efficiently dispatch teams to review and or fix the harnessing to ensure compliance. Importantly, because American’s maintenance is performed at its U.S. maintenance bases, FAA personnel had ongoing access to American’s line staff, supervisors, aircraft, log books, mechanic’s Task Cards, maintenance manuals, engineers and maintenance control, i.e. where the planes are sent for inspection and modification. What’s more, there are ample FAA inspectors to immediately engage the issue.

The upshot of this vivid contrast is that airlines that are unwilling to have this kind of FAA scrutiny have no incentive to maintain their fleets in the U.S. It’s cheaper and there is less oversight by an order of magnitude when maintenance is performed overseas, sometimes even in non FAA-certificated repair stations that the FAA does not even know exist.

BTC believes that at this time an independent and expert top-down review of the FAA should be undertaken to review its mission, organizational structure, funding, culture and systemic problems. We encourage Congress to consider a directive to the National Academy of Sciences, Transportation Research Board, to perform such a thorough review of the FAA. 

EDITOR’S Note: A growing crisis in U.S. regulatory oversight of airlines’ maintenance programs and practices has emerged as recent developments and press stories have established. (See reports and analysis here.) To support a Signatory Letter to House Transportation Committee Chairman James Oberstar, please provide your approval HERE by COB Monday, March 31.