redtail
22nd Nov 2001, 17:28
Safety fears raised over jet repairs
Tuesday, February 23, 1999
By ANDREW SCHNEIDER, LISE OLSEN and SCOTT SUNDE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTERS
EVERETT -- Federal aviation safety inspectors, warning of dangerously incompetent work on many jetliners, last summer recommended closing Tramco, North America's largest independent aircraft repair station.
In July, a Federal Aviation Administration inspector at the sprawling Tramco plant warned of "a disaster waiting to happen" because of problems at the Paine Field operation, which worked on 421 planes last year.
FAA inspectors also wrote agency lawyers that Tramco's "violations raise significant concerns for safety and clearly raise the potential of a catastrophic failure leading to a crash."
But their bosses ruled against pulling the company's FAA license.
"We felt it was more appropriate to use other means of dealing with this issue," said FAA spokesman Mitch Barker. "We increased our surveillance at Tramco . . . and that continues."
So do problems at Tramco.
Just last month, FAA inspectors found serious flaws in Tramco's work on a United Airlines jet's control cables.
But a Tramco executive and a lawyer representing the company bristled yesterday at suggestions the company has anything but a sterling record.
"The company has an outstanding safety record," said Kenneth Quinn, Tramco's Washington, D.C., lawyer. "It's never been involved in any major incident or accident in its history."
Bill Ashworth, a Tramco vice president for maintenance, quality and engineering, said, "We're dedicated to safety -- absolutely dedicated to safety beyond anything else."
Yet FAA scrutiny has prompted changes at Tramco, which has tightened its quality assurance program and will launch an immediate "top to bottom" audit of its operations, Quinn said.
Today an eight-member independent team of auditors is expected to begin a review of repair work by Tramco mechanics and to survey how its customers and the FAA evaluate the work.
The company routinely has outside audits, but Ashworth said this enhanced review is both to ensure Tramco isn't "missing something" and as a response to questions from the Post-Intelligencer.
The station was renamed BFGoodrich Aerospace MRO Group Inc. in August to reflect the name of its parent company. But most of those who work there still use its original name, Tramco.
Working in three massive hangars at Paine Field, Tramco's 2,300 workers perform repairs, heavy maintenance, modifications and inspections on jets owned by dozens of passenger carriers such as United, Northwest, Continental and Southwest.
The company also maintains cargo planes for United Parcel Service and Federal Express. In addition, it refits and customizes planes for clients such as the Seattle SuperSonics and the president of Kazakstan.
Southwest, the airline with the nation's best safety record, expresses continued confidence in Tramco, which it has used for two decades.
But at least two airlines -- America West and Frontier -- stopped using Tramco last year. Both had trouble with planes Tramco mechanics returned to service with lingering mechanical problems.
Tramco said quality concerns had nothing to do with the decisions of America West and Frontier.
Pierre Michel, the FAA's principal maintenance inspector for Tramco, ran a one-man operation there until last summer. Since then, four other inspectors were added to his staff, which is still just a third of the dozen he and his colleagues have requested. Michel and all other FAA officials contacted for this article declined comment and referred all questions to Barker, the regional spokesman.
Understaffed as they are, Michel and his team have filled filing cabinets and computer files with documentation of safety problems.
Tramco executives say the FAA has overstated the severity of the violations and that "all problems cited have been addressed and resolved."
Tramco paid four penalties to the FAA in the summer of 1998. But they were all small, ranging from $1,100 to $13,200, the FAA's Barker said.
But Barker also said the books are still open.
"Some of the violations have been closed (resolved) but there are 15 that are still being actively pursued," he said.
Several hundred pages of FAA documents, inspection reports, internal correspondence and Tramco documents obtained or reviewed by the Post-Intelligencer show a lengthy and continuing record of mechanical, training and equipment violations committed by Tramco workers and apparently overlooked by the company's safety inspectors.
Among the violations in the past three years:
A Frontier 737 was sent back into service with lose and insecure couplings in its fuel tank. The plane made 43 flights before the trouble was spotted in June 1998. Had the couplings separated, fuel could have pumped into the wing, where it would leak out, posing a fire or explosion risk.
