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Intellectual Property Law

: Threat Level

FAA and Southwest Airlines Accused of Falsifying Safety Reports

By Ryan Singel, Kevin Poulsen, Sarah Lai Stirland, Kim Zetter, and David Kravets

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The Federal Aviation Administration and Southwest Airlines are being accused of falsifying a safety report that provided assurances that the airline had met compliance rules for safety inspections of its jets, according to documents released today by a U.S. House Committee that is investigating claims made by two FAA whistleblowers. The report blames cronyism for the falsification and the FAA's failure to properly do its job in conducting oversight of Southwest and other airlines.

This comes on the tail of news released two weeks ago that the FAA also allowed substandard parts that are critical to the safety of commercial and military planes to enter the aviation supply chain because it failed to provide proper oversight of the parts suppliers.

All of this, of course, provides new context for the story published in January about safety concerns over Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner aircraft and the FAA's ability to assure that the plane's communication system won't be vulnerable to hackers.

But, turning back to the Southwest issue, last week, the FAA announced that it was fining Southwest Airlines $10.2 million for safety violations. According to the FAA's findings, the airline had flown nearly four dozen jets on more than 59,000 flights before it realized that it hadn't conducted required safety inspections on the planes. Then, even after the airline became aware that it hadn't conduced inspections, it continued to fly 38 Boeing jets on a total of 1,451 flights without checking the planes.

When the airline finally got around to inspecting the planes, it found cracks in half a dozen of them -- including one crack that was nearly four inches long. As the Dallas Morning News points out, a similar fracture caused an Aloha Airlines jet to rip apart in 1988.

In March 2007, Southwest notified the FAA that it had failed to conduct inspections and said that it had stopped flying the plans in questions. In truth, Southwest continued to fly 38 of the planes for another week.

So last week the FAA, showing that it takes its oversight function seriously, announced the fine against Southwest Airlines, which is reportedly the largest fine that the FAA has ever levied on an airline.

But now it seems that the FAA, or at least some FAA supervisors, may have been complicit in Southwest's safety lapses.

According to two FAA whistleblowers, a couple of colleagues who were responsible for overseeing Southwest failed to act on information that Southwest hadn't conducted safety inspections. The whistleblowers also say the FAA failed to act on their concerns about the FAA employees until after the whistleblowers approached a federal agency about these concerns and that an internal FAA investigation of the issue was leaked to Southwest.

The whistleblowers say a href=" http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/031108dnbussouthwest.3b2e20a.html?npc">the problems stem from a cozy relationship that developed between the FAA and Southwest after a former FAA inspector went to work for the airline.

The FAA has placed three employees on administrative leave while it investigates the allegations.

In the meantime, someone leaked a report from the inspector general's office for the U.S. Department of Transportation. The Project on Government Oversight published the report last week.

Among the inspector general's findings:

"Manufacturers were not verifying that their suppliers were providing effective oversight of the sub-tier suppliers they used to produce parts. This is a critical safety issue, as demonstrated by four engine failures that occurred in FY 2003 due to faulty speed sensors on fuel pumps obtained from a supplier. Three of the engine failures occurred on the ground and one occurred in flight. The part failures were traced to unapproved design changes made by a sub-tier supplier. In all, 152 parts were manufactured in the suspect population."

"Effective oversight of suppliers is essential to ensure that substandard parts do not enter the aviation supply chain. For example, in February 2003, 1 supplier released approximately 5,000 parts that were not manufactured properly for use on landing gear for large commercial passenger aircraft. At least one of these landing gear parts failed while in service. While FAA became aware of this large-scale breakdown at this supplier in 2003, it has not performed a supplier audit at this facility in the last 4 years."

"One supplier allowed new, untrained employees to manufacture several components. We witnessed one new employee improperly inspecting a product. A later review of his training record showed that he had not received any formal training in the proper inspection method. This was the same supplier mentioned previously that used a piece of paper as a measuring device for an oil and fuel pressure transmitter."

Photo: Southwest Airlines

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Full post as published by Threat Level on March 11, 2008 (boomark / email).