Safety last, FAA inspectors complain

They accuse bosses of treating Alaska Airlines with kid gloves

Friday, March 5, 1999

 

By SCOTT SUNDE, ANDREW SCHNEIDER and LISE OLSEN
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTERS

© 1999 Seattle Post-Intelligencer. All rights reserved.

The job of federal inspectors who monitor the nation's airlines is to protect the flying public.

But when it comes to Seattle-based Alaska Airlines, it doesn't pay for inspectors to do their job too well. That message is vivid in hundreds of pages of Federal Aviation Administration documents, in transcripts of legal proceedings and in interviews by the Post-Intelligencer.

It is a message that has echoed through the decade -- inspectors who have held the job since 1991 tell similar stories of enforcing federal regulations at Alaska, only to get heat rather than praise from their bosses. Some of those safety watchdogs have been disciplined and moved to other jobs after airline managers or pilots campaigned against them.

The airline, meanwhile, has avoided some major fines despite what inspectors call a pattern of bending and breaking the rules.

In one case, inspectors found that the airline failed to properly check the flying skills of 35 pilots and asked their bosses to levy a fine of more than $400,000. Alaska acknowledged the error and received an apologetic letter from an FAA manager.

In another case, Alaska balked at an FAA order to increase training for pilots flying into a difficult airport. The FAA backed down, even though it still requires at least one other airline to comply with that order.

Alaska's practices are also the subject of a criminal investigation. A federal grand jury in Oakland, Calif., is looking into allegations that Alaska mechanics signed off on maintenance that was not done. The FAA may revoke the licenses of two Alaska maintenance supervisors.

All airlines have systems for ensuring safety, but they also have strict government oversight. An army of FAA inspectors monitor every aspect of their operations -- from the way pilots are trained to fly to the way galley coffeepots are serviced.

Each airline has teams of FAA inspectors to monitor operations, maintenance and security. Each team is led by a principal inspector.

The inspectors are the public's primary line of defense. They can propose fines and sanctions, and even prompt criminal charges.

Inspectors are guided by lengthy regulations, said Mary Rose Diefenderfer, a former FAA principal operations inspector at Alaska.

"We are not talking about enforcing rules and regulations that I or my team made up," Diefenderfer said. "These are laboriously written, usually after months or years of research and investigation by hundreds of the world's top safety experts . . ."

The relationship between the FAA and air carriers is far more complex than simply enforcing rules. By federal law, the FAA must simultaneously protect the flying public and promote the interests of civil aviation.

(Editor's note: A 1996 act of Congress limited the Federal Aviation Administration's mandate to maintaining and enhancing safety. This note was added after initial posting)

In the case of Alaska Airlines, that means FAA managers in Seattle want to police the hometown airline but also to maintain a cordial relationship.

And FAA inspectors say that when the dual roles of safety enforcer and air travel booster clash, their bosses tend to put cordiality ahead of safety.

Brad Pearson, manager of the FAA's Northwest flight standards division, said he's "bewildered and amazed" by suggestions that Alaska gets special treatment.

"I don't know of any instance where we have overlooked something we should have investigated or not taken action where it was appropriate," Pearson said.

"I consider Alaska Airlines to be a good air carrier, and they get a lot of surveillance."

Michael Swanigan, Alaska's vice president of flight operations, said he considers relations with the FAA good. But he said Alaska has no special influence with the agency.

Still, the inspectors cite a series of incidents.

In 1993, FAA inspectors discovered that some Alaska pilots -- including the vice president for flight operations -- failed to attend required training sessions, but signed rosters saying they had. Ultimately, the FAA stripped five pilots of their captain's papers.

But the FAA didn't just penalize Alaska. Diefenderfer says the agency also punished her. She was transferred to another position, although she fought the move and later won back her old job.

"Go along and get along would make the professional lives of all inspectors easier, but if there is even a remote chance that something we find can lead to an accident or death, safety has got to come first and the hell with politics," Diefenderfer said.

In 1997, Diefenderfer again angered Alaska. Her inspectors believed the airline failed to give flight tests -- tantamount to a driver's road test -- to several newly hired pilots.