A United 727 was released for service by Tramco with its flight control column -- which is comparable to a car's steering column -- improperly rigged 4 1/2 inches out of position. A United crew found the problem in February 1998 during a preflight inspection. Had it not been caught, the pilot might have experienced stiff control or a false impression of how the aircraft was moving during flight.
A Northwest 727 was released by Tramco and flown with Vise Grip locking pliers securing an equipment cooling fan in March 1998. Had the pliers come loose, critical equipment could have overheated and failed.
Between 1988 and 1994, Tramco repaired the aluminum "skin" of 10 Boeing 737 ailerons, a part of the wing that helps the pilot bank or turn the aircraft. The repairs were not done in accord with Boeing standards, and ailerons on planes flown by Casino Express and South Africa Airways came apart in flight.
Loss of an aileron during high-speed flight could cause violent vibrations that could overstress other flight surfaces, causing them to fail. Tramco executive Ashworth said the problem is the only instance in which the FAA told the company of a safety problem.
A Frontier 737 was cleared for operation with a leaking engine pressure ratio system, which measures engine performance. Because of this, one flight had a problem which the crew handled and another flight was aborted. The date of the incident was not available yesterday.
A Southwest 737 was returned to service with a rudder power control unit improperly reassembled in December 1996. It malfunctioned during a test after making a few flights. Failure of the same unit, which moves the rudder to make the plane turn, is suspected in the fatal crashes of a USAir 737 in Pittsburgh and a United 737 in Colorado Springs. Neither plane has been identified as having been worked on at Tramco.
A Federal Express 737 was released for service with bolts holding an elevator lose or missing. The elevator is a part of the tail that helps regulate airspeed and rate of climb or descent. The date of the incident was unavailable yesterday.
"The No. 1 primary concern is that Tramco will directly or indirectly cause a major airplane accident by returning an airplane or airplane component to service in an unsafe, unairworthy condition," regional aviation safety inspector William Blake wrote in an August briefing paper to Brad Pearson, flight standards division manager for the FAA's Northwest Mountain Region.
The Post-Intelligencer retained William Becker, a certified aircraft appraiser and expert witness on aircraft safety issues, to review FAA and Tramco documents.
"A lot of that stuff is scary, and with 57 years in the business I don't scare easily," Becker said. "Almost every case, issue or incident could have been elevated to rather remarkable proportions."
Many of the problems should have been glaringly obvious and should have easily been caught by mechanics or inspectors, Becker said.
A Colorado-based aviation consultant who also has worked with Tramco disagreed. Michael Boyd, president of the Boyd Group, an aviation research firm, said it's inevitable that some things will be missed when a plane is taken apart.
"I would caution against saying Tramco does sloppy work on the basis that these things are found," he said. "It doesn't mean that it's excusable . . . but knowing Tramco's reputation, I would probably err on the side of (trusting) Tramco and not the FAA."
In correspondence to the FAA, Tramco disputes the accuracy of several of the violations, denying some outright and saying others caused no damage or unsafe conditions.
The Tramco officials said the company didn't even know that Michel had recommended taking away the certification.
"They never did bring up the certification case. That ought to be telling you that no one was apparently pursuing this case," said Quinn, Tramco's lawyer.
In fact, FAA documents show repeated warnings to Tramco that the company lacks key management people with experience in maintaining planes flown by major air carriers. Ashworth is one of the Tramco officials whose qualifications have been questioned.
Quinn maintains that top FAA administrators don't agree with Michel's interpretation of the regulations as requiring such experience.
The FAA also has faulted Tramco's policy of paying bonuses or other incentives to quality control inspectors who meet production schedules. They say this system means the inspectors are not free from corporate pressure to keep an aircraft from being returned to flight service.
Ashworth said Tramco does not cut corners and is "by far the most expensive company in this industry."
He and Quinn said the company's quality assurance program is based on FAA research and has won plaudits from government and industry.
Still, they admit that mistakes can be made. "Anytime you have human beings touching an aircraft it is possible that they do it incorrectly," Quinn said.
In the past decade, Tramco has expanded its hangar space and tripled its staff to meet growing demand from airlines that increasingly have contracted with third-party repair stations to do major maintenance. The number of planes it services each year has nearly doubled since 1994.
