Article: FAA says regional airline didn't inspect planes

F

Firebird2XC

Well-Known Member
(From April- I'm a little slow this month..)

"FAA says regional airline didn't inspect planes"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/9052046

JOAN LOWY
Associated Press Writer= WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal aviation officials on Tuesday proposed fining regional carrier Chautauqua Airlines $348,000 for allegedly flying passengers thousands of times without performing required safety inspections of the planes.
The airline's management of its maintenance program and its system for tracking the status of compliance with safety orders led to the violations, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.
Among the violations cited by the FAA:
— Chautauqua flew eight Canadair Regional Jets more than 9,900 times in 2007 and 2008 before inspecting lower wings for cracks. The inspections were supposed to be performed every 5,000 flights.
— In January 2009, the airline operated a regional jet on 231 flights without inspecting a different section of the lower wings for cracks and flew another of the planes for 61 hours without a required inspection of electrical relays.
— Another regional jet made more than 17,600 flights between November 2007 and January 2009 before mandatory inspections of the plane's GE engines were performed.
— An Embraer 145 regional jet was operated for 43 days past the time one of its inertial navigation units should have been replaced.
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Well they didn't crash so I don't see why they need to be inspected in the first place?

(Trying to see things from managements point of view!):laff:
 
Coming from the part 91 world where the PIC has to check this sort of thing before flying, how much responsibility does the crew have in checking that mx items have been done?

Does dispatch do it? Do you get a printout before you fly?

If so, did they just blatantly pencil whip the inspections or were they just over looked by a bunch of different departments?
 
mojo6911 said:
Coming from the part 91 world where the PIC has to check this sort of thing before flying, how much responsibility does the crew have in checking that mx items have been done?

Does dispatch do it? Do you get a printout before you fly?

If so, did they just blatantly pencil whip the inspections or were they just over looked by a bunch of different departments?
Click to expand...

The crew's responsibility is to check that there are no open write ups, check past write ups and to verify all MEL/CDL's are legal and complied with.

There is some statement in our ops manual that if the plane is released by MX control, all necessary and recurring maintenance is complied with. These aircraft have all sorts of MX programs that really you or I couldn't follow and I believe the company uses computers to track.

We don't get a printout per-se, but the release from dispatch is basically the document (per our FOM like I said above) that says MX is up to date.
 
Baronman said:
The crew's responsibility is to check that there are no open write ups, check past write ups and to verify all MEL/CDL's are legal and complied with.

There is some statement in our ops manual that if the plane is released by MX control, all necessary and recurring maintenance is complied with. These aircraft have all sorts of MX programs that really you or I couldn't follow and I believe the company uses computers to track.

We don't get a printout per-se, but the release from dispatch is basically the document (per our FOM like I said above) that says MX is up to date.
Click to expand...

So in this case, there had to be some pencilwhipping involved?
 
Mx on something like those RJs is ponderously complex, with literally thousands of life-limited parts and different inspection intervals. Not excusing it, but it's pretty easy to see how these might be missed...someone forgets to enter a line in the massive computerized tracking system and boom, none of the floor mechs have any idea that that inspection is supposed to be done. Your 100 hour/annual inspection, this is not.
 
mojo6911 said:
So in this case, there had to be some pencilwhipping involved?
Click to expand...
Not necessarily. Again these things are very complex with large fleets of aircraft going all over the place hitting various mx bases. There is a human component (error) with loading data and who knows, perhaps something was incorrect with the computer mx systems.

Of course it is possible that there was a sinister plan, that in between taking over airlines and figuring out ways to pay their pilots the same for larger and larger aircraft, the reverend was plotting how to not do required mx on their soon-to-be-gone CRJ fleet.
 
This is a classic example of hastily standing up a new fleet type and not completely understanding what needed to be done. I'm betting it's not a coincidence that this was uncovered right as the last CHQ CRJ's were being inspected to be returned/sold/etc...someone else likely noticed the problem and brought it to CHQ's attention or a CHQ employee discovered it during a more thorough examination of records prior to transfer. This kind of thing is a regular occurrence in maintenance everywhere and is often human error. I've seen it in 121, 135, 91, and military maintenance.
 
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