Muddle in Alaska Airlines Case

The Federal Aviation Administration stumbled last week when it announced a serious but highly unusual action against Alaska Airlines, the nation’s 10th-largest air carrier. It proposed shutting down the airline’s heavy maintenance operations at its Seattle and Oakland facilities, then didn’t go nearly far enough in explaining that this had to do with record-keeping deficiencies, not whether Alaska Airlines was doing good repair work on its planes.

A sign of the public confusion to come should have been apparent at the announcement of the FAA plan when journalists wondered aloud why the proposed action was so serious if only record-keeping was involved.

The proposed shutdown, if carried out, will mean that any Alaska Airlines jet then grounded for a major overhaul or heavy maintenance check will have to remain on the ground, as will any additional jets that reach their scheduled dates for overhauls. This is serious stuff for an airline that, while one of the nation’s largest, has only 89 aircraft.

But here’s what Joe Public takes away from an announcement like that: He thinks the FAA has serious concerns about Alaska Airlines. Those concerns involve aircraft maintenance. The FAA is proposing not to let Alaska Airlines oversee major overhaul work, which means that planes would be taken out of service.

Any prospective Alaska Airlines passenger well might ask: If things are that serious, why isn’t the FAA moving to ground the airline, period? Is it telling us that this airline isn’t safe? Didn’t the FAA get into trouble once before regarding a now-defunct airline called ValuJet, saying that the airline was safe in advance of a fatal crash in the Florida Everglades in 1996? Wouldn’t air travelers draw a connection with the crash of Alaska Airlines Flight 261, which killed all 88 aboard off Ventura? The FAA said Monday that there was no similarity whatsoever between ValuJet’s 1996 troubles and the Alaska Airlines problems of today. That’s precisely what the FAA should have explained better last week in its announcement on Alaska Airlines.

The FAA praised Alaska Airlines as a well-established air carrier with a proven track record, unlike the small start-up ValuJet. Next, the FAA said that Alaska Airlines’ key problem was basically one of faulty record-keeping. The aircraft inspected by the FAA appeared to be maintained properly, but the records of that maintenance were shoddy, incomplete or inaccurate, something that another FAA spokesman said could lead to serious problems down the line. Meanwhile, Alaska Airlines staffers said they had already taken steps to address the FAA’s concerns.

What’s happened here? The FAA was forcing an airline’s hand to get it to upgrade its system of documenting maintenance work, but the flying public didn’t get the information it needed. That’s the kind of press briefing that the FAA can and should improve upon.