But Tramco may have grown too fast, said Becker, the Post-Intelligencer's consultant.
"Tramco had the opportunity to take on more business than they can handle at the time they were losing their most experienced personnel," said Becker. "That has to be a root cause, but it's not an excuse. There is no excuse."
Competition for experienced aircraft workers is also intense when Boeing is flush with orders, said Steven Calvo, a Seattle-based senior evaluator of transportation issues for Congress' General Accounting Office.
"In the past, Tramco has had a problem when Boeing is doing very well," Calvo said. "Tramco will lose a lot of experienced people because Boeing pays more. The loss of this experience could explain why they are having what appears to be a quality control problem."
Ashworth acknowledged that turnover was a problem three years ago, when Boeing hired Tramco workers away to jobs that pay $5 an hour more, but said turnover has fallen since then and many former employees who face layoffs at Boeing are returning.
Many of the FAA's concerns appear to center on cost cutting.
The agency faulted Tramco for removing the floorboards and changing primary flight instruments and an auto-pilot component during a test flight of a FedEx 727. The FAA said these actions made the aircraft "unairworthy."
In a letter to Tramco top management, FAA inspector Michel wrote, "Your quality control manager complained about the requirements of multiple test flights and the impact of higher costs to your customers."
In another instance, an FAA inspector checking Tramco's inspection of a UPS 757's landing gear found dirt and grime covering the gear surfaces "in such a condition that it couldn't have been inspected properly."
Michel wrote Tramco that when he discussed with the Tramco inspection crew chief the need to clean the gear before making a proper inspection, the man "expressed his concern on how he was going account for this additional expense and the amount of man-hours this was going to take."
In a letter to Marlene Livack, the FAA's Seattle Flight Standards district office manager, Ashworth disputed Michel's allegations. He said Michel "obviously misinterpreted" Tramco's manager of quality control and its chief inspector.
Ashworth said yesterday the company's quality assurance program, which went into effect in the second quarter of 1997, did need improvements and has received them because of FAA oversight.
Quinn refused to publicly speculate on Michel's actions or to criticize him. But he said there seemed to be a "disconnect" between how local inspectors enforce rules and how FAA headquarters believe they should be enforced. The local inspectors tend to view the regulations as "gospel, which it's not," Quinn said.
Concerns about safety at Tramco cannot be blamed on misunderstandings or on FAA inspectors failing to do their duty.
"We have worked with Michel in the past and found him to be very professional and very knowledgeable about the working of repair stations and there is no reason to doubt the concerns he's raised," said Calvo, of the GAO.
It's not as clear, however, that FAA managers back up those inspectors.
There are scores of examples of FAA safety inspectors around the nation being criticized, ostracized or even demoted and fired for tenacity in doing their jobs. These tales often surface at congressional hearings convened after air disasters.
The agency also faces regular criticism for ignoring problems because its mandate is to promote the interests of the aviation industry as well as to regulate it.
Quinn, who was chief counsel for the FAA before he left government, confirmed that the agency's criticism of Tramco came at a time when Ashworth was being considered for a top safety job at the FAA's Washington headquarters.
But he said the possible appointment garnered no special treatment for Tramco.
FAA documents indicate that at least one senior supervisor and a manager in Seattle's flight standards office cooled efforts to crank up the heat to bring Tramco into compliance.
Instead of acting on a recommendation to pull Tramco's certificate last year, Livack, the FAA manager, called for special meetings with the company to resolve the issues.
In this case, the FAA "categorically denies" that Livack was soft on Tramco.
"In fact, she spearheaded the increased efforts to get the company to comply," said Barker, the FAA spokesman.
But changes Tramco promised in August don't seem be reducing the number and severity of problems.
In December, a 737 used to shuttle Arco Supreme oil field workers to Alaska's North Slope went through a Tramco D-check, the most detailed maintenance and inspection sequence required by the FAA and Boeing.
The aircraft was held for two or three extra days as Tramco mechanics tried to correct a problem with an elevator, said Jack Evans, manager of corporate communication for Alaska Airlines, which has the maintenance contract for Arco's two planes.
Tramco declared the aircraft was OK. It then made two round trips carrying oil field workers between Anchorage and the North Slope.