After Alaska complained, the FAA again transferred Diefenderfer to a new job. Two team members also transferred out.

In a letter to Diefenderfer in September 1997, Pearson wrote that he and fellow FAA supervisor Marlene Livack found it unacceptable that the relationship between Alaska and the safety inspectors had become strained.

He also wrote, "I want you to clearly understand that Marlene and I are adamant that an effective working relationship does not mean we lessen our expectations for safety, the carrier's responsibility for compliance or our inspectors' obligation to enforce regulations."

FAA inspectors say the message was clear: Being nice is more important than being tough.

"My impression is that FAA management is more interested in keeping Alaska Airlines happy than they are in keeping Alaska Airlines compliant," Steven Franklin, a member of Diefenderfer's team, testified last fall at a grievance hearing over her transfer.

Franklin said that in 1997 he put up a poster at his desk quoting a former FAA administrator who said "the passenger is the customer, not the company."

He replaced it when someone took it down, and Livack, the FAA manager, removed that copy. In his testimony, Franklin singled out Livack and Phil Hoy, who supervised both Diefenderfer and himself.

"Mr. Hoy and Ms. Livack believe the company (Alaska Airlines) is the ultimate customer, and that everything we do is to make sure the customer is satisfied in order to make sure the customer is happy," Franklin said.

Another inspector, Lester Martin, testified that Hoy "was too much pro-Alaska and not hardly any pro-FAA."

To be sure, the FAA has hammered Alaska Airlines in some cases. Just last year, the airline agreed to pay a $338,000 penalty to settle a dispute over hydraulic systems on Boeing 737s.

"It we're talking such a kid gloves approach to the carrier, what would be the reason that we would have had such large penalties on maintenance cases?" Pearson said.

John Hubbard, the FAA's principal inspector overseeing Alaska's maintenance, acknowledged that others in the Seattle office have been pressured by management, but said he has not been.

"I've never felt that," he said in an interview. "I'm immune to pressure."

Indeed, Alaska's maintenance practices and record keeping are apparently the focus of the grand jury investigation.

But inspectors who have had trouble with the airline worked in operations. Much of their work focused on pilots -- particularly how they are trained and how they fly.

In many ways, Alaska Airlines places unusual demands on pilots, some of whom fly large jets into tiny fields at remote villages, contending with the worst weather and treacherous mountain terrain.

The fact that the Seattle-based airline retains an Alaskan in a parka on the tail of its jets is a powerful reminder of the airline's roots and its continued self-image. Inspectors say they hear a constant refrain when dealing with the airline: Things are different on the Last Frontier. Rules sometimes must bend to fit conditions.

Swanigan said Alaska faces unusual conditions -- gravel runways in some places and non-precision approaches to remote airfields -- situations other major carriers rarely face.

But he said safety is paramount, and noted that the Department of Defense, which does $28 million worth of business with Alaska annually, gave the carrier a perfect score after a weeklong safety inspection last fall.

"I lay awake nights thinking about safety," Swanigan said. "For us to bust an airplane is my worst nightmare."

Bob Lloyd, the FAA's principal operations inspector at Alaska in the early 1990s, said the airline reacted differently to FAA inspectors than did Pan American or People's Express, which he had previously regulated.

"Alaska, if it wasn't the way they did it, they didn't want to hear about it," he said. "It was awful."

And Seattle-based FAA managers approached their work with more of a sense of camaraderie with the airline than did those in New York and Miami. They "wanted to make sure Alaska was happy," he recalled.

After his boss told him to stop sending so many enforcement letters to Alaska, Lloyd transferred out of the Seattle office in 1993.

Pearson declined to characterize his office's relationship with Alaska, other than to say that "we make a practice of investigating any incidents, and reports of wrongdoing."

FAA managers can and do point to airline-irritating gaffes by undiplomatic inspectors when asked to justify transfers and punishment. But in at least one case, they never gave the inspector an opportunity to anger the airline.

