Attention All Passengers (19 page)

And the crew fatigue problems highlighted in the Buffalo crash continue to reverberate throughout the industry. “One thing that's never discussed is pilot commuting,” says Bob Crandall, the fiery former CEO of American Airlines. “They live on the other side of the country or they live outside the United States, and they commute to fly. And then want to talk about fatigue in the cockpit. Well, you also have to talk about all the flying you did before you signed in for duty. . . . But the problem is the FAA is not doing as good a job as it should because it has not done anything about circumstances like the Colgan situation.”

But pilot pay and pilot commuting are linked, and few organizations have done more to highlight such inequities than the National Air Disaster Alliance/Foundation, which assists crash victims' families, so I asked the executive director if things have improved since the Buffalo accident. “Nothing has changed,” Gail Dunham said flatly. “It's an enormous disappointment. It's still about pathetic pilot pay. The pay scale still starts at seventeen thousand dollars a year. Did you ever think you would get on a plane where the pilot is making seventeen thousand dollars a year? It's appalling.”

When I asked Cohen of the Regional Airline Association about the wide disparity between crew salaries for mainline and regional airlines, he said, “It doesn't affect the product one bit.” Cohen explained: “Since the Wright brothers, salary has been linked to two things: the size of the aircraft and seniority. And contracts are freely collectively bargained by both parties.” He notes that in February 2011, 90.5 percent of the pilots at Pinnacle, Mesaba, and Colgan ratified a new five-year contract.

In the wake of the Buffalo accident, there's no question the salary issue caught the public's attention. But Voss maintains the problem runs deeper than pilot pay rates: “There's no incentive in the system to develop those pilots because they're going to come in and go out. If something is fundamentally wrong, it's that there are two different types of regionals. If they are going to be minor-league teams, then treat them like minor-league teams. But it's a race to the bottom, so you see two radically different models.”

Salt in the wound for Flight 3407 family members was the testimony of Jeffery Smisek, then the CEO of Continental and now the CEO of United. He responded to congressional inquiries into the Buffalo crash by suggesting it was not Continental's duty to oversee the safety of Colgan's operation, and stated: “That is the responsibility of the Federal Aviation Administration.” The Eckert sisters were present that day, and when I brought this up with Karen, she responded, “Oh, that was horrible. It was like a punch.”

Other airline executives whisper off the record that Smisek screwed up that day—big-time—but rival airlines have taken the Smisek approach as well. When asked about a regional partner by the
New York Times
, a US Airways spokesman was quoted as saying, “We've got our own airline to run.” And at a Senate hearing in 2009, a senior vice president at Delta stated: “We do not, and cannot, directly manage our regional partners' safety and quality issues.”

So do some mainline airlines take more responsibility for their regional partners than others? It's a topic I've raised with both current and former airline executives, and responses vary. Take Glenn Tilton. The CEO of United and I crossed swords on many issues during FAAC meetings, but in the end we fundamentally agree on the need for mainline airlines to assume responsibility for their regional partners. He explains that United (now merged with Continental—ironically enough, considering Continental's recent history) implements a “two-pronged policy” of constantly exchanging best practices on safety and reliability and launching thoroughly objective audits of regional operations, with the price of failure being termination.

Yet the executive in charge of the Regional Airline Association asserts that the safety burden remains with the regionals. When I asked Cohen about Smisek's congressional testimony, he said, “The legal and regulatory responsibility is on the operator.” But he added, “The other half of the equation is that there's one level of safety and has to be. . . . The most fundamental element is trust. If you're a mainline airline, you're entrusting the most sacred things: the safety of your passengers and the value of your brand. The frequent flyer program, the cocktail napkins, everything—it's all branded.”

Tilton, however, dismisses the proposal that legacy airlines assume legal or operational control of their regional partners: “I don't think that's possible with publicly traded companies.” One thing is certain: the current tangled web of multiple mainline/regional partnerships undoubtedly would make such rules difficult to implement.

