FBI talking to Alaska workers here

Query related to crash, interviewed mechanic says A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory

Wednesday, April 12, 2000

By PAUL SHUKOVSKY and TRACY JOHNSON
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTERS

FBI agents investigating Alaska Airlines maintenance practices in Oakland, Calif., have expanded the investigation to include work at the airline's Seattle base.

A San Francisco-based FBI agent yesterday interviewed Seattle-area Alaska mechanics. The agent has been a lead investigator for a Bay Area grand jury concerned with alleged falsification of maintenance records at Alaska's Oakland facility. The investigation was recently expanded to include circumstances surrounding the Jan. 31 crash of Alaska Flight 261.

 

THE CRASH OF FLIGHT 261 More coverage ...

The shift to Seattle means the FBI suspects crimes may have been committed here as well as in Oakland, federal criminal justice sources said.

FBI agents raided Alaska facilities, seizing records in both Oakland and SeaTac in December, 1998. Since then, the investigation and questioning of mechanics has occurred almost exclusively in California.

Alaska Airlines spokesman Greg Witter yesterday said he did not know about the FBI's presence in Seattle.

"We're cooperating fully with every federal agency and official, involving everything and anything having to do with the Flight 261 tragedy or the 1 1/2-year-old investigation of our Oakland (maintenance) facility," Witter said.

One mechanic who works in Alaska's maintenance hangar in Sea-Tac Airport said he was interviewed at length yesterday by an FBI agent.

"Everything we talked about was relevant to the crash," said the mechanic, who recounted the interview on the condition he would remain anonymous.

The mechanic, who has no first-hand knowledge of work on the MD-80 that crashed off the California coast, killing all 88 people on board, said he talked for more than two hours about a range of topics, including what he calls "the deterioration of maintenance" practices at Alaska. The company has lost experienced mechanics, and those remaining must battle pressure to cut corners on repairs, he said.

Meanwhile, the Federal Aviation Administration is conducting a so-called "white glove" inspection of Alaska Airlines, which began last week at in Seattle and Oakland. The 15-person team is looking at maintenance, paperwork procedures and other practices.

Problems at Alaska's Seattle maintenance hangar surfaced last month, when 64 mechanics claimed that their manager had forced them to cut corners on repairs. The mechanics, in a letter to company headquarters, alleged they had been told to put unserviceable parts back on planes. Ordering such action or doing so could constitute criminal violation of aviation regulations.

The company placed the manager, who denies any wrongdoing, on paid leave while they investigate. Airline officials also said they interviewed all 64 mechanics and none could cite a case where an unsafe plane was put into service.

The FAA has investigated allegations of improper maintenance practices in Oakland and has proposed a $44,000 fine against Alaska. It wants to revoke the mechanic's licenses of three maintenance supervisors.

The Oakland facility does much of the maintenance work on Alaska's fleet, including the last "heavy check" of the aircraft that crashed. That September 1997 check was to have included an inspection of the jackscrew, a device that moves a critical surface controlling pitch.

The jackscrew assembly has become a focus of the crash investigation. It was excessively worn and lacked grease in critical areas, the National Transportation Safety Board said.

P-I reporter Paul Shukovsky can be reached at 206-448-8072 or paulshukovsky@seattle-pi.com

Thursday, April 13, 2000, 11:57 p.m. Pacific


Alaska reassigns manager after 64 mechanics claim he sought to cut corners

by Steve Miletich
Seattle Times staff reporter

Alaska Airlines has demoted a top maintenance manager who was the subject of a letter in which 64 mechanics complained he had threatened and pressured them to cut corners.

The manager, Robert Falla, has been removed from overseeing Alaska's maintenance operations in Seattle and given a new job as company representative to a contractor that does maintenance work for the airline.

Alaska spokesman Greg Witter would not characterize the move as a demotion, saying Falla had been reassigned to a position in which he has expertise.

But Witter did say the change shifts Falla from supervising several hundred mechanics to a nonsupervisory job.

A source familiar with the matter said Falla will remain at his current salary.

Falla, who has been on paid leave since the letter was delivered to Alaska last month, is to return to work next week.

Witter said he couldn't discuss the reasons for moving Falla pending release within the next two weeks of a company analysis and summary of the letter's allegations.

But Witter stressed that a preliminary inquiry by Alaska and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) into the letter showed no unsafe planes were released.

Alaska Chief Executive John Kelly previously suggested Falla's management style was behind the letter. Several Alaska mechanics interviewed by The Seattle Times said that's not the issue and neither is whether planes were released in proper condition.

They said it was about practices in which mechanics and inspectors prevailed on safety matters only after heated arguments with Falla and supervisors. Those matters included efforts to install worn parts, the mechanics said.

One Alaska mechanic said he was questioned yesterday by an FBI agent and investigator for the federal Department of Transportation's inspector general, wanting to know if the FAA's report on his statement about the letter was accurate.

The mechanic said he told them the report showed he had simply answered no when asked whether unsafe planes were released, but didn't contain his full answers about the difficulty of doing work properly.

"Where I elaborated and mentioned specific things, none of that was recorded," the mechanic said.

Falla couldn't be reached for comment, but his attorney, Scott Engelhard, said, "There has been no finding of any wrongdoing by Mr. Falla, and he has accepted an available position that we do not believe is a demotion."

The mechanics' letter came as the airline found itself under scrutiny after the crash of Alaska Flight 261, in which all 88 passengers and crew were killed off the Southern California coast Jan. 31.

