Here's a little gem from the past. Try reading between the lines, and ponder what must have happened before the company and the pilots made nice for the public.
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Published Thursday, March 30, 2000
Northwest quells pilot worries about outside repair shops
Tony Kennedy / Star Tribune
A meeting Wednesday between top Northwest Airlines executives and pilots union safety officials apparently erased pilots' concerns about the safety of aircraft maintenance done by outside vendors.
The meeting was prompted by a strongly worded complaint letter the union sent last month, which cited five recent pilot reports of trouble with planes freshly returned to service from maintenance vendors in San Antonio, Seattle and Dothan, Ala.
Greg Cardis, air safety chairman for the Northwest Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), said he left Wednesday's high-level meeting satisfied that there is no chronic problem with Northwest's system of hiring government-certified independent repair stations for jobs not assigned to the airline's own mechanics.
"Our concerns have been addressed," Cardis said. "In the end, we don't see it as a system problem. The data that we were provided shows that vendor maintenance is every bit as reliable as our own maintenance."
Northwest Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Richard Anderson and other airline executives met with ALPA officials in response to a complaint letter that ALPA Central Air Safety Vice-Chair Bob Aaron sent to Northwest's senior vice president of technical operations. Referring to the five incidents, Aaron's letter said, "When viewed collectively, their mix is one for potential disaster."
Ken Hylander, Northwest's vice president for quality, reliability and engineering, said in an interview last week that he was eager to meet with the pilots to explain the incidents, which the company knew about before getting the complaint letter. Hylander said it is very important that the pilots have confidence in maintenance procedures.
Incomplete information
Cardis said after Wednesday's meeting that it was obvious the union didn't have complete information when it drafted its complaint letter. Several of the reported problems were minor, and the company already had taken appropriate corrective action, he said.
"We thought there was more to it," Cardis said. "On balance, they responded, and we really don't have any more issues."
In the most serious incident, confirmed by Northwest and scrutinized by the Federal Aviation Administration, mechanics at Pemco in Dothan, Ala., did not reconnect antenna cables that were unhooked from navigation radios during structural repairs to a Northwest DC-9. The cables, located beneath panels in the DC-9's cargo department, were left dangling when the panels were reinstalled.
When the jetliner returned to service in a non-passenger ferry flight, both navigation radios were inoperable, and the pilots relied on voice radio to get directional headings from air traffic controllers. The plane landed safely. Cardis said the navigation radios passed a pre-flight inspection because the DC-9's ground location was near a navigation radio transmitter.
"This one got the attention of the FAA," Hylander said.
Although the regulatory agency did not fine Northwest or Pemco, disciplinary action was taken against individuals who caused the error. Northwest increased its quality assurance work at Pemco, and new training ensued.
Hylander said the mechanics who disconnected the cables did not document their work, and a crew that took over for them did not know from looking at paperwork that the cables had been disconnected.
"They did not follow good maintenance procedures," Hylander said.
Maintenance procedures
The complaint letter from ALPA questioned whether Northwest had enough "hands-on oversight" of its maintenance vendors to assure decisive quality control. Cardis said after Wednesday's meeting that Northwest's system of oversight exceeds FAA requirements.
Union mechanics at Northwest took issue a couple of years ago when the airline ended a practice of assigning its own union mechanics to act as on-site inspectors at outside repair shops. Northwest's Anderson said the inspection program had been installed on a temporary basis when Northwest was adding a lot of planes to its fleet.
When Northwest's demand for airplane commissioning work subsided, management employees trained in quality assurance replaced the union inspectors.
Hylander said Northwest heavily audits prospective repair shops. Once a vendor has been authorized to do work for Northwest, the airline opens a management office on the premises. Staffing includes one full-time quality assurance representative and a site manager responsible for Northwest's overall check program at the facility. Hylander said Northwest also has managers on the scene whenever a work shift is in progress at one of its repair stations.
In addition, he said, the FAA has independent oversight of repair stations even if it doesn't maintain a full-time on-site presence at the shops. Furthermore, Northwest holds quarterly business reviews with each of its maintenance vendors.
"We constantly manage it," Hylander said. "Our on-site surveillance [at repair shops] is effectively more than in our own hangars."
Anderson said his goal is to keep Northwest's own maintenance facilities operating at full-tilt while using outside vendors to handle intermittent overloads.
He said Northwest's use of repair shops was higher than usual in 1998 and 1999, primarily because of a heavy maintenance cycle and partly because of an unofficial work slowdown by Northwest's own mechanics.
Last year, Northwest sent about a third of its maintenance work to outside vendors, Anderson said. This year, the load carried by outsiders will dwindle to about 10 percent, he said.