Some context is required here. The dirty little secret among airline executives is that they believe labor—and particularly labor unions—“forced” the major carriers into outsourcing as a way of reducing costs. And this applies to call centers, to maintenance repair shops, and to regional partnerships. When I met with Crandall and asked about the explosion of regional airlines, he told me: “That, of course, is all a reaction to labor.”

Airline veteran Michael Levine believes most mainline airlines don't want to own their regional partner airlines, in order to avoid the stress and cost of labor contracts. I think he's right, but the end result is that they've created a second-tier regional system with lower pay scales, and therefore created lower-quality service. However, Levine blames the unions for this situation, while I believe that airline executives have allowed service and standards to deteriorate as wages have fallen.
7

There's ample evidence of poor management of regionals. A core group of Flight 3407 family members has made more than forty trips to Washington, which Karen Eckert explains thus: “We have data. We don't just go and cry. We're hoping to raise the consciousness so there is a difference.” They've had an impressive impact: they showed me personalized letters from members of Congress, and in May 2010 President Obama met with ten family members in Buffalo to hear their stories. But their greatest accomplishment came in August 2010, when Obama signed into law the Airline Safety and Federal Aviation Administration Extension Act of 2010. Among the key provisions are strengthening standards for pilot training, enhancing FAA oversight of regional carriers, and increasing transparency for codeshared flights. Unfortunately, critics claim it will not do enough.

Mainline or regional, it's all about FAA oversight. After her sister's death on Flight 3407, Susan Eckert Bourque learned how such marketing agreements work: “When it suits them, the regionals are independent. When it doesn't suit them, they're not. They kept saying, ‘It's the FAA's job.' ” She cites the need for stricter oversight of regionals and adds, “It has to be done through legislation and regulation. We can't trust the airlines to police themselves.”

Last year I asked Randy Babbitt, then the administrator of the FAA, if pilot proficiency at the regionals currently is up to par, and his response was intriguing: “We make a set of rules on training standards. And if you want to do it to a higher standard—that's your privilege. Some are going well beyond.” He also noted that many mainline carriers provide state-of-the-art flight simulators in training. In other words, bigger airlines with bigger pockets exceed the regulations, while smaller regional airlines often can't compete.

I went further, and bluntly asked Babbitt if all U.S. regional airlines are compliant with the FARs. He said, “Absolutely. We oversee fifty thousand flights a day and fifty-five hundred commercial aircraft. We have seven thousand inspectors but we can't monitor all the flights. That's why we use spot checks, data, trends, and designees.” So perhaps the root problem with regional carrier oversight—and maintenance oversight as well—is not about adhering to the FARs, but about strengthening those regulations? That's the inescapable conclusion I drew.

Without prompting, Babbitt's boss referenced the Buffalo catastrophe as well. When I met with Secretary LaHood, I asked about the challenges since taking office in 2009, and he responded, “I think the saddest day for all of us was when the Colgan Air plane crashed in Buffalo on that cold winter night and fifty people perished. But we stepped up immediately. Randy traveled the country and he had ten or twelve safety summits. We immediately put new enforcement rules in place for rest for pilots and training for pilots. Because we know there were flaws in the operation of that particular flight. The pilots were not well trained. They weren't well rested. And we learned some very, very tough lessons from that tragedy.”

Those words resonate when you visit the tiny town of Clarence Center, a hamlet within landing gear distance of Buffalo Niagara International Airport, and you stand on a street where screaming metal once fell from the cold sky. In an age when technology has brought an immeasurable margin of safety to the art and science of flying, these were fifty deaths attributable to the oldest of demons: human error. But even that assessment does not tell the full tale, for ultimately the two Colgan Air crew members were victims as well. Human greed, though it may be harder for the NTSB to categorize, is a much deeper and indelible systemic cause. The regional airline industry's hiring practices, the salary scales, the training programs—all this can be traced back to major airlines that seek to place more and more human lives in the hands of the lowest bidders.

