FAA Inspector Criticized for Relationship With Southwest
At
Southwest Airlines
(LUV) - Get Report
, the Federal Aviation Administration's chief maintenance inspector grew too close to the carrier, leading eventually to major violations of FAA procedures, agents said Thursday in Washington.
In compelling testimony before the House Transportation Committee on Thursday, a half dozen current and former FAA inspectors described a climate in which chief inspector Douglas Gawadzinski seemed overly supportive of the company he was supposed to regulate, while agents who raised safety concerns were ignored or punished.
"We had a rogue inspector who could not be corralled and headed in the right direction, and
who appeared to be protected at every turn," said Michael Mills, formerly assistant manager of the FAA's Dallas flight standards district office. Mills said it was unclear whether Gawadzinski's behavior was supported by higher-ups in the FAA, although "certain instances led me to wonder whether some of his purported support might have some legs."
With Gawadzinski's support, Southwest flew aircraft without conducting inspections that were required by airworthiness directives, which are orders issued after serious safety problems are discovered. "It is never permissible for an airline to continue to operate commercial flights in noncompliance with an
airworthiness directive," said Nicholas Sabatini, associate administrator for aviation safety. "It flies in the face of everything we stand for."
Sabatini said Southwest has been fined $10.2 million. He said Gawadzinski has been assigned to a desk job while his case is investigated, and he indicated further action is likely when the review is complete. "I consider what has happened here egregious," Sabatini said.
Additionally, the FAA will soon implement a new plan to encourage safety reporting by employees, improve safety reporting by airlines and regulate airline employment for former FAA employees. However, Sabatini noted that in 2,400 recent inspections, airlines were compliant in 99% of cases.
Calvin Scovel, inspector general for the Transportation Department, said Southwest's program to ensure compliance with airworthiness directives was ineffective. In fact, he said, the program itself has not been inspected since 1999. As a result, he said, the carrier flew 48 aircraft for up to nine months without conducting a specific, required inspection for fuselage cracks.
When Southwest reported this in March, Gawadzinski did not instruct the carrier to ground the airplanes, which flew for nine more days. Eventually, reviews found fuselage cracks in five of the planes.
Whistleblower Bobby Boutris, a Southwest inspector, expressed concerns about the airline's compliance with airworthiness directives as early as 2003, and stepped up his efforts in 2006. That led Southwest to lodge a complaint against him, resulting in his removal from oversight duties.
Another whistleblower, inspector Douglas Peters, said he contacted Congressional investigators in July 2007 after seeing that Southwest operated airplanes with fuselage cracks with Gawadzinski's knowledge.
"There was a serious divide within the office
between those who followed policy and those who were loyal to Gawadzinski," said Peters, who moved to another airline in October.
Meanwhile, Mills said he was placed in another job in May 2007 after complaining to his superiors that Southwest had flown airplanes without conducting required inspections and that Gawadzinski, his subordinate, had suppressed this information. Two Congressmen said they were disturbed by Mills' move.
Southwest executives appeared before the committee late Thursday. In prepared remarks, CEO Gary Kelly and Chairman Emeritus Herb Kelleher said the carrier regularly performs "overlapping, repetitive and comprehensive" inspections for cracks.
Southwest said the March events began when it started a modification of "lap joints" to resolve crack issues. A record-keeping error meant paperwork did not cover inspections of a small portion of the hull, or about 0.6% of the surface, that should have been part of the modification process. The areas were covered in other inspections, however, the carrier said.
"Better judgment should have been exercised than to allow those aircraft to fly after the potential noncompliance was discovered," Southwest said. Going forward, the carrier said, it will not fly airplanes if there is a failure to comply with an airworthiness directive.
Additionally, it will not move forward with plans to relocate certain maintenance operations to a facility in El Salvador because it decided that "now was not the time to add complexity with significant changes to our maintenance operations."
In recent weeks, Southwest,
Delta
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,
AMR's
(AMR)
American and
UAL's
(UAUA)
United have temporarily grounded parts of their fleet in order to conduct maintenance reviews.