Lester Martin succeeded Diefenderfer as Alaska's principal operations inspector -- and lasted just one day.

His only significant act that day in the summer of 1997 was to write letters to 10 Alaska captains, asking if they had received the flight checks Diefenderfer thought were lacking.

Phil Hoy stopped the letters from going out and made another staffer the acting chief, Martin testified at the arbitration hearing.

Back in the ranks, Martin lasted just a few more weeks as part of the Alaska inspection team. In October, 1997, Hoy approached him during the investigation of an Alaska captain who failed to log an aborted flight caused by a mechanical problem.

Hoy "said that I was too hard on Alaska," Martin testified. "That he thought it was best that I -- how did he phrase it -- 'My future would be better with Pro Air.'"

Martin is now principal operations inspector for Pro-Air, a 2-year-old Seattle-based carrier.

Pearson said he's offended by suggestions that Martin was shifted to Pro-Air as punishment.

"He was reassigned to Pro-Air because . . . he has experience in certificate management in (the airline) environment," Pearson said.

Inspectors don't question that Alaska is a safe operator.

"The best thing Alaska has going for it are its pilots -- they are excellent," Diefenderfer said. "That . . . is probably the reason Alaska has such a good (safety) record."

But neither do inspectors question that Alaska resists FAA oversight and flexes its muscles to get its way.

In part, that's what happened in the first half of 1997, when FAA inspectors questioned whether Alaska had failed to do proficiency checks for about 35 pilots. Inspectors also found that instructor pilots rarely recorded test results, though computer records showed that all had passed.

Swanigan said Alaska may have technically broken the rule, but that it complied with its spirit. He said paper forms didn't use the common name for the test, "line check," but that the test was being done.

The inspectors considered asking that Alaska be fined more than $400,000, Martin testified.

Alaska moved first, pulling the pilots out of service for testing.

On April 15, Hoy wrote Swanigan that he was in the "unenviable position" of having credible evidence of a violation.

"We believe this (the pre-emptive move) was a prudent decision inasmuch as a substantial civil penalty . . . typically results only when operations continue uncorrected after the issue has surfaced, as in this case," Hoy wrote.

He expressed regret for "the disruption and inconvenience this episode has caused Alaska Airlines."

The agency's managers and lawyers decided there wasn't enough evidence to justify a fine.

"There was clearly a difference between Phil Hoy, the supervisor, and the reporting inspector," said Pearson, the FAA administrator. " . . . Hoy didn't have the same certainty that it was a violation (or) that it was so aggravated that it should cost that size of a fine."

Hoy said he wasn't the only author.

"I coordinated very closely with Ms. Diefenderfer and others in the certificate management section," Hoy said. "Mary Rose thought it was a very good letter."

Efforts to gain additional evidence were squelched.

When inspector Jewett Gibson proposed sitting in on Alaska training sessions, Hoy said there would be no "clandestine" investigations and called Alaska management about the plan, Gibson testified.

"You can't say that they are doing something wrong if you don't have proof," he told the arbitrator. "The only way to get the proof is to sit in and see the training. I was never allowed to do that."

Frustrated with their supervisors, the inspectors went to the Transportation Department's inspector general, which is something like a police internal affairs unit. The inspectors complained about Alaska and about FAA managers. A spokesman for that office said the investigation is ongoing but declined comment.

Swanigan, the Alaska vice president, said investigators have told the airline it has been cleared of wrongdoing. He said his major complaint about the incident was that the FAA hadn't alerted the airline earlier. He said he told FAA officials: "If you see us do something that isn't right, you have to tell us."

Pearson said the issue was "thoroughly investigated, and it was determined that there was no violation that could be substantiated. Hundreds of hours went into that case . . . and it ultimately was assessed by our chief counsel."

The FAA was no tougher when it came to requiring special training for Alaska pilots landing in Reno, Nev.

Reno is in high desert, with mountains to the south and west. Wind shear and turbulence are common. Pilots there are required to have special training.

Reno Air has recurrent training for its pilots, said Greg Helleckson, that airline's director of flight operation, to help ensure pilots know what to do if they have a problem while landing and must go around and try again.

