Upkeep, not age, determines safety of older aircraft, says FAA

May 30, 2000
Web posted at: 7:54 p.m. EDT (2354 GMT)

From Correspondent Carl Rochelle

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (CNN) -- The airplane that flies you to your next destination may be older than the pilot flying the aircraft. But aviation safety officials say that the age of an aircraft is not as important as how well it has been maintained.

"Over the last 12 years, we've instigated rules that have made the operation of older aircraft an economic decision, not a safety issue," said Tom McSweeney of the Federal Aviation Administration.

In 1988, the average age of large airliners was nearly 13 years. Today, it has grown to nearly 16 years and officials say 10 years from now, the average jetliner will be 18 to 20 years old.

Much of the research that has kept aging aircraft safe is conducted at an FAA testing facility at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

That is where United Airlines inspector Jim Wilcox examined a Boeing 737 jetliner as closely as a dentist checking for a cavity. He is on loan to the FAA, working at improving techniques for finding problems on aging aircraft.

It can be cheaper to continue operating an older plane rather than buying a new one. But the safety of aging aircraft became a major concern in 1988 after failures in the metal structure of a 19-year-old Aloha Airlines 737 jetliner resulted in the in-flight loss of a large part of the plane's fuselage.

One person died -- a flight attendant who was sucked out of the opening ripped in the aircraft. The Aloha crew managed to fly the crippled jetliner back to Hawaii and make a safe landing.

The FAA said the Aloha incident taught them that some aircraft age more rapidly than others and that methods needed to be developed to monitor and deal with a plane's mechanical and structural problems before they caused an accident.

An aircraft's age is often measured in take-offs, landings, flight hours and the operating environment -- such as the salt air that Aloha operated in.


Plane inspector Wilcox uses a mirror and flashlight to examine a 737 jetliner

"We want to catch flaws when they're early enough that they can be repaired so they don't ground the aircraft, so we can extend its life," said aircraft inspector Mike Valley.

Valley uses use heat and infrared cameras to search for flaws. Cracks and bad rivets are the target of current testers that use an electronic signal to locate flaws.

The jetliners tested at Sandia were donated by the airlines. One 747 that had more than 100,000 flight hours and millions of passengers behind it has undergone close inspection and tests on its wiring.

Wiring questions were raised in wake of the crash of TWA Flight 800. Investigators know there was an explosion in the 747's center fuel tank and there is concern that wiring may have been involved in the blast.

"We haven't found anything that makes us want to take immediate actions. But we have found some things that cause us to want to enhance the inspections of wiring in aircraft," McSweeney said.

The work at the FAA lab isn't limited to jetliners. The engineers and scientists also study the effect of aging on smaller jets, turboprops and helicopters.