Back in 2003, Beverly Eckert wrote a column for
USA Today
that was at once stirring and eerily prescient: “My Silence Cannot Be Bought.” She detailed her decision to refuse a “$1.8 million average award” payoff for her husband's death on 9/11 and instead chose to file suit to learn the real causes of that day's horror: “Lawmakers capped the liability of the airlines at the behest of lobbyists who descended on Washington while the Sept. 11th fires still smoldered.” And she closed by stating: “So I say to Congress, big business, and everyone who conspired to divert attention from government and private-sector failures: My husband's life was priceless, and I will not let his death be meaningless. My silence cannot be bought.”

Unfortunately, in the wake of her own fiery death, and plagued by a new set of unanswered questions, Beverly Eckert's challenge to speak out against government and private-sector failures still looms.

7

Outrageous Outsourcing:

The Single Greatest Threat to Airline Safety

The machine does not isolate us from the great problems of nature but plunges us more deeply into them.

—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, pilot and author

T
wenty-one fatalities—but nothing major. That's how the airline industry views the one accident that has stood out from all others because it foretold the dangers to come. This crash remains the wake-up call the airlines
still
refuse to acknowledge.

In January 2003, Flight 5481 took off from Charlotte, North Carolina, en route to Greenville, South Carolina. The Beechcraft 1900D, operated by Air Midwest on behalf of US Airways Express, had barely gotten airborne when it stalled and crashed into a US Airways hangar and burst into flames, just thirty-seven seconds after leaving the ground. All twenty-one persons on board were killed and one person in the hangar was injured.

The NTSB determined that the probable cause was the airplane's loss of pitch control during takeoff, which had resulted from the incorrect rigging of the critical elevator control system by an outsourced maintenance contactor, Raytheon Aerospace in Huntington, West Virginia. In turn, Raytheon had further outsourced some work to unlicensed maintenance contractors—which, incredibly enough, is
not
a violation of FAA regulations. Whose fault was the crash? As it often does, the NTSB cited multiple parties. These included Raytheon, Air Midwest (for its “lack of oversight of the work being performed at the Huntington maintenance station”), and the FAA itself (for lack of oversight of Air Midwest's maintenance program).

So what about US Airways? Well, even though the doomed airplane was painted in that airline's colors, federal authorities are blind to such nuances. This was strictly an Air Midwest tragedy, not a US Airways tragedy.

As airline accident investigations go, this one was fairly routine, inasmuch as such heartache can ever become routine. The NTSB wrapped up its findings in little more than a year. But then a funny thing happened. Word got out that some of the family members of the victims—specifically the parents of Christiana Shepherd, an eighteen-year-old college student—had not accepted an offer of settlement from Air Midwest's insurance reps. Instead the Shepherds wanted a public apology. The attorneys conference-called and conference-called, and in a nation where a dollar sign can be affixed to anything or anyone, the airline's lawyers began to get a little frustrated. Just what exactly did these parents want? An apology. No, really. How much? They want an apology. No, come on. Give us a figure. That
is
what they want—an apology. And so it went. Nearly four years after the accident, I spoke to Pastor Douglas Shepherd and his wife, Tereasa Shepherd, for
Consumer Reports
. “The bottom line for these [airline] companies cannot be money,” Christiana's father told me. “That has to change. Outsourcing with no oversight leads to loss.”

It took more than two years, but in the end, the Shepherds caused an extraordinary event to take place, something unique in U.S. commercial aviation. The head of an airline attended a memorial service, stood before the next of kin, and read a formal and public apology. On May 6, 2005, Greg Stephens, the president of Air Midwest, joined victims' families at the crash site memorial in Charlotte and uttered these words: “We are truly sorry, and regret and apologize to everyone affected by this tragic event.”

In the interim, the outsourced maintenance company had—you guessed it—changed its name, from Raytheon Aerospace to Vertex Aerospace. But even that new entity was invoked by Stephens in his remarks: “Air Midwest and its maintenance provider, Vertex, acknowledge deficiencies, which together with the wording of the aircraft maintenance manuals, contributed to this accident.”

Obviously much credit goes to the Shepherds for making this happen. And credit where it's due to Air Midwest for breaking the nearly century-old tradition of airlines invoking a virtual curtain of silence after a tragedy. But a few qualifications are required: Soon after the apology, Vertex Aerospace changed its name
again
, this time to L-3 Communications Aerotech. Then Air Midwest was shut down by parent company Mesa Air Group in 2008. And despite the eloquence of Stephens's apology, at no time did he mention the airline whose name was emblazoned on the side of the defective plane: US Airways.