When Diefenderfer ordered Alaska to do the same in 1997, the airline objected, saying its training and flight experience in Juneau would suffice and that adding classes about Reno would cut into training on more difficult airports.

What raised eyebrows in Seattle and Washington, D.C., was that FAA managers here allowed Alaska to hold off on the training while it appealed.

Owen Dullaghan, a safety inspector then assigned to special projects at the FAA's Washington headquarters, had been involved in a congressional study of the Juneau airport.

At Diefenderfer's arbitration hearing he testified that Hoy had ordered her not to press the issue "and just accept the fact that Alaska Airlines had notified us in Washington that they wanted to appeal the process.

"Therefore, the procedure as outlined in the regulations was not being complied with," he said. "therefore, Alaska continued to operate in violation of an acknowledged safety issue."

Eventually, Alaska won: FAA officials in Washington decided not to require special training, said Pearson, the regional administrator.

"This matter was not brushed over," Pearson said. "The reason that the training that was already given was considered sufficient is because it is much more difficult in Juneau than in Reno. The procedure at Reno was not particularly complicated. It is unique to Reno, however."

 

In late June 1997, the FAA transferred Diefenderfer to a desk job.

Martin transferred out of Alaska inspections in October. So did Jewett Gibson, who testified he asked for a transfer because Swanigan, the Alaska vice president, "basically told me that he was going to have me fired using any means at his availability."

Swanigan says he never said that to Gibson, but yesterday he confirmed that in 1996 he wrote to the FAA asking that Gibson be transferred after the inspector argued with Alaska gate agents.

In 1997, Gibson faced a five-day suspension without pay after he was accused of peddling health care products as he was doing inspections.

But the pilots later told the FAA their statements were exaggerated, and one said Swanigan ordered him to report Gibson. Swanigan confirms he ordered the pilot to make a report.

"There is the appearance a regulated party is exerting undue influence into personnel matters of the FAA through actively seeking derogatory information from their employees against FAA inspectors assigned to the Alaska Airlines certificate," a security investigator wrote. Gibson's suspension was reduced to a reprimand.

Soon after Livack arrived in Seattle in the spring of 1997 to take over as the FAA's office manager, she met with supervisor Hoy and Swanigan.

Swanigan said the relationship between the FAA and Alaska was broken, Livack testified.

Swanigan recalls the meeting. But he said he was not unhappy with the inspectors. Rather, he wanted Diefenderfer to be promoted to supervise all the inspectors, eliminating a glitch in the FAA organization.

But Livack was so concerned about the relationship that she brought in a professional social worker to "facilitate" staff meetings aimed at improving communications.

Inspectors said the meetings seem more about haranguing Diefenderfer than improving interpersonal skills.

Alaska also threatened to pull out of a voluntary pilot training program that is a favorite of top FAA officials.

Since that exchange, the FAA has assigned a new principal inspector and has replaced three of the four inspection team members. Only Franklin remains in the group.

The new principal inspector is Dennis Harn, who heads what Alaska likes to call its "dream team" of inspectors, Swanigan said.

The inspectors have a wide range of technical knowledge and more resources and can respond faster to questions, Swanigan said.

Last fall Franklin testified that Alaska and FAA management seemed happy, and Livack and Hoy were pleased that Alaska's chief executive, John Kelly, "was happy with the way things were going."

"To me that's a red flag," he said.

 

P-I senior national correspondent Andrew Schneider can be reached at 206-448-8218 or andrewschneider@seattle-pi.com

P-I reporter Scott Sunde can be reached at 206-448-8331 or scottsunde@seattle-pi.com

http://www.fltstd.org/content/news/safety.htm

http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/local/mary05.shtml

 

Grounded by politics at the FAA

How safety inspector lost her dream job

Friday, March 5, 1999

By LISE OLSEN, ANDREW SCHNEIDER and SCOTT SUNDE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTERS

© 1999 Seattle Post-Intelligencer. All rights reserved.

