>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