On the second flight, pilots experienced slight problems with the way the elevators were responding. The plane was flown back to Seattle, where Alaska Airlines mechanics found two of the elevator control cables improperly connected, said Evans.
Ashworth said he believes the problem must have occurred after the plane left his plant.
Last Friday Alaska Airlines maintenance managers met with their counterparts at Tramco to discuss the elevator problem. Ashworth would say little about the meeting.
In January, FAA inspectors found another serious mechanical problem, this time with a United 727 that had been repaired at Tramco. The plane's improperly rigged control cables were rubbing against another component and one cable was nearly worn through. Had it parted, the pilot could have had difficulty controlling the plane.
In December 1995, America West joined a national trend among air carriers by laying off hundreds of its own mechanics and contracting out heavy maintenance to Tramco.
But in 1998, America West "decided to move our maintenance," said Frank Tucci, vice president of maintenance and engineering. "We have pulled out."
Tucci would not say specifically why America West dropped Tramco. "I can't take a chance on lawsuits," he said.
Before it dropped Tramco, at least two planes were returned to America West with problems that Tramco had not fixed -- both incidents that helped prompt FAA inspector Michel's recommendation to revoke certification.
In July, America West was forced to pay an unprecedented $2.5 million civil settlement by the FAA because of a wide range of issues that included maintenance and operations problems between 1996 and mid-1998, said Bill Shumann,{8cq an FAA spokesman in Washington, D.C. America West had its own mechanics during that period, but used Tramco for heavy maintenance.
The government specifically faulted the airlines' oversight of third-party maintenance providers, including Tramco. To avoid paying an additional $2.5 million, the airline agreed to conditions that include correcting "oversight of contract maintenance and performance of maintenance."
Shumann said that in many cases the fine had "nothing to do with the quality of the contract maintenance."
Frontier Airlines, a small Denver-based carrier, also stopped using Tramco several months ago, after discovering fuel line problems in two planes. One plane made more than 40 flights before Frontier's own inspectors discovered lose and unsecured couplings in a fuel tank.
Frontier spokeswoman Elise Eberwein said the airline was already planning to hire more mechanics and do its own overhauls when it dropped Tramco last year. She would not say if Frontier stopped using Tramco sooner than planned because of maintenance problems.
"That's an issue between Tramco and the FAA," she said. "We're not going to comment publicly . . . we don't fly planes that aren't airworthy."
Tramco officials say that they couldn't reach an acceptable contract with America West and that Frontier simply found a cheaper third-party shop.
"No carrier or customer has expressed safety or quality control concerns in context of a contract termination," Quinn said.
Other air carriers said their confidence in Tramco remains unshaken, although they have had problems with the Everett repair station.
Tim Logan, Northwest's director of flight safety, described problems his airline has had with Tramco as a "reliability issue."
Planes were "not meeting our requirements coming out of maintenance," he said.
But Northwest spokesman Jon Austin said the airline will continue to send planes to Tramco.
"These incidents in our judgment were reliability rather than safety issues, but nonetheless ones we take seriously. We consider them anomalous when compared with the relationship we have had with Tramco," Austin said.
UPS spokesman Mark Dickens said the company retains an eight-person quality control team to oversee maintenance in Everett, and is "very happy with Tramco."
"To me it sounds like at this point that the FAA inspector on site there is doing his job, there are checks and balances and the process that's established is working," he said.
And at Southwest Airlines, which has used Tramco for heavy maintenance of its fleet for 20 years, spokeswoman Christine Tureabe said, "We're confident in their abilities."
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Facts on Tramco
Business: North America's largest company doing maintenance, repair and modification of heavy aircraft owned by others.
Location: Everett's Paine Field.
Employees: About 2,300, including 1,600 mechanics.
Facilities: Three major hangars, including one built in 1993 to house four Boeing 747s at one time.
Major clients: United Airlines, Southwest Airlines, America West, United Parcel Service, Northwest Airlines, Federal Express, Continental Airlines.
History: Founded 1970 by Ron Crockett and Bob Trimble. Sold 1988 to Ohio-based BFGoodrich Aerospace. Has experienced rapid growth in business and has expanded to meet demand, doubling its aircraft repair capacity in 1989 and again in 1993.