As a farm kid in Pennsylvania, Mary Rose Diefenderfer dreamed of soaring in the clouds.

But today Diefenderfer, a former commercial pilot and aviation safety inspector, has seen her dreams grounded by the bloody politics of airline regulation.

Federal Aviation Administration managers in Seattle have twice removed her from her job policing Alaska Airlines. Each time, she was transferred after investigating Alaska for violating pilot training or certification rules.

The first time, in 1993, she won back her job. Now she's stuck in a desk job, answering questions for safety inspectors who are doing what she wants to do.

Like many of the FAA's 3,000 safety inspectors nationwide, she is a zealot for following rules because she knows why the rules are there.

MARGIN FOR ERROR See also: Safety last, FAA inspectors complain Other stories in this series.

"I have the nightmares that most inspectors have -- the smoking, charred hole in the ground, twisted metal, body bags filled with unrecognizable corpses, the loved ones grieving," she said. "This is what it's all about. This is what we're supposed to prevent. This is our job."

Her current job "is like dying a slow death. I want to be out there on the safety line again," she said.

Her last chance rests with a pending lawsuit, and with breaking the FAA's bureaucratic code of silence.

"I really kept hoping that the FAA would realize that there are some valid safety concerns out there, that its inspectors were doing their jobs properly," she said. "But it has become political, too much of appeasing the carrier at all cost. I don't think the FAA will change until the public and Congress make it change."

Diefenderfer learned about FAA politics on the job as the agency's principal operations inspector at Alaska Airlines between 1993 and 1997.

She and her three-member team focused on the way Alaska ran the airline, trained its pilots and, in large part, how those pilots flew. She said the job required a firm hand to tame a "bush pilot attitude."

"They had what I considered to be a frontier mentality: 'Do what you want, get the job done and worry about the consequences later.'"

In one case, the airline's newsletter lauded a resourceful pilot who discovered that a Siberian airport lacked de-icing fluid and used a more plentiful ice melter on his plane's wings. It had to caution pilots against the practice after the FAA pointed out that vodka isn't an approved substitute and is quite flammable.

The job became difficult when she confronted Alaska employees about bending, ignoring and breaking rules. It became impossible when her bosses backed the airline over her and her inspectors.

When she was removed from her job, Diefenderfer and her inspectors were finishing an investigation of improper pilot testing and alleged falsification of records. Her team recommended a big fine.

But Diefenderfer's bosses rejected that suggestion. Instead, one of her supervisors wrote an apologetic letter to the airline in April.

In June, the FAA transferred her.

Diefenderfer, 43, doesn't come across as a troublemaker. She's a friendly woman, quick to smile. Perhaps because she's spent so much time doing what she loves.

She learned to fly a plane before she learned to drive a car.

Her dad, a private pilot and state senator back in Hazelton, Pa., helped her get her glider pilot's certificate at a small airfield near her family's farm when she was only 14.

Her love of flying led her to Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla., where she earned a bachelor's degree in aeronautical sciences in 1975 -- one of few women among 2,000 men.

At 22, she became one of Texas International Airlines' first female pilots. That was 1978, and the reception wasn't always good. A man once refused to fly on her plane after seeing her in the cockpit. Some male pilots were uneasy at first, but several became close friends -- including the one she married.

"I loved almost every minute of it, even the crazy schedules," she said. "It's a wonderful, exciting world up there, and for me, it's impossible not to love flying."

Then the airline industry hit turbulence: strikes, furloughs and bankruptcies. Texas International was swallowed by Continental.

In 1988, she took a pay cut for what she thought would be the security of a government job.

Both she and her husband, Glenn, work for the FAA. In 1993 she was promoted to principal operations inspector for Alaska Airlines, overseeing the carrier's operations from Siberia to Mexico. Her style was to push for changes to make things safer, rather than recommending fines.

That approach made her "easy to work with," said Lew Richardson, an Alaska pilot and longtime Air Line Pilots Association safety representative.

"It worked to her benefit and to our benefit," he said. "Then we could get the (pilots) to come forward and say that they did this, and let everyone else know and make it safer for everybody."

