American Airlines at odds with FAA over groundings

BY CHRISTOPHER CONKEY AND ANDY PASZTOR

AMR Corp.'s American Airlines and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration are at loggerheads over a safety-compliance issue that stranded 350,000 travelers in April, suggesting the two sides will have difficulty coming up with a solution to avoid another disruption.

Meanwhile, the FAA angered many airlines Friday by proposing rules that could strip carriers of some takeoff and landing slots at New York's airports and auction them off to competitors.

The Transportation Department released reports on Friday from American and the FAA on the safety-compliance dispute that led to thousands of flight cancellations during the second week of April. At the time, many lawmakers and other critics said the FAA had overreacted. The FAA said it was doing its job.

The two reports, along with a number of internal FAA documents, paint a more complex picture, offering a window into the often subjecrive world of safety compliance and a showdown between an airline and its regulator.

The dispute was over howAmerican complied with a 2006 safety directive to alleviate certain electricalwiring fire hazards on MD-80s, which carried a deadline of March 5. At the core of the dispute, though, is a question about something that may have occurred in early April: Did FAA officials give American assurances it could gradually complete the overdue wiring fixes without a schedule disruption, only to backtrack days later?

The FAA's report maintains that agency officials never implied or told American it would be given enough time to do the repairs without disrupting flight schedules. The airline argues that until the final few hours, local agency officials "expressed no objection" when American proposed a seven-day compliance deadline that would have avoided groundings. The airline's chronology said that before the impasse, local FAA officials even "expressed appreciation for American's prompt action."

The week of Apri16, local FAA officials in Fort Worth drafted a memo summarizing the issues and stressing the stakes. Under the heading "Political Considerations/Other Dynamics," the memo said American's problems "may generate even more controversy once it is known [the airline] is having to rework the same issues."

On April 7 and 8, inspections of 17 more planes in Dallas turned up more discrepancies. The FAA, according to its report, concluded that American repeatedly had failed "to demonstrate its ability to comply." American's version indicates that contrary to the earlier signals from the agency's local office, by the afternoon of Tuesday, April 8, the legal team at FAA headquarters explicitly warned that the agency "was prepared to take action to ground" the fleet unless American did so first.

In interviews Friday, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters and acting FAA Administrator Robert Sturgell said they have "no knowledge" of any earlier agreement between American and agency officials thatwould have avoided major schedule disruptions.

An American spokesman said the company still believes it was "in compliance with the intent" of the wiring directive and that repairs, as the company's report asserts, "could have been accomplished with minimal disruption to the public and with no adverse impact on safety."

The reports won't end the battle, because the FAA has at least three separate investigations into American's actions. The company may face a civil penalty for noncompliance.

The FAA hopes a government-industry committee will come up with ways to avoid a similar episode.