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http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/local/tram23.shtml
Tuesday, February 23, 1999
By ANDREW SCHNEIDER, LISE OLSEN and SCOTT SUNDE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTERS
EVERETT -- Federal aviation safety inspectors, warning of dangerously incompetent work on many jetliners, last summer recommended closing Tramco, North America's largest independent aircraft repair station.
In July, a Federal Aviation Administration inspector at the sprawling Tramco plant warned of "a disaster waiting to happen" because of problems at the Paine Field operation, which worked on 421 planes last year.
FAA inspectors also wrote agency lawyers that Tramco's "violations raise significant concerns for safety and clearly raise the potential of a catastrophic failure leading to a crash."
But their bosses ruled against pulling the company's FAA license.
"We felt it was more appropriate to use other means of dealing with this issue," said FAA spokesman Mitch Barker. "We increased our surveillance at Tramco . . . and that continues."
So do problems at Tramco.
Just last month, FAA inspectors found serious flaws in Tramco's work on a United Airlines jet's control cables.
But a Tramco executive and a lawyer representing the company bristled yesterday at suggestions the company has anything but a sterling record.
"The company has an outstanding safety record," said Kenneth Quinn, Tramco's Washington, D.C., lawyer. "It's never been involved in any major incident or accident in its history."
Bill Ashworth, a Tramco vice president for maintenance, quality and engineering, said, "We're dedicated to safety -- absolutely dedicated to safety beyond anything else."
Yet FAA scrutiny has prompted changes at Tramco, which has tightened its quality assurance program and will launch an immediate "top to bottom" audit of its operations, Quinn said.
Today an eight-member independent team of auditors is expected to begin a review of repair work by Tramco mechanics and to survey how its customers and the FAA evaluate the work.
The company routinely has outside audits, but Ashworth said this enhanced review is both to ensure Tramco isn't "missing something" and as a response to questions from the Post-Intelligencer.
The station was renamed BFGoodrich Aerospace MRO Group Inc. in August to reflect the name of its parent company. But most of those who work there still use its original name, Tramco.
Working in three massive hangars at Paine Field, Tramco's 2,300 workers perform repairs, heavy maintenance, modifications and inspections on jets owned by dozens of passenger carriers such as United, Northwest, Continental and Southwest.
The company also maintains cargo planes for United Parcel Service and Federal Express. In addition, it refits and customizes planes for clients such as the Seattle SuperSonics and the president of Kazakstan.
Southwest, the airline with the nation's best safety record, expresses continued confidence in Tramco, which it has used for two decades.
But at least two airlines -- America West and Frontier -- stopped using Tramco last year. Both had trouble with planes Tramco mechanics returned to service with lingering mechanical problems.
Tramco said quality concerns had nothing to do with the decisions of America West and Frontier.
Pierre Michel, the FAA's principal maintenance inspector for Tramco, ran a one-man operation there until last summer. Since then, four other inspectors were added to his staff, which is still just a third of the dozen he and his colleagues have requested. Michel and all other FAA officials contacted for this article declined comment and referred all questions to Barker, the regional spokesman.
Understaffed as they are, Michel and his team have filled filing cabinets and computer files with documentation of safety problems.
Tramco executives say the FAA has overstated the severity of the violations and that "all problems cited have been addressed and resolved."
Tramco paid four penalties to the FAA in the summer of 1998. But they were all small, ranging from $1,100 to $13,200, the FAA's Barker said.
But Barker also said the books are still open.
"Some of the violations have been closed (resolved) but there are 15 that are still being actively pursued," he said.
Several hundred pages of FAA documents, inspection reports, internal correspondence and Tramco documents obtained or reviewed by the Post-Intelligencer show a lengthy and continuing record of mechanical, training and equipment violations committed by Tramco workers and apparently overlooked by the company's safety inspectors.
Among the violations in the past three years:
A Frontier 737 was sent back into service with lose and insecure couplings in its fuel tank. The plane made 43 flights before the trouble was spotted in June 1998. Had the couplings separated, fuel could have pumped into the wing, where it would leak out, posing a fire or explosion risk.