Diefenderfer's first confrontation with Alaska and FAA management came in 1993 when a pilot became lost over Russian airspace, and it wasn't just any pilot. It was Alaska's then-Vice President of Operations Thomas Cufley, himself a former FAA official and a friend of her boss.

Alaska trained pilots to fly the now-suspended Russian route, but Diefenderfer found that Cufley and other pilots routinely missed the classes. They signed attendance lists in the airline's files, but their names were not on the originals kept by instructors. Eventually, several pilots confessed to altering records, and five were stripped of their captain's papers. Cufley resigned from management, but still flies for Alaska.

But Diefenderfer said she also was punished: transferred to another job without warning or an adequate explanation. She was reinstated two months later, after she filed a complaint.

The tension grew as Diefenderfer and the airline clashed over safety at Juneau International Airport. The capital city airport is a pilot's nightmare: mountains on three sides, a runway parallel to a fjord and frequent high winds. Congress ordered a study of the airport in 1992 after a National Guard plane crashed in the Chilkat Mountains there, killing eight.

That 1996 report singled out an FAA-approved eastward departure as a particular problem. It requires pilots to take off into a box canyon, veer toward a mountain, then turn more than 180 degrees.

In a Seattle flight simulator, Diefenderfer watched Alaska pilots try to make the departure with one engine out. Invariably, they would smack into the simulated mountain. She restricted the use of that departure for several months in 1996, forcing Alaska to cancel 25 percent to 30 percent of all flights out of Juneau.

Her stand was unpopular, but new methods and technology have since been adopted to increase the margin of safety in Juneau.

She believes the action that may have ended her career as Alaska's principal operations inspector began with an unusual flight taken by one of her inspectors in early 1997.

According to an FAA report, the inspector went along with an Alaska instructor pilot and a new captain taking a proficiency test that pilots call a "check ride." The new captain made errors and should have failed the test, but the instructor recorded no score and said he would continue training -- violating FAA requirements that all check rides must be recorded.

In April 1997, Alaska executives complained to Marlene Livack, who had recently become manager of the Seattle district office and one of Diefenderfer's bosses. They told Livack their relationship with the FAA's inspection team had deteriorated, and mentioned Diefenderfer by name.

"The constant conflicts in trying to get these safety issues resolved took its toll," she said. "There were months of sleepless nights. I'd lie awake wondering if I pushed too hard or didn't push hard enough."

In June 1997, her bosses pushed her out. They accused her of not being a team player -- of being abrasive, hostile in meetings and of ignoring the chain of command.

FAA officials declined comment, saying the agency forbids discussion of personnel matters.

Diefenderfer had written a memo two years earlier saying that her immediate supervisor, Phil Hoy, should be kept out of enforcement matters. Alaska, she wrote, needs to be told that Phil is "the administrative supervisor. All technical issues need to go to the principals (inspectors)."

In another e-mail she told Hoy she was the "technical supervisor of this section" and that she had the "background that you don't have."

And she had gone over the heads of all her supervisors by sending a letter to Alaska Chief Executive Officer John Kelly, asking about the status of her relationship with the airline and pointing out problems with Alaska personnel.

"I wrote the letter because I felt there were severe safety issues that he didn't know about. It's his airline. He's got to care," she said.

Still, her bosses didn't like the surprise.

Diefenderfer was barred from any further contact with Alaska, and was told not to take any records or even brief her successor. In January, an arbitrator ruled that FAA management had "legitimate business reasons" for her reassignment, partly due to her impolitic actions.

Two years have passed since Diefenderfer's battle with Alaska. Her suit to win reinstatement is on appeal, but she has grown discouraged.

She kept the same pay and rank when she was transferred, but her desk job often leaves her with nothing to do for days at a time. She says she stays on in hopes of clearing her name, but it may be a lost cause.

"I love the FAA, but in reality, I know that I don't have a future with the agency," she said. "Was it worth all the grief? I believe (the inspectors) probably saved some lives with our effort. So, sure, it was worth it."

Monday, January 25, 1999

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