Allegiant Air pilots have accused the carrier of using planes that 'barely pass' safety standards

I haven't seen proof of any problem, so it's hard to say. The statistics provided by the IBT troglodytes weren't exactly frightening.
I suspect if one were cherry picking data for a purpose one could make any 121 airline's mechanical difficulty stats sound bad to the average passenger.

The folks in the front seats that have posted here seem to think there is something to it though, so there might be some truth behind the hyperbole, hard to tell from my perspective.
 
The picture of the recent evacuation in Boise was pretty epic. I saw that happen once before but it was a US Airways A320 in the Hudson...

The Allegiant pilots will be damned if they bring up any sort of safety issue during negotiations. Easy pickings. They did that where I work over part 117. Doesn't mean there isn't a problem.
 
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"

Absolutely there were problems there. With all due respect to ATN pilot and he is correct in the sense that SabreTech was the cause of the flight 592 crash. Valujet was an accident waiting to happen. If not 592 it would have been not much longer until they did auger one in. When I worked for NW we were on call MX for ValuJet and their aircraft were in such bad shape we (mechanics) told our company we would not work on their aircraft at our station anymore. I remember one incident on the DC-9 an airplane I know quite well apparantly there was an air ground sense problem so the crew pulled the ground shift relays right behind the capt's seat to keep it in the air mode and armed the spoilers for landing and reached back and pushed those c/b's in a little to soon and deployed the spoilers and slammed the jet onto the runway. I guess it's easy to say this issue at Allegiant is pilot union posturing and I do not know enough about what is happening there but it does seem suspect.
 
The folks in the front seats that have posted here seem to think there is something to it though, so there might be some truth behind the hyperbole, hard to tell from my perspective.

Sorry, but they ruined their credibility when they tried to engage in an illegal strike. They're going to have to show proof now.
 
I'm not sure what "mistake" that would be, as ValuJet was not responsible for what happened.

Valujet most certainly was responsible. But I'm not referring to NTSB and FAA findings. I'm referring to the decisions made in the executive suite that created a negative safety culture.

Despite what you like to think, there is such a thing as corporate culture. If senior management is safety oriented, that mindset filters down through the organization, and takes hold at all levels. It becomes part of the thinking process; part of the corporate psyche. As a result management and operational decisions, whether it is recognized or not, get passed through that safety filter. In a safety culture, these actions tend to be rewarded rather than punished.

The opposite is also true. If senior management exhibits little or no regard safety, that attitude also takes hold in the organization.

It's hard to explain unless you've experienced it. I have experienced both sides of the coin, and I can tell you there was a marked difference between the two organizations. And ironically, I have found that the company with the safety culture in place tends to do better financially, despite the increased costs that a safety culture brings.

My point here is that, what happened at Valujet seems to be happening now at Allegiant. And so I ask again: Do we really have to re-learn this lesson?
 
Its not just one pilot talking about it, its a large number of them. Its been going on for quite some time. I know a dude who left the airline because the airplanes were crap and the pressure to keep them flying was getting out of hand. I thought he was just a bitter hater.
 
Again, you don't have a clue what you're talking about when it comes to that accident. The fault was on the shipper, not on ValuJet. Period.

Todd's correct. 592 accident may have happened during a time period of lacking of safety at ValueJet, but the error chain was not triggered by them. It was a coincidence, factually. The accident sequence actually started with the company properly maintaining the aircraft by having the old generators replaced. The company that replaced them, stored them in the maintenance facility temporarily...at least that was the goal. When the facility was about to be inspected, the generators were found during the tidying process. The question was something like, "oh- these are ValueJet's??" "They're the old one's..." "Well, they need to be returned to them, regardless."

So then, the packaging process started. You had your mislabeled, replaced parts, some of which were not even tagged at all. For many parts, the most important part of removal is the timing of the parts tag. Once the job is a forgotten memory, it's nearly too late. You'd need an expert, intimate with the actual part to figure out how to tag it.

There was an attempt to properly tag the parts but the tags were documented incorrectly. It just so happens that the incorrect documentation led to the incorrect classification of the parts being able to be transported by air. Add the fact that the parts were improperly safetied after removal from the aircraft AND improperly packaged. ValueJet was responsible for none of that. Perhaps the safety culture at ValueJet would have led to the same conclusion, had they been handling that part of the process, but they weren't.

I've seen firsthand what a bad safety culture looks like. It helps no one to cross reputation and events and make a judgement based on those two things alone. The actual problem(s) don't get fixed and sometimes, the wrong people keep their jobs.
 
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