A United 727 was released for service by Tramco with its flight control column -- which is comparable to a car's steering column -- improperly rigged 4 1/2 inches out of position. A United crew found the problem in February 1998 during a preflight inspection. Had it not been caught, the pilot might have experienced stiff control or a false impression of how the aircraft was moving during flight.
A Northwest 727 was released by Tramco and flown with Vise Grip locking pliers securing an equipment cooling fan in March 1998. Had the pliers come loose, critical equipment could have overheated and failed.
Between 1988 and 1994, Tramco repaired the aluminum "skin" of 10 Boeing 737 ailerons, a part of the wing that helps the pilot bank or turn the aircraft. The repairs were not done in accord with Boeing standards, and ailerons on planes flown by Casino Express and South Africa Airways came apart in flight.
Loss of an aileron during high-speed flight could cause violent vibrations that could overstress other flight surfaces, causing them to fail. Tramco executive Ashworth said the problem is the only instance in which the FAA told the company of a safety problem.
A Frontier 737 was cleared for operation with a leaking engine pressure ratio system, which measures engine performance. Because of this, one flight had a problem which the crew handled and another flight was aborted. The date of the incident was not available yesterday.
A Southwest 737 was returned to service with a rudder power control unit improperly reassembled in December 1996. It malfunctioned during a test after making a few flights. Failure of the same unit, which moves the rudder to make the plane turn, is suspected in the fatal crashes of a USAir 737 in Pittsburgh and a United 737 in Colorado Springs. Neither plane has been identified as having been worked on at Tramco.
A Federal Express 737 was released for service with bolts holding an elevator lose or missing. The elevator is a part of the tail that helps regulate airspeed and rate of climb or descent. The date of the incident was unavailable yesterday.
"The No. 1 primary concern is that Tramco will directly or indirectly cause a major airplane accident by returning an airplane or airplane component to service in an unsafe, unairworthy condition," regional aviation safety inspector William Blake wrote in an August briefing paper to Brad Pearson, flight standards division manager for the FAA's Northwest Mountain Region.
The Post-Intelligencer retained William Becker, a certified aircraft appraiser and expert witness on aircraft safety issues, to review FAA and Tramco documents.
"A lot of that stuff is scary, and with 57 years in the business I don't scare easily," Becker said. "Almost every case, issue or incident could have been elevated to rather remarkable proportions."
Many of the problems should have been glaringly obvious and should have easily been caught by mechanics or inspectors, Becker said.
A Colorado-based aviation consultant who also has worked with Tramco disagreed. Michael Boyd, president of the Boyd Group, an aviation research firm, said it's inevitable that some things will be missed when a plane is taken apart.
"I would caution against saying Tramco does sloppy work on the basis that these things are found," he said. "It doesn't mean that it's excusable . . . but knowing Tramco's reputation, I would probably err on the side of (trusting) Tramco and not the FAA."
In correspondence to the FAA, Tramco disputes the accuracy of several of the violations, denying some outright and saying others caused no damage or unsafe conditions.
The Tramco officials said the company didn't even know that Michel had recommended taking away the certification.
"They never did bring up the certification case. That ought to be telling you that no one was apparently pursuing this case," said Quinn, Tramco's lawyer.
In fact, FAA documents show repeated warnings to Tramco that the company lacks key management people with experience in maintaining planes flown by major air carriers. Ashworth is one of the Tramco officials whose qualifications have been questioned.
Quinn maintains that top FAA administrators don't agree with Michel's interpretation of the regulations as requiring such experience.
The FAA also has faulted Tramco's policy of paying bonuses or other incentives to quality control inspectors who meet production schedules. They say this system means the inspectors are not free from corporate pressure to keep an aircraft from being returned to flight service.
Ashworth said Tramco does not cut corners and is "by far the most expensive company in this industry."
He and Quinn said the company's quality assurance program is based on FAA research and has won plaudits from government and industry.
Still, they admit that mistakes can be made. "Anytime you have human beings touching an aircraft it is possible that they do it incorrectly," Quinn said.
In the past decade, Tramco has expanded its hangar space and tripled its staff to meet growing demand from airlines that increasingly have contracted with third-party repair stations to do major maintenance. The number of planes it services each year has nearly doubled since 1994.
