ValuJet is clearly in trouble and is acting fast to reassure the public. The airline is cooperating with an FAA probe, voluntarily cutting many of its flights while the agency inspects its jets. In addition, ValuJet late last week named a high-profile “safety czar” to oversee the airline’s maintenance operation. Some of those steps may be working. Despite the crash, almost 50 percent of those surveyed in a NEWSWEEK Poll said they wouldn’t have a problem flying Valujet. But the spotlight is turning on the FAA. Mounting evidence suggests that the FAA should have moved aggressively to clean up ValuJet’s alleged maintenance and safety problems long ago. In fact, the agency late last week released documents that seemed to confirm that its monitoring of the airline was flawed. An internal report by the FAA, completed just nine days before the Florida crash, ranked ValuJet’s safety record as the second worst among 14 discount carriers. NEWSWEEK also uncovered other problems, which raises more questions about the agency’s supervision of the airline. Among them: inadequately trained pilots and a series of incidents and near accidents. But so far there is no evidence that such problems caused the recent crash.
It’s a hard landing for an airline that, until now, has been one of the industry’s high fliers. Founded nearly three years ago by Robert Priddy, a onetime baggage handler, ValuJet grew from two aircraft to more than 50, earning a tidy profit last year of $68 million. To run the company Priddy recruited Lewis Jordan, formerly a top lieutenant to Frank Lorenzo-the ex-chief of Continental Airlines. The secret of his success, Priddy likes to say, is to be lean and mean, which allows the airline to offer those enticing $39 airfares. How lean? At ValuJet, top execs often answer their own phones and work off desks bought at discount stores. The airline saves in other ways, too. Many new pilots are relatively young, often with little major-airline experience. They earn between $40,000 and $60,000, about half the industry average. Pilots must also pay several thousand dollars for their own training to obtain FAA certificates qualifying them to operate the company’s aged DC-9s.
But federal regulators and former employees, including a group of flight attendants on ABC’s “Nightline” last week, say ValuJet might have squeezed too hard. FAA documents allege that ValuJet’s planes in a number of instances were not being maintained properly. In one widely publicized incident last June, almost a year before the FAA cracked down on the airline, an engine on ValuJet N908VJ caught fire during a takeoff run, destroying the aircraft. A few months before that, according to FAA files, mechanics improperly delayed repairs to the locking mechanisms on the same plane’s cargo doors. The plane had also been involved in an unscheduled landing when the passenger cabin lost pressure. Another case: FAA records show ValuJet improperly kept an aircraft in service for 23 days before repairing a leaking hydraulic line connected to the nose gear.
The DC-9 that crashed last week N904VJ-had its own history of maintenance and operational problems. During the last two years, FAA records show, the plane made seven unscheduled landings-far above average. The most serious incident: an apparent maintenance lapse in early 1994 when a loose cap caused the plane to leak oil in flight. Last January the plane was forced to return to Atlanta after takeoff when a faulty generator threatened to cause engine problems.
There have been incidents, apart from what might have been accidental lapses in maintenance, that were indeed serious. Information gathered by NEWSWEEK, much of it from FAA files, shows that ValuJet’s planes were involved in 12 “accidents” and less serious “incidents” since January 1994, including botching a landing so badly that the jet landed with no nose gear. ValuJet’s president Lewis Jordan said accounts of his airline’s safety problems were “distorted.” He told NEWSWEEK he didn’t want to “quibble” over negative reports. But he did say: “We have some problems… Our focus is making things right as soon as we can.”
It’s not entirely clear why the FAA didn’t act sooner to remedy certain problems. Some of the maintenance failures revealed in official documents are clear violations of FAA rules. Yet rather than close down the carrier, or force it to make repairs, the agency did little more than slap the carrier’s wrist, as when it levied an $8,500 fine last month for failing to repair the locks on an aircraft’s doors. FAA administrator David Hinson defends the airline’s record. “We believe ValuJet is safe,” he said. In addition, agency safety chief Anthony Broderick insisted at a press conference Friday that ValuJet’s problems never revealed a pattern of “systematic safety violations.” Transportation Department officials have said that ValuJet passed a “white glove” inspection last fall with only minor problems.
That response is puzzling, especially since some of the agency’s own regulators were concerned. In a Feb. 5 letter to ValuJet, FAA inspector Robert Bruce complained that pilots involved in “several” recent incidents had “very little” major airline experience. Bruce also said that on other occasions, FAA inspectors riding in the cockpit on ValuJet flights had to “counsel” pilots who appeared to be breaking the agency’s guidelines for proper flying. Officials overseeing the FAA at the Department of Transportation were also worried. Last February, at the time the FAA was also probing ValuJet, officials from the DOT inspector general’s office traveled to Atlanta and met with FAA inspectors supervising ValuJet. Among their concerns: the FAA inspector monitoring ValuJet’s maintenance operations wasn’t experienced enough.
Two weeks after the inspector general’s visit, the FAA began an unusually intense review of the airline, to the point of assigning 11 additional inspectors to its operations. That investigation was continuing at the time of the Florida crash, suggesting that the FAA finally realized it had to act. Now the investigations into ValuJet and the FAA’s handling of the case are likely to intensify. Among other things, the Transportation Department is investigating unspecified allegations that the FAA may have pressured inspectors to go easy on the carrier. FAA computer records show that inspectors opened up 43 “enforcement” investigations, including nine involving maintenance. But last week, FAA safety chief Broderick told NEWSWEEK that the agency had destroyed original records of some of these cases, as it does when it finds minor infractions. That means a complete investigation of the FAA’s role may not be possible. Meanwhile, ValuJet vowed to go out of its way to accommodate the regulators. Last Friday, it reduced its daily flights from 320 flights to 160, allowing more time for its planes to be inspected, and appointed a retired air force general, James B. Davis, to serve as its safety chief. Said ValuJet’s Jordan: “Anything other than a flawless safety record is unacceptable.”
These rates include all mishaps, including those that don’t threaten the flight.
ACCIDENTS PER 100,000 DEPARTURES Tower 8.68 ValuJet 4.23 Carnival 2.74 American Trans Air 0.56 United 0.45 Continental 0.35 American 0.34 Delta 0.31 USAir 0.24 America West 0.23 TWA 0.23 Southwest 0.22 FIRSTFOUR AIRLINES AND SOUTHWEST ARE BUDGET CARRIERS. SOURCE FAA
