April 08, 2008
And Even More With The Airlines
ATA, Aloha, and Skybus going out of business because of fuel costs? Bunk…
I found it very interesting that ATA, Aloha, and Skybus airlines all claimed bankruptcy based upon rising fuel costs during the Congressional, US Dept of Transportation, and FAA investigation this last week. The shutdown of all three airlines came without any advanced warning which prompted me to investigate a little further. As it turns out, in addition to other costs cited, each airline would have been forced to fail anyways in order to meet FAA required maintenance.
Over the past several weeks, with the FAA under scrutiny after the discovery of maintenance issues with Southwest Airlines, the major carriers have cancelled flights in order to address maintenance requirements that were not performed. Has this made our skies safer? I am drafting this while sitting at Gate E13, O’Hare, on flight NWA 139 (Northwest Airlines) supposed to leave at 1:10pm to Minneapolis then on to my connecting flight. It is 1:45pm and we are awaiting the OK related to a maintenance problem. With so much under scrutiny, how are these issues still slipping by?
A sudden change such as performing past-due maintenance will not correct or change these problems. It takes 12-24 months of sustained, consistent program to see real changes. Unless the airlines and FAA learn from this situation, we will return to the degrading situation that we have been experiencing. Over the past several years that I have been writing my newsletter, the volume of experiences I have written about pales compared to the documented reality.
An additional problem stems from the coverage of the airlines/FAA maintenance issue. The general media is reporting about the delayed and cancelled flights, even downplaying the number of spot checks that have identified issues. The selected, ignored, maintenance practices are a concern. For instance, Southwest Airlines claimed that redundant inspections would catch any problems. However, when the required inspection was performed on 46 aircraft, 22.7% of the aircraft failed the inspection. Later, American Airlines, Delta, and United Airlines cancelled numerous flights in order to perform required inspections and I suspect more to follow.
In each case, the airlines assured everyone that there was no danger. However, Aloha Airlines was the one who lost a 20 foot section of aircraft on their 19 year old Boeing 737 in April of 1988, 20 years ago this month. The failure killed one flight attendant, whose body is suspected to have triggered a small hole to become a larger one that triggered the fuselage failure (air hammer), and injured 61 passengers and crew. The following month the NTSB identified that Aloha did not have the framework in place to perform or ensure that maintenance was being performed. Twenty years later, to the month, Aloha closes business without warning as the same problem may have existed. Supporting this conclusion are numerous comments from passengers over the past several years related to the general maintenance of aircraft. At least the FAA and Southwest issue identified the problem before a major accident and numerous deaths occurred. Yet, are we doomed to relive the same problem? The general public has an attention span of 7 days – and the media is not helping.
So, how does this relate to industry? What is the secondary damage caused by this problem? Let us just review off-peak seasons where the aircraft are primarily moving business passengers. What is the business impact, not to the airlines, but to the airline passengers’ companies from an airline delay or cancellation? I know that one cancellation, alone, cost SBD over $5k for one employee. Now, what happens if key personnel are delayed on a major project or miss a key sales meeting? How much time is lost? How many customers are lost?
In the meantime, the three (so far) failed airlines provide an immediate lesson of the cost associated with not performing maintenance in facilities. Eventually the costs exceed the ability of the plant to maintain availability and it shuts down or the cost to manufacture becomes extremely high.
Byline: Howard W Penrose, Ph.D., CMRP
National Writers Union and International Federation of Journalists
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