But Tramco may have grown too fast, said Becker, the Post-Intelligencer's consultant.
"Tramco had the opportunity to take on more business than they can handle at the time they were losing their most experienced personnel," said Becker. "That has to be a root cause, but it's not an excuse. There is no excuse."
Competition for experienced aircraft workers is also intense when Boeing is flush with orders, said Steven Calvo, a Seattle-based senior evaluator of transportation issues for Congress' General Accounting Office.
"In the past, Tramco has had a problem when Boeing is doing very well," Calvo said. "Tramco will lose a lot of experienced people because Boeing pays more. The loss of this experience could explain why they are having what appears to be a quality control problem."
Ashworth acknowledged that turnover was a problem three years ago, when Boeing hired Tramco workers away to jobs that pay $5 an hour more, but said turnover has fallen since then and many former employees who face layoffs at Boeing are returning.
Many of the FAA's concerns appear to center on cost cutting.
The agency faulted Tramco for removing the floorboards and changing primary flight instruments and an auto-pilot component during a test flight of a FedEx 727. The FAA said these actions made the aircraft "unairworthy."
In a letter to Tramco top management, FAA inspector Michel wrote, "Your quality control manager complained about the requirements of multiple test flights and the impact of higher costs to your customers."
In another instance, an FAA inspector checking Tramco's inspection of a UPS 757's landing gear found dirt and grime covering the gear surfaces "in such a condition that it couldn't have been inspected properly."
Michel wrote Tramco that when he discussed with the Tramco inspection crew chief the need to clean the gear before making a proper inspection, the man "expressed his concern on how he was going account for this additional expense and the amount of man-hours this was going to take."
In a letter to Marlene Livack, the FAA's Seattle Flight Standards district office manager, Ashworth disputed Michel's allegations. He said Michel "obviously misinterpreted" Tramco's manager of quality control and its chief inspector.
Ashworth said yesterday the company's quality assurance program, which went into effect in the second quarter of 1997, did need improvements and has received them because of FAA oversight.
Quinn refused to publicly speculate on Michel's actions or to criticize him. But he said there seemed to be a "disconnect" between how local inspectors enforce rules and how FAA headquarters believe they should be enforced. The local inspectors tend to view the regulations as "gospel, which it's not," Quinn said.
Concerns about safety at Tramco cannot be blamed on misunderstandings or on FAA inspectors failing to do their duty.
"We have worked with Michel in the past and found him to be very professional and very knowledgeable about the working of repair stations and there is no reason to doubt the concerns he's raised," said Calvo, of the GAO.
It's not as clear, however, that FAA managers back up those inspectors.
There are scores of examples of FAA safety inspectors around the nation being criticized, ostracized or even demoted and fired for tenacity in doing their jobs. These tales often surface at congressional hearings convened after air disasters.
The agency also faces regular criticism for ignoring problems because its mandate is to promote the interests of the aviation industry as well as to regulate it.
Quinn, who was chief counsel for the FAA before he left government, confirmed that the agency's criticism of Tramco came at a time when Ashworth was being considered for a top safety job at the FAA's Washington headquarters.
But he said the possible appointment garnered no special treatment for Tramco.
FAA documents indicate that at least one senior supervisor and a manager in Seattle's flight standards office cooled efforts to crank up the heat to bring Tramco into compliance.
Instead of acting on a recommendation to pull Tramco's certificate last year, Livack, the FAA manager, called for special meetings with the company to resolve the issues.
In this case, the FAA "categorically denies" that Livack was soft on Tramco.
"In fact, she spearheaded the increased efforts to get the company to comply," said Barker, the FAA spokesman.
But changes Tramco promised in August don't seem be reducing the number and severity of problems.
In December, a 737 used to shuttle Arco Supreme oil field workers to Alaska's North Slope went through a Tramco D-check, the most detailed maintenance and inspection sequence required by the FAA and Boeing.
The aircraft was held for two or three extra days as Tramco mechanics tried to correct a problem with an elevator, said Jack Evans, manager of corporate communication for Alaska Airlines, which has the maintenance contract for Arco's two planes.
Tramco declared the aircraft was OK. It then made two round trips carrying oil field workers between Anchorage and the North Slope.
