United, US Airways Receive Big Fines for Maintenance Problems

If someone at one airline can use towels as parts, someone at another can think ‘screw it, let the door open it’s time for my break’. Since Republic is buying the E190′s from US they must now be thinking ‘gee what else might be wrong that wasn’t taken care of’.

I wonder one day if we will have consumer laws that say the aircraft numbers must be reported in any story about airplanes issues/problems and/or at boarding time the agents must inform passengers that the aircraft was the one involved in whaterver issue and let the passenger decide if they want to fly on that aircraft. We have so many other laws for consumer rights, when will someone come up with pushing for this one? Can you just see 200 people delaying a flight because they are wondering if other towels (or whatever) were used incorrectly or other parts not inspected and is the plane safe to travel on. Right that would go over well.

My list of airlines “not to fly” is getting quite long….

I’m surprised they (UA) didn’t get a fine over the fire on the 777 at LHR in February 2007. Apparently, the pilots didn’t notice there was a fire for 14 minutes after it had been smouldering, despite the stewardesses telling them they could smell burning.

nigel wrote:

It is one aircraft and one mechanic. This is nowhere near the blatent violations seen at Southwest or some of the third world airlines.

Yeah, but Southwest thought they were doing something correct, but messed up on the paperwork.

There should have been no question in anyones mine that the actions of United’s mechanics were unacceptable. That a mechanic even did this points toward a huge cultural issue, which is the general problem I see with United.

US Airways’s problems point toward issues with their merger, they didn’t execute it as well as they should have, and they had to clean up a bunch afterwards. This isn’t news to anyone who has followed their merger.

Three years ago, I was on a United 777 from O’Hare to Dulles which had an aborted takeoff. I was sitting over the trailing edge of the wing, and as we pulled off the runway, I looked out and saw the flaps going down. Pretty scary, especially since I had my kids with me.

The pilot literally didn’t say anything. Just went around and took off again. When we got to Dulles, I tried in vain for about an hour to get somebody at United to pay attention and initiate an inquiry. I tried everyone I could find at Dulles and even called Chicago HQ to see if anyone there was interested. Eventually I gave up and reported the incident to the FAA.

What I learned from the FAA, which did investigate, made me feel a little better about the safety situation, but no better about United. Apparently, between gate and takeoff we were reassigned to a shorter runway that required more flaps than had been set, and the pilots failed to make the adjustment before starting the takeoff roll. The FAA inspector said that the pilot self-reported (apparently he cares what the FAA thinks but not what his passengers think), and that if he had continued with the takeoff we would have been OK, although we would have taken off after the runway’s designated abort point. The inspector also said that a 777 will not take off unless the flaps are extended at least partway.

That said, I was and remain appalled at the complete lack of interest shown by United. I also was and remain appalled by the pilot’s behavior in not making an announcement in order to reassure the passengers and cabin crew. This is not the kind of performance that makes one want to fly an airline, is it?

@ ChicagoFlyer:
Sounds like he didn’t want to tell the passengers that he screwed up and they would be afraid to fly with him. Or he’s an honest man and didn’t want to follow standard airline regulations and just blame it on air traffic control like they do everything else.

I just hope United has hunted down the guy who did this and fired him (or them).

I don’t. There is an ‘open and honest’ reporting culture in the airlines as it is far more important to have a fault reported than an aircraft fly with a defect because someone feared they might lose their job. It is very rarely just one person that causes an incident/accident and only by having an open culture for reporting mistakes can a dangerous process or chain of events be stopped. In this case, it was the airline that reported the incident. Could they have hidden this? Probably. Did they know they would be fined for the breach? Almost certainly yes. But they did report it on the grounds that it may stop someone at another airline doing the same and prevent another engine failure – perhaps in a less benign situation such as at V1 with gusty winds, a high payload and wet runway.

Steve Laurance wrote:

I was a United Airlines pilot for 30 years. We had the finest maintenance in the business. If we knew all the details of this incident, which we don’t, I think we’d find that it was little more than a minor infraction. Otherwise, the airplane wouldn’t have flown that many times without incident. I hope all the perfect people who have never made a mistake, will please explain how they do it to us that are only human.

Steve, I haven’t been around the industry nearly as long as you have, but my first response reading this was: “shrug” someone is blowing this way out of proportion.

I’m curious about something else, however… what would have happened if they were using the required protective caps instead of the shop towels? Would there have been the same inflight problem? If so, would the commenters here still be calling for the mech’s firing? For a one-time instance, I wouldn’t call for a guy’s head on a silver platter. Only if he has a reputation for being sloppy and lazy. (And truth be told, I bet two people screwed up — the guy who didn’t remove the caps/rags, and the guy who was supposed to sign off that the caps/rags were removed prior to flight.)

Is safety being systematically subcontracted to the lowest bidder?

Gout us air flights in 24 hrs and two major delays for maintenance. Last month, 12 flights and 4 maintenance delays. While it good that these issues are nmh detected, how could this many non-scheduled maintenance items pop up??