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| Today in Aviation History |
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1783
First human balloon flights. A Frenchman, Jean Piltre de Rozier, made the first captive-balloon ascension (Oct. 15). With the Marquis d'Arlandes, Piltre de Rozier made the first free flight, reaching a peak altitude of about 500 ft, and traveling about 5 1/2 mi in 20 min.
2004
A passenger plane crashes into a frozen lake near the city of Baotou in the Inner Mongolia region of northern China, killing all 53 on board and two on the ground. |
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Unsafe Skies, Follow-Up
Posted on Monday, June 09, 2003 @ 17:12:03 EDT by deccal |
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(KCBS) Our report last week exposing holes in airline maintenance is getting attention now in Washington. The report showed how airlines are saving money firing their own licensed mechanics, and instead hiring subcontractors who can do the maintenance and repair work for cheaper.
We were shocked to learn that airlines aren't the only ones subcontracting work. The FAA is also saving money, subcontracting the very inspection work that is supposed to keep air travel safe. Drew Griffin has the story.
Click READ MORE for the story
United Airlines wants to increase the amount of work subcontractors do on its planes. It's called outsourcing, and for troubled airlines like United, firing your own mechanics and sending the work out is a great way to save money.
Hank Krakowski, United's Chief Safety Officer: "They do outsourcing all the time. It's cheaper. Maintains good quality."
But thats not what we found examining United's own records.
In just two examples of shoddy maintenance by subcontractors, the airline failed to detect a plane with parts of its fuel line missing, until that plane had already flown 17 flights without it.
And it also failed to notice for months a subcontractor's failure to perform routine maintenance on United' entire fleet of 727s.
Krakoski: "Theres an FAA investigation that's going on as we speak."
And United record keeping of outsourced maintenance was so questionable, the former inspector general of the Department of Transportation says there's no way you could tell if the work had even been done -- which could lead to grounding the airplanes.
United says it has since cleared up its record keeping of outsourced maintenance and is more closely watching its subcontractors.
But we wanted to know why the FAA wasn't able to catch the same errors in the first place.
After all, it is the mission of the FAA to make sure those who inspect and maintain commercial airliners do their jobs properly.
Linda Goodrich is an FAA inspector and vice president of the FAA employees union.
"We have limited resources. It's impossible for us to be at those outlying facilities."
She says cost-cutting outsourcing isn't just a trend in the airline business, it's a trend in the FAA. The Federal Aviation Administration is cutting costs by subcontracting its inspection work. And she says, just like the airlines the agency is loosing control.
"The strain on the system is thinning that safety buffer," Goodrich says.
And safety is suffering. Faulty outsource inspections by the FAA have been linked to the crash of a Swissair flight, a Valuejet plane in Florida, and the Alaska Airline flight off the coast of Oxnard.
It had its maintenance work signed off by a freelance FAA inspector.
We wanted to ask the FAA why it is outsourcing its own inspections. We were told the practice is under investigation. In fact it is part of the investigation into why this crash took place.
On Jan. 8, a U.S. Airways Express flight crashed and burned on take off in North Carolina. The plane's flight controls had just been worked on by a third party maintenance subcontractor, over which the FAA had little or no oversight.
Mary Schiavo, former inspector general at the Department of Transportation is a major critic of airlines cost cutting by outsourcing maintenance.
"I think with so many carriers in financial difficulty looking for ways to cut corners, its difficult for the inspectors to keep up."
The fear is more accidents. But there is also a growing fear of something else -- terrorism.
Thats because airlines are sending more and more of their outsource work overseas where there is little FAA oversight of the work or those who are working on the planes.
Goodrich: "It makes it almost impossible for the inspector to reach out and observe what work is being done."
And even if the inspection is done here at home, if its done by a freelance FAA inspector, that can prove deadly as well.
On Sept. 11, American Airlines flight 77, which smashed into the Pentagon, was believed to have been piloted by terrorist Hani Hanjour. And before that fateful day, no one from the FAA knew anything about him, because Hanjour earned his flight training and his flight training certificate from an FAA subcontractor.
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