Do airlines ever cut corners on maintenance?

Can in-house mechanics be pressured by a penny-pinching boss? Certainly, most work hard and take pride in their jobs. But one technician, who worked for 15 years in the engine-overhaul business, says they can't help but make judgment calls. "Not every technician will have the same opinion," he says.

When parts come up for inspection, mechanics have to make some decisions -- take them apart for a closer look? Pass them? Fail them? "One guy will pass it, another won't. We would scrap something, the customer would ask to send it to [the engine manufacturer] and their technicians wouldn't scrap it. These are gray areas, obviously."

Here's an example of where their employers' loyalties lie. The downed Alaska Airlines MD-83 was due for an inspection of its horizontal stabilizer hinges -- the stabilizer the pilots reported having trouble with just before the crash. The FAA "airworthiness directive" (AD) mandating the hinge inspection for all MD-83s included comments from airplane operators. One was a plea to perform less stringent inspections, and another asked the FAA to allow previous, less stringent inspections to count toward the AD compliance.

Fortunately, the FAA didn't listen and issued the hinge-inspection AD anyway, at an estimated cost of over $7,000 in labor per airplane. It offered an 18-month window to comply, so that the cost wouldn't put undue hardship on MD-83 operators. Alaska Airlines' jet was within that 18-month time frame when it plunged into the ocean, so even if a hinge failure did contribute to the crash, the airline was operating well within the FAA's legal guidelines.

The stabilizer-hinge inspection was ordered because rust was found on older planes. Some mechanics doubt that Alaska Airlines' newer MD-83, built in 1992, could have developed enough corrosion to cause a catastrophic failure.

But many pilots and mechanics have stories of petitioning the FAA to change a certain maintenance procedure only to be ignored until a crash calls attention to the issue. Likewise, the FAA tends to check up on airlines only when something forces them to. A disgruntled employee reports a record-keeping discrepancy. A crash investigation reveals an improper repair procedure.

That tricky relationship between the airlines and the FAA, plus the agency's low staffing, means that airlines are often left to their own devices when it comes to abiding by maintenance regulations. "The risk to letting agencies self-police is that there's no real threat from FAA," says an airline pilot who spent his early career in Alaska (not at Alaska Airlines). There, he says, he flew for "nasty little operators that cut every corner there was," and never once saw the FAA drop in.

Clearly, the FAA is more reactive than proactive. Airlines are desperate to cut costs. Who has the incentive and the power to change the system?

You do. I do. Everyone who buys a plane ticket does. The only way to force airlines to spend money on maintenance is to pay for your trip. Pay for the pilot who spent 10 years flying in Alaska and knows how to land in a snowstorm. Pay for the flight attendant with a few evacuations under his or her belt. And pay for the mechanic who's seen turbine blades fail and insists on searching for the nearly invisible cracks. After all, the people on the plane are those with the biggest incentive to make sure it doesn't crash.

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