Maybe not that flight specially but there were lots of issues at ValueJet before that crash......
In August 1995, the
Department of Defense (DoD) rejected ValuJet's bid to fly military personnel. In a scathing report, the DoD cited serious deficiencies in ValuJet's quality assurance procedures.
[5]
The
Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Atlanta field office sent a memo on February 14, 1996, to
Washington, D.C., stating that "consideration should be given to an immediate FAR-121 re-certification of this airline" - in other words, the FAA wanted ValuJet grounded. ValuJet airplanes made 15 emergency landings in 1994, 57 in 1995, and 57 from January through May 1996. In February the FAA ordered ValuJet to seek approval before adding any new aircraft or cities to their network, something the industry had not seen since deregulation in 1979. This attempt at removing ValuJet's certification was "lost in the maze at FAA" according to NTSB Chairman Jim Hall.
[7] By this time, ValuJet's accident rate was not only one of the highest in the low-fare sector, but was more than 14 times that of the legacy airline"