On the second flight, pilots experienced slight problems with the way the elevators were responding. The plane was flown back to Seattle, where Alaska Airlines mechanics found two of the elevator control cables improperly connected, said Evans.
Ashworth said he believes the problem must have occurred after the plane left his plant.
Last Friday Alaska Airlines maintenance managers met with their counterparts at Tramco to discuss the elevator problem. Ashworth would say little about the meeting.
In January, FAA inspectors found another serious mechanical problem, this time with a United 727 that had been repaired at Tramco. The plane's improperly rigged control cables were rubbing against another component and one cable was nearly worn through. Had it parted, the pilot could have had difficulty controlling the plane.
In December 1995, America West joined a national trend among air carriers by laying off hundreds of its own mechanics and contracting out heavy maintenance to Tramco.
But in 1998, America West "decided to move our maintenance," said Frank Tucci, vice president of maintenance and engineering. "We have pulled out."
Tucci would not say specifically why America West dropped Tramco. "I can't take a chance on lawsuits," he said.
Before it dropped Tramco, at least two planes were returned to America West with problems that Tramco had not fixed -- both incidents that helped prompt FAA inspector Michel's recommendation to revoke certification.
In July, America West was forced to pay an unprecedented $2.5 million civil settlement by the FAA because of a wide range of issues that included maintenance and operations problems between 1996 and mid-1998, said Bill Shumann,{8cq an FAA spokesman in Washington, D.C. America West had its own mechanics during that period, but used Tramco for heavy maintenance.
The government specifically faulted the airlines' oversight of third-party maintenance providers, including Tramco. To avoid paying an additional $2.5 million, the airline agreed to conditions that include correcting "oversight of contract maintenance and performance of maintenance."
Shumann said that in many cases the fine had "nothing to do with the quality of the contract maintenance."
Frontier Airlines, a small Denver-based carrier, also stopped using Tramco several months ago, after discovering fuel line problems in two planes. One plane made more than 40 flights before Frontier's own inspectors discovered lose and unsecured couplings in a fuel tank.
Frontier spokeswoman Elise Eberwein said the airline was already planning to hire more mechanics and do its own overhauls when it dropped Tramco last year. She would not say if Frontier stopped using Tramco sooner than planned because of maintenance problems.
"That's an issue between Tramco and the FAA," she said. "We're not going to comment publicly . . . we don't fly planes that aren't airworthy."
Tramco officials say that they couldn't reach an acceptable contract with America West and that Frontier simply found a cheaper third-party shop.
"No carrier or customer has expressed safety or quality control concerns in context of a contract termination," Quinn said.
Other air carriers said their confidence in Tramco remains unshaken, although they have had problems with the Everett repair station.
Tim Logan, Northwest's director of flight safety, described problems his airline has had with Tramco as a "reliability issue."
Planes were "not meeting our requirements coming out of maintenance," he said.
But Northwest spokesman Jon Austin said the airline will continue to send planes to Tramco.
"These incidents in our judgment were reliability rather than safety issues, but nonetheless ones we take seriously. We consider them anomalous when compared with the relationship we have had with Tramco," Austin said.
UPS spokesman Mark Dickens said the company retains an eight-person quality control team to oversee maintenance in Everett, and is "very happy with Tramco."
"To me it sounds like at this point that the FAA inspector on site there is doing his job, there are checks and balances and the process that's established is working," he said.
And at Southwest Airlines, which has used Tramco for heavy maintenance of its fleet for 20 years, spokeswoman Christine Tureabe said, "We're confident in their abilities."
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Facts on Tramco
Business: North America's largest company doing maintenance, repair and modification of heavy aircraft owned by others.
Location: Everett's Paine Field.
Employees: About 2,300, including 1,600 mechanics.
Facilities: Three major hangars, including one built in 1993 to house four Boeing 747s at one time.
Major clients: United Airlines, Southwest Airlines, America West, United Parcel Service, Northwest Airlines, Federal Express, Continental Airlines.
History: Founded 1970 by Ron Crockett and Bob Trimble. Sold 1988 to Ohio-based BFGoodrich Aerospace. Has experienced rapid growth in business and has expanded to meet demand, doubling its aircraft repair capacity in 1989 and again in 1993.
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