Cutting Corners

Despite tremendous advances in technology, aircraft maintenance remains a critical threat to airline safety. Many passengers may be surprised to learn that airline accidents caused by maintenance factors have increased significantly in recent years. In fact, PlaneCrashInfo.org has categorized causes of fatal commercial accidents worldwide from the 1950s through the 2000s, and the percentage of accidents due to mechanical failure between 2000 and 2009 was 28 percent, higher than in any of the previous
five decades
. That total was second only to pilot error.

There's a tasteless joke that's been kicking around the industry for years: “If they ever find a way to kill the passengers without killing the pilots, then the industry is in trouble.” What's implied, of course, is that crew members are putting their own lives on the line when they take off in an airplane with a questionable airworthiness record, but even so there are limits. The military addresses this issue by often requiring mechanics to fly in the aircraft they service. But I can testify under oath that every day airline pilots take up aircraft they know are lacking in critical maintenance; I saw it firsthand at the small carriers where I worked.

“That ninety-nine-dollar ticket came with a price,” a mechanic for a major U.S. airline told me. “And the savings came from maintenance.” This isn't hyperbole. The industry's collective decision to outsource maintenance has become a threat to everyone who flies commercially these days. Among domestic carriers, there is only one exception: American Airlines continues to perform nearly all maintenance in-house, but the company's recent bankruptcy filing may change that policy.

Airline executives, FAA administrators, and Wall Street cheerleaders all maintain the same drumbeat: wrenches are wrenches, so it doesn't matter in which country they are turned, nor does it matter whether the hands turning those wrenches are working for a living wage or a subminimum wage. Why should a passenger care if an airline pays an outside company to hire a mechanic who will work for less than that airline's own mechanics? Financial analysts are quick to remind us all how greedy those union leaders are (though they dare not criticize the exponentially more excessive greed of airline executives). If the work is done properly, and the airline saves a few pennies per hour, then it's a win-win.

I asked Tom Brantley of Professional Aviation Safety Specialists what I have been asked by so many skeptics—editors, fact-checkers, interviewers, attorneys, even passengers: If things are so bad, why aren't planes falling out of the sky? He responded, “Is that really the criteria we want? Once a plane falls out of the sky, is that when we change? It's like a relative with a drug problem. That person is going to crash and burn but may look okay.” Brantley added, “I think there's a margin of safety. And that margin is razor thin now. There are no more buffers. There is no buffer zone now. The FAA doesn't know where the margin is.” FAA whistle-blower Gabe Bruno says, “That's exactly where the problem is—the FAA is waiting for a fatal accident. That's the wrong benchmark. If there's no accident, it won't get picked up at all.”

Former FAA administrator Randy Babbitt acknowledged the concerns I raised in the FAAC and said, “It's a challenge, there's no question. There is greater and greater reliance on power by the hour [outsourced maintenance agreements]. . . . We've had recent incidents that were the fault of outsourced maintenance.” But he asserted some foreign governments are assisting the FAA with surveillance: “We have confidence with certain regimes, for example, the European Union. Whatever oversight is provided, we trust their inspectors are going there.”

Today most passengers have no idea how dangerous the outsourcing paradigm has become. Consider:

• Although regulations indicate all maintenance shops are treated equally, in reality there are two models, and independent facilities can differ on hiring, training, security, and drug and alcohol screening.

• In addition, there are two sets of rules for certificated and noncertificated repair shops, and more work is being
sub
-subcontracted to noncertificated shops.

• Many outside contractors are not FAA-licensed mechanics; in some cases, the technicians cannot read aircraft manuals in English.

• The most critical problem of all—documented repeatedly by several government agencies—is the FAA's inability to provide consistent oversight of outsourced maintenance, both in the United States and abroad.

