More Flights Canceled for Inspections
By Dan Reed and Alan Levin
FORT WORTH — American Airlines is aiming to have all of its 300 Boeing MD-80s jets flying again by late Saturday, but the world’s largest airline and its passengers face hundreds more flight cancellations before then.
American expects to cancel 570 flights today, pushing its total above 3,000 since Tuesday, when it grounded the MD-80s for mandatory wiring inspections. At an average of 100 passengers per flight, American’s maintenance issues have disrupted the lives of more than a quarter-million travelers this week.
Restoring its schedule to normal by Saturday will require the carrier’s technicians and the federal inspectors who recertify planes to pick up their already hectic pace.
As of Thursday afternoon, 132 MD-80s had been returned to service. The airline said it planned to have 170 flying this morning.
Meanwhile, senators in Washington tore into Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials for alleged weak maintenance and safety oversight.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., chairman of the Senate aviation subcommittee, called the groundings at American “an embarrassment to the nation.”
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said the FAA did nothing until whistle-blowers testified to a U.S. House committee this month that the agency was “turning a blind eye to some flagrant violations.”
“If the FAA didn’t have to be shamed into paying attention to these issues, these inspections (of American’s grounded jets) could have been spaced out and done in an orderly way,” Schumer said. “Now we’re all paying a huge price.”
Rockefeller suggested that senior FAA officials should be dismissed. “Sometimes you’ve got to fire people to make a point,” he said.
He lashed out at Nicholas Sabatini, the FAA’s safety chief, who testified during Thursday’s subcommittee hearing. Sabatini has said that the FAA failed to enforce safety directives at Southwest Airlines last year, but has insisted that the blame lies with regional managers.
The FAA and Sabatini received support Thursday from American CEO Gerard Arpey. He stood up for the agency whose newfound toughness in enforcing safety change orders, called airworthiness directives, is costing American tens of millions of dollars.
“I will not criticize the FAA,” Arpey said in a news conference at American’s Fort Worth headquarters.
A senior American mechanic and mechanics union officer struck a more defensive tone.
“I want to say unequivocally that our MD-80s are safe,” said Dennis Burchette, international vice president of the Transport Workers Union.
“Hundreds of highly trained, FAA award-winning technicians … didn’t simply get it wrong,” he said.
Arpey said American in 2005 led the way in working with Boeing and FAA officials in figuring out how to address the potential problem for which it is now inspecting MD-80s.
Dan Reed reported from Fort Worth. Alan Levin reported from Washington, D.C. (c) Copyright 2008 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.