The airline's maintenance practices are being closely examined by the National Transportation Safety Board, which is looking into the cause of the crash, as well as by the FBI and the inspector general, which are conducting a separate criminal investigation.

Falla had no oversight of the Alaska MD-83 that crashed.

The mechanics' letter stemmed from longstanding complaints about Falla and was triggered by disputes with him over a recent repair to the horizontal stabilizer and jackscrew on an Alaska MD-80 - the same type of plane and parts that are a focus of the fatal crash.

Alaska responded by assembling an outside team of experts to review all of its operations; beginning a search for a new vice president of safety, and establishing an employee hotline to report safety concerns.



Copyright © 2000 The Seattle Times Company
The Associated Press
S E A T T L E, April 13 — Federal Aviation Administration oversight of Alaska Airlines has come under scrutiny in an investigation into the crash of Flight 261 and the company’s maintenance operations, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported today.
    Citing unnamed criminal justice and aviation industry sources, the newspaper’s copyright article said that aspect of the probe appeared to be in a preliminary stage.
     “The question right now is how broad is it [the investigation] going to be,” a federal source was quoted as saying. “Is FAA in bed with Alaska?”
     The question for investigators is whether the company encouraged criminally wrong maintenance practices that were allowed or ignored by the FAA.

Pressure to Cut Corners Cited
In a related development, The Seattle Times reported today that a top Alaska Airlines maintenance manager, the subject of a letter by 64 mechanics who wrote that he threatened and pressured them to cut corners, has been reassigned.
     Robert Falla, previously the supervisor for several hundred mechanics as overseer of maintenance operations in Seattle, is being moved next week to a non-supervisory job as company representative to a maintenance contractor, Alaska Airlines spokesman Greg Witter said.
     Falla was placed on paid leave after the letter was delivered to Alaska Airlines management last month. Witter said a preliminary inquiry by the FAA and the company showed no unsafe planes were released for service. He also denied that Falla’s reassignment was a demotion.
     Company and FAA officials told the Post-Intelligencer they did not know about the FAA coming under FBI scrutiny in the investigation, which stems partly from the crash in which 88 people died on Jan. 31.
     “We have no information of any kind of investigation into FAA oversight of Alaska by the FBI,” said Mitch Barker, an FAA spokesman in Renton.
     Any accusations of an improper relationship between the company and the regulatory agency are “baseless,” Witter said.
     “People who choose to hide behind the cloak of anonymity when making such serious charges need to be asked what their real agenda is, because it clearly has nothing to do with safety or the truth,” Witter said.

Reg Enforcement Allegedly Penalized
The Alaska Airlines maintenance probe dates back to at least December 1998, when federal investigators seized company records in Seattle and at its maintenance hangar in Oakland, Calif.
     The grand jury investigation was later expanded to cover the circumstances around the crash, and this week FBI agents interviewed some Alaska Airlines mechanics who work in Seattle.
     In interviews published by the Post-Intelligencer last year, some FAA inspectors assigned to Alaska Airlines said they were penalized by supervisors when they were strict in enforcing federal regulations, sometimes being reassigned to other jobs after airline managers or pilots complained about them.
     One inspector, Lester Martin, was the FAA’s principal overseer of Alaska Airlines operations for a total of one day in 1997.
     Testifying in a later arbitration hearing, Martin said that his only act on that day was to write letter asking whether 10 Alaska Airlines pilots had received flight checks as required.
     A supervisor prevented the letters from being sent and replaced Martin with another FAA staffer as acting chief overseer, Martin said.
     He testified that after a few more weeks of work on the FAA’s Alaska Airlines team, he was told by a supervisor “that I was too hard on Alaska ... I — how did he phrase it? — ‘My future would be better with [another airline].’”
     The Seattle Times quoted an unnamed mechanic as saying an FBI agent and investigator for the Transportation Department’s inspector general asked him whether an FAA report on his statement about the letter was accurate.
     The mechanic said he replied that the report indicated he merely answered no when asked whether unsafe planes were released, rather than including his complaints that Falla had made it difficult to meet safety requirements.
     “Where I elaborated and mentioned specific things, none of that was recorded,” the mechanic said.

     Alaska CEO announces remedial initiatives

Copyright 2000 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Seattle Post: Feds should expedite probe of FAA oversight

Source; http://www.seattlep-i.com/opinion/faaed1.shtml

   Investigators examining Alaska Airlines' maintenance operations have made a prudent move in broadening that investigation to include an examination of the nature of the Federal Aviation Administration's oversight of the airline. The FAA is paid to be a public watchdog not an
airline lapdog.

   Yet disturbing reports from FAA field investigators, published in this newspaper a year ago, raised questions about how thorough the FAA is in its policing work at Alaska. Some of them alleged that their superiors hampered their efforts to enforce safety regulations and punished them if they did so.

   Last Thursday, the Post-Intelligencer disclosed in a copyrighted story that a preliminary investigation is under way to determine if a full-fledged examination of the FAA's relationship with Alaska is warranted. The aim is to learn if Alaska encouraged criminally improper maintenance practices that were either sanctioned by or ignored by the FAA. An Alaska spokesman dismissed as "baseless' any allegations of an improper relationship between the airline and its regulator.

   An FAA spokesman said officials at that agency know nothing about any such investigation. If FAA officials did condone improper maintenance by Alaska, it must be dealt with quickly. The grand jury seated in San Francisco since 1988 to investigate Alaska's maintenance procedures must insist on a thorough examination of FAA's behavior.
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