The airlines are engaged in a “mad race to the bottom on costs,” according to Kevin Mitchell, chairman of the Business Travel Coalition. “You can't win this argument on economic grounds,” he says. “Yes, there are savings in outsourcing maintenance, but it shouldn't screw up your bigger picture analysis.” He also notes how misleading statistics can be: “In an era of great change, statistics are not as predictive as over a forty-year normalized period. I would debunk this argument by looking at Deepwater Horizon. The day before the explosion, there had been zero mishaps. But there had been signs it could happen.”

Some historical perspective is critical. U.S. commercial aviation was the world's gold standard for nearly ninety years, but times have rapidly changed, and too many laurels are being rested upon. What has occurred over the last ten years is a complete break with industry protocol. On the FAA's website are the locations of many of its outposts, termed Flight Standards District Offices (FSDOs), widely known as “Fizz-does.” For decades, the FAA put its resources where the airlines put theirs. So the FAA's principal maintenance inspector for Delta would be located in Atlanta, just down the road from Delta's primary maintenance facility. So too for Northwest in Minneapolis, American in Tulsa, etc. For generations it meant that at any time of day or night an FAA inspector could pop in unannounced and watch as those wrenches were turned. Veteran FAA folks call it kicking the tires.

Today those FSDOs are still in the same cities, but the maintenance work has moved elsewhere, sometimes to the other side of the world, leaving scores of FAA inspectors behind with little to do but inspect empty hangars because politics and budgets have prevented them from doing their jobs.

The new outside repair stations have names such as TIMCO, HEICO, SASCO, Sonico, Ameco Beijing, Aeroman, Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering, MTU, and ST/Aerospace. They're located throughout the United States and in Europe, as well as Mexico, El Salvador, China, and Singapore. Unfortunately, in many cases airplanes come back from such facilities in need of more work.

David Bourne is the director of the Airline Division of the Teamsters, but he is also a veteran pilot qualified in multiple aircraft types. Therefore his take is unique: “This is not a paper argument. I have personally encountered problems with outsourced maintenance. We could tell where the repairs had been done when we flew the planes after servicing.”

Take the tragic crash of Air France's supersonic Concorde in Paris back in July 2000, a disaster that claimed 113 lives. The image of that damaged aircraft spewing plumes of fire, its fuel tank aflame upon takeoff, was transmitted around the world. That photo hastened the end for the entire Concorde fleet; both Air France and British Airways grounded them for good by 2003, thus ending commercial supersonic transport. What was not as widely reported, however, were the subsequent findings of French authorities that the fire (and resulting crash) was caused by a tire that ruptured just as the plane accelerated for takeoff, after that tire struck a piece of titanium debris on the runway. And the debris? It turned out to be a wear strip from an engine cowling that had just fallen off the last plane to depart from the same runway, a Continental Airlines DC-10. And
that
aircraft, in turn, had just been serviced by an outside contractor, Israel Aircraft Industries in Tel Aviv. In December 2010, a French court found Continental and one of its employees criminally responsible.

How bad has the maintenance outsourcing problem gotten for U.S. airlines? An independent analysis by
USA Today
found that between 2004 and 2009, millions of passengers flew on 65,000 flights operated by domestic carriers that should never have left the ground. That's right, a total of
65,000 flights
.

Here's a small sampling of troubling indicators:

• In 2008, a Boeing 737 operated by United declared an emergency air turnback to Denver due to a low fuel pressure indicator on one of its two engines. The reason? Rather than using the proper protective caps, mechanics had used two shop towels to cover the oil sump covers on that engine.

• In 2009, the FAA imposed a $5.4 million fine against US Airways for operating three airplanes after the FAA had issued Airworthiness Directives demanding the planes be grounded until inspected. Two of the planes were flown despite a warning about a possible crack in the landing gear and the other airplane was flown despite the threat of a cargo door opening in-flight.

• In 2010, the FAA levied a $348,000 fine against Chautauqua Airlines for operating eleven regional jets for more than 27,700 flights between 2007 and 2009 without performing required inspections. Further complicating the issue is that Chautauqua itself is an outsourced airline for five separate regional brands—AmericanConnection, Continental Express, Delta Connection, Midwest Connection, and US Airways Express—so it's unclear which passengers were in danger.