FAA Says It Didn’t Approve Southwest’s 737 Fix

FORT WORTH, Texas _ A “twofold breakdown” in safety procedures at Southwest Airlines and the Federal Aviation Administration resulted in airplanes flying without being inspected for potentially dangerous fuselage cracks last year, FAA officials said.

The agency denied Southwest’s assertion that the FAA had approved a plan last March to continue flying 46 Boeing 737s for up to 10 days despite having missed key inspections. Small cracks were discovered on six aircraft once they were examined.

Although several agency employees were aware that Southwest planes were flying despite the lack of inspections, “no FAA employees have any authorization to provide an alternative” to the rules, said Peggy Gilligan, the agency’s deputy associate administrator for aviation safety.

The FAA has proposed a $10.2 million fine against Southwest for the incident. If upheld, the penalty would be the largest in the agency’s history.

Southwest maintained that the FAA had signed off on the plan to continue flying the planes.

“I think we’re each telling our side of the story, which is part of this process,” Beth Harbin, a Southwest spokeswoman, said. “We are certainly confident in our end of it and look forward to learning more about how everyone else sees it.”

Separately, a congressman who leads a key transportation committee alleged that Southwest might have also missed inspections of the rudder control system on 70 airplanes. The airline denied that any crucial rudder inspections were overlooked.

Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, called the inspection failures “the most serious lapse of safety I have observed” in 23 years of monitoring the FAA.

Speaking at a news conference in Washington, D.C., Oberstar blasted the FAA, claiming that it has a “cozy relationship” with the airline industry, and suggested that the agency had fined Southwest this week because his committee will be holding a hearing on the case soon.

Gary Kelly, chief executive of Dallas-based Southwest, defended the airline’s safety record but said he has ordered an investigation into what happened.

“Our interpretation of the guidance that we got from the FAA at the time was that we were in compliance with all laws and regulations,” Kelly said in a statement the airline e-mailed to reporters.

The inspection lapse dates to a 2004 directive from the FAA that requires regular examinations of certain Boeing 737 airplanes for tiny cracks in the fuselage. Such cracks can grow and eventually cause a rupture in the aircraft’s shell. That might depressurize the airplane cabin and could result in a crash.

Most of the airlines that flew without inspections were 22 or 23 years old.

The airline and the FAA agree on this point: In March 2007, Southwest reviewed its inspection records and discovered that it had not been conducting the inspections for the cracks on a small portion of some planes. On March 15, the airline notified the agency of the lapse.

At that point, the accounts diverge. Southwest insists that it presented the FAA with a plan to quickly inspect the planes and received approval from the agency. The airline believed that the planes could be safely operated while awaiting the inspections.

All of the aircraft were examined within 10 days. Small cracks, which were found on six jets during the reviews, were repaired.

Boeing Corp. issued a statement declaring that “the safety of the Southwest fleet was not compromised.” The aircraft manufacturer said it reviewed Southwest’s actions and “concluded the 10-day compliance plan was technically valid.”

“We worked out with the FAA how to fix that problem, and we fixed it,” Kelly said.

The FAA denies that it ever signed off on any plan. Under the safety regulations, Southwest was obligated to immediately ground the jets once the lapse was discovered, said Jim Ballough, the director of the agency’s flight-standards service. The agency can review alternatives to the regulations, but the airline never asked for such a review, he said.

The airplanes “were not in an airworthy condition” when flown, the agency told the airline in a letter dated Thursday.

The FAA acknowledged that “several” of its employees were apparently aware of Southwest’s actions and failed to enforce the rules.

Some “probing questions” should have been asked by the FAA employees as to “whether or not the aircraft were grounded, where they were located, what the schedule was for the inspections,” Ballough said. “That’s why we feel this was a twofold breakdown,” he said.

Two of those employees “are no longer in the positions they held at that time,” Gilligan said, but she would not specify whether they had been fired or reassigned.

Regardless, Ballough said, Southwest had no excuse for keeping the planes in the sky. “They did not meet the safety requirements,” he said.

The agency’s top officials became aware of the problem in April, he said, and began investigating. That review culminated with the $10.2 million fine announced Thursday.

Meanwhile, Oberstar raised more questions about Southwest’s safety procedures. He said whistle-blowers had provided his office with information that the rudder control systems on 70 airplanes had not received necessary inspections.

Southwest denied the assertion. According to the airline, the only thing missed in relation to the rudder was a task required by Boeing, not the FAA, to check the power-control unit of the aircraft’s standby rudder. The standby rudder is not powered on the vast majority of flights, the airline said.

“Southwest Airlines is and has always been 100 percent compliant with the (required rudder inspections),” the airline said in a statement.

FAA officials said they are investigating another report concerning Southwest but wouldn’t confirm whether it involved the rudders. “At this point it would be premature to talk about it,” Gilligan said.

The problem with the cracks had been brought to Oberstar’s attention by an FAA inspector who felt that his superiors weren’t taking the problem seriously, he said.

“These whistle-blowers showed a great deal of courage” in coming forward, he said.

The agency was also criticized by Professional Aviation Safety Specialists, the union that represents FAA inspectors.

“The bottom line is that the FAA appears to be more concerned with keeping airlines solvent rather than safe,” Tom Brantley, the union’s president, said in a statement.

Kelly disagreed, and said his airline’s safety record speaks for itself.

“We’ve got a 37-year history of very safe operations, one of the safest operations in the world,” he said, “and we’re safer today than we’ve ever been.”

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(Staff writer Dave Montgomery contributed to this report.)

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(c) 2008, Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

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