My 16-year-old daughter and a couple of her friends recently returned to Los Angeles from a week of college tours and interviews on the east coast. It was only a few days later that the terrorist plot was exposed, sending the airline industry and our nation screaming into high alert.
Like most nutty moms, I tend to spend at least a few creative minutes before sleep getting my daily cardiovascular workout by blowing the perceived dangers of the day into epic proportion. Oh yeah-sustained increase of heartbeat, sweating, deep breathing, and for that special occasion, arrhythmia. Of course my kids are safely in bed, but please understand, this is what we do. So it may surprise you that I never gave liquid bombs a single thought. Oh no, I had greater aviation threats to ponder: poor maintenance & outsourcing.
Though my daughter's United Airline Flight 212 did not get any press, it was NOT uneventful. On the LAX to D.C leg of her flight, the plane made an emergency landing in Wichita, Kansas because of an electrical failure. I don't know if there was a contingency plan to land on a highway as reported by a passenger monitoring the air traffic control tower, but when the plane landed in Wichita, it was greeted by fire trucks and ambulances.
During a sleepless night, I made several phone calls to United Airline customer service department in an effort to reduce the 18 hour layover that my daughter faced with the next "guaranteed" flight out. I don't know to what country United has outsourced the department, but the experience was maddening. One lengthy, nonproductive conversation ended with the rep saying, "I don't know where the plane is." That wasn't even my question.
Later, I started digging around on the internet to find out whether emergency landings were commonplace. Though I never succeeded in finding any statistics, I did find a disturbing report of an audit by the U.S. Department of Transportation, Inspector General's office, investigating the use of non-certified repair facilities and FAA oversight of these facilities. (This link will provide access to a pdf of the full report.)
http://www.oig.dot.gov/...
Some highlights:
Prior to our review, FAA officials advised us that noncertificated repair facilities only performed minor services. During our review, we found that some of the minor services noncertificated facilities perform include work such as checking engine oil levels, welding of parts, or changing tires. However, we also found that noncertificated facilities can, and often do, perform the same type of work as FAA certificated repair stations, including both scheduled and critical maintenance. Some of the critical repairs we identified that noncertificated repair facilities perform include engine replacements and adjustments to flight control systems. [The flight control system was found to be the cause of a US Airways flight in 2003]
<snip>
,,,neither FAA nor the six air carriers we reviewed provided adequate oversight of the work that noncertificated facilities performed. In fact, the six air carriers we reviewed relied primarily on telephone contact to monitor maintenance work performed by noncertificated facilities rather than onsite
reviews of the actual maintenance work. In contrast, air carriers often assign onsite staff to monitor major work performed at certificated repair stations. In addition, FAA inspectors assigned to oversee air carriers also visit certificated repair stations to monitor the work performed on air carriers' aircraft. Further, work performed in air carrier inhouse facilities receive continuous monitoring by both FAA and air carrier representatives. Despite the differences in quality control and oversight that exist between certificated and noncertificated repair facilities, there are no limitations on the scope of work noncertificated facilities can perform. On the contrary, FAA limits the work a certificated repair station can perform to those maintenance tasks it has verified that the facility can perform.
<snip>
... noncertificated repair facilities are not covered under FAA's routine oversight program for repair stations. FAA has taken the position that since it has not certificated these facilities, oversight of the work performed by noncertificated facilities rests solely with the air carrier using them. However, we identified as many as 1,400 domestic and foreign facilities that could perform the same work (e.g., repairing flight control systems and engine parts) a certificated facility performs but are not inspected like certificated facilities. Of those 1,400 facilities, we identified 104 foreign noncertificated facilities--FAA had never inspected any of them.
<snip>
While FAA relies on air carrier training and oversight programs, we found significant shortcomings in all six air carrier programs we reviewed. Examples of these shortcomings follow.
· Training of mechanics ranged from a 1hour video to 11 hours of combined video and classroom training. One U.S. air carrier mailed a workbook to each noncertificated facility and told the mechanics to read the information and fax back a signed form indicating they had completed the carrier's training. Conversely, some foreign air carriers require mechanics to have 2 months of training before they can work on the carrier's aircraft. The training air carriers provided to mechanics at noncertificated facilities before they complete critical repairs was particularly problematic. FAA requires that mechanics performing critical repairs 2 receive specialized training on those repairs. However, we found that mechanics at noncertificated repair facilities were not receiving detailed training on this type of maintenance work. Typically, air carriers only provided mechanics at noncertificated facilities with telephone briefings to perform this maintenance.
· Air carrier oversight of noncertificated facilities was limited. One of the six air carriers we reviewed performed no oversight of its noncertificated facilities. The other five air carriers did perform evaluations of the facility operations (e.g., reviewed tool calibration and fulfillment of air carrier training) but did not review the actual maintenance work the facilities performed to ensure they met air carrier requirements. One air carrier used a 2 page checklist of superficial questions requiring a "yes" or "no" response as its audit of the facility's work. For example, one question on the checklist was "Does the vendor have a fax machine?"
So what was the FAA response to the Inspector General's concerns of allowing noncertified mechanics to perform critical repairs?
The FAA said it believe its practices had had "no adverse impact on safety."
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/...
Because we're all pals here at Daily Kos, I would be doubly remiss if I didn't cue you in on the airlines that outsource their major maintenance. They are JetBlue, Southwest, America West, Northwest and United (no surprise here). American Airlines outsources only minor maintenance.
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/...
By now, your confidence in the FAA may be a little tattered. Please allow me to rip it to shreds with the news, as reported in today's LA Times, on the LAX air traffic control systems:
The summer of turbulence involving LAX started when controllers at a Palmdale center that handles high-altitude flights completely lost communication with pilots for several minutes on July 18 after a backup power system inexplicably went down.
FAA investigators are still trying to determine what caused the outage, which affected airports throughout Southern California. Controllers have used the backup power system several times since the outage without a problem, Gregor [FAA spokesman] said, as a precaution when there was high demand on the main power grid.
On July 26, a system designed to alert controllers at the LAX tower to potential collisions on the ground was partially disabled minutes before a turboprop plane narrowly missed a regional jet that had strayed onto its runway.
On Aug. 7, a system on LAX's southern airfield that helps pilots land on foggy days was out for 3 1/2 hours, delaying dozens of flights for more than 90 minutes.
On Monday morning at 10 a.m. the same equipment went down. Technicians reset the equipment by 10:40 a.m., but the outage delayed arrivals for up to 45 minutes for part of the morning.
Aviation experts said it was not unheard of for a single air traffic system to go down several times at the same facility.
But the situation at LAX -- with three different systems at different locations failing within a few weeks -- is another matter, they said.
"Having three things fail in three different locations is pretty unusual," said Richard Marchi, senior advisor for policy and regulatory affairs at Airports Council International, a trade group.
Once again, the response from the FAA is less than comforting:
FAA spokesman Ian Gregor maintained Monday that the landing systems were sound and that the recent equipment outages were unrelated.
http://www.latimes.com/...
Statistically, the risk of dying on an airline flight has improved over the last 10-15 years, now at an all-time low of 1 flight in 22.8 million, or a 60% drop from the 1990's. Most is due to new safety devices. But with the laxity shown by the FCC, we can only thank our good luck.
http://72.14.203.104/...
After spending a couple of nights together, my daughter and the other passengers came to know each other as the 212's. One morning while standing in some line for who knows what, a man was complaining loudly about his plane making an emergency landing because of an electrical problem. Unfortunately, he was not a 212er.
Well, I guess it's good night and good luck.