Entire Emery Fleet Grounded?

[Bubbette]

That's what it says is going to happen, because of maintenance violations. Were they really that bad, or is the FAA just starting to crack down now, in light of recent maintenance related crashes?

[atlast]

CNF's Emery Worldwide Airlines Unit Suspends Operations
PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 13, 2001--CNF Inc. announced today that its Emery Worldwide Airlines unit has suspended its air carrier operations as part of an interim agreement with the FAA. EWA said it expects to resume operations when issues raised by the FAA are resolved.

Emery Worldwide air freight company, which is separate from the airline, will continue operations on a full-scale global basis. "There will be no interruption of freight service and Emery air freight will meet all of the day-to-day operating requirements of our customers both in North America and around the world,'' said Chutta Ratnathicam, chief executive officer of Emery Worldwide.

He said that Emery Worldwide has made arrangements to service customers in North America, utilizing, among others, a fleet of aircraft operated by Ryan Aviation of Wichita, Kansas. Emery Worldwide airfreight operates a network of service centers in North America and has operations in more than 200 countries. The airfreight company operates a hub in Dayton, Ohio to sort freight. That facility remains fully operational.

However, Emery Worldwide Airlines said it would be forced to furlough up to 800 airline pilots, crewmembers and other administrative personnel, as necessary.

CNF Inc. is a $5.3 billion management company

[Night Freight 1]

The Associated Press is reporting that huge air freight hauler Emery
Worldwide, already the subject of a report on Air Safety Online today,
has suspended operations this morning. The Washington Post reported
this morning that the Federal Aviation Administration had given Emery
an ultimatum: ground yourself or we'll ground you.

[Pentac]

Emery's problems are long in coming. This represents the culmination of the FAA's review of Emery after the fatal February 2000 DC-8 crash at Ranch Cordova California.

I think the FAA feels Emery to have some redeeming values since they gave them the voluntary shutdown option.

I know there is some acrimony between the flight Ops and Maintenance Department over the crash issue and the state of their maintenance program in general (their is a dispute over the cause of the crash (load shift or maintenance blunder - the NTSB investigation is still marked as prelim).

Too bad, there are some good people in those old Douglasaurus communities but as they retire, they are replaced by people who cannot quite manage 'the art' (yes, a general statement, sorry).

[BoeingBabe]

I have to agree with Pentac. The FAA has been more than patient w/EWA. As a matter of fact I am surprised that it has taken this long for them to ask for their certificate. There has been many close calls for EWA over the last year or so and the FAA was very forgiving and willing to overlook things than they should have been.
This is much more than just a maintenance or crash investigation issue. Perhaps the biggest problem is with the upper managment. You can't run an airline or freight operations like you run a trucking company. There were a lot of bad decisions in the recent purchase of EWA's DC-10's. Again same old story. Unqualified people making unqualified decisions on purchasing aircraft that will certainly make big implications on the whole operation. This was also done when they acquired their DC-8's. They bought these 8's when the engines were going to expire in about 500 hours! STUPID multi million dollar incompetent decision. Again on the DC-10's they didn't even obtain a C check before leasing them. CRAZY!!!
Emery did manage to bring in some better management last year and started to turn things around. But the trucking side of Emery didn't like them spending any money on maintenance training and fired them and brought in these so called aviation experts who are mostly nothing but overpaid aviation rejects. This is not to say that everyone at EWA is this way. In fact there are a lot of GREAT COMPETENT people working for EWA that are so under-appreciated that it is extremely sad.
There were also issues with logbook entries and paperwork policies and procedures. They were practically non existent. They had no system of accountability from one outstation to the next. EWA hired some people to come in and set things up for them but the "unqualified management" would have nothing to do with that because it hurt their ego. SAD BUT TRUE!
I really hate to see this happen to Emery because for the most part they have some TERRIFIC people working for them. They are just undermined by some of the fools from the trucking side. I really don't see EWA coming out of this and if they do I will be totally surprised. I have actually looked for them to file bankruptcy many times before and see it coming since no one wants to buy them out.
It is just sad to see so many great people working there hurt so bad by the overpaid executives at the top that care only about getting their big paycheck every week.

[Cyclic Hotline]

F.A.A. Orders Troubled Freight Carrier to Suspend Flights

By MATTHEW L. WALD The New York Times
The Federal Aviation Administration (news - web sites) forced Emery Worldwide Airlines, a cargo airline, to ground its fleet of planes because of extensive maintenance problems.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 13 The Federal Aviation Administration forced Emery Worldwide Airlines, a cargo airline with its hub in Dayton, Ohio, to ground its fleet of planes today because of extensive maintenance problems.

The F.A.A. described a litany of problems with the airline, which it said had accumulated more than 100 violations, mostly for ignoring maintenance problems or fixing things poorly.

For example, in February and April, crews reported problems with the cabin pressurization system of one of the airline's DC-10's 17 times before it was fixed. Also this year, mechanics installed the wrong valve on a landing gear hydraulic system, so that the gear would not lower, forcing the crew to skid to a stop on the engine housing on a runway in Nashville. Mechanics were supposed to check the system before letting the plane fly but apparently did not.

A company spokesman said that the company would fly a full schedule tonight, using contractor airplanes, and deliver all its shipments without interruption. But he also raised the possibility that Emery might never fly again. A spokesman for the pilots' union said that in the current slump in the air freight business the company might have engineered its own suspension as a money-saving move.

The F.A.A.'s action came a week before a scheduled hearing now postponed by the National Transportation Safety Board into the crash of an Emery DC-8 soon after takeoff from Sacramento on Feb. 16, 2000. The crash killed all three crew members, and the plane exploded in a used car lot that had been crowded a few hours earlier with people attending a car auction. Investigators suspect a problem with an outside company that performs maintenance for Emery under contract. F.A.A. officials said the problems that forced the airline's grounding concerned maintenance by its own mechanics.

The member of the safety board who will conduct the hearing into the Sacramento crash, John Goglia, a maintenance expert, said that the crash "has a number of similarities to ValuJet," referring to the DC-9 passenger plane that crashed in the Florida Everglades in May 1996, killing 110 people. The immediate cause of the crash was hazardous cargo, but a deeper problem was ValuJet's failure to supervise a maintenance contractor and the F.A.A.'s failure to supervise either the airline or the maintenance firm.

"We went through this drill already," Mr. Goglia said. "Why are we back here again? What happened that they didn't get the message?"

The safety board hearing has been postponed because, Mr. Goglia said, he could not get the attention of Emery's senior management at this point.

The decision by the F.A.A. to seek the grounding of Emery's fleet was reported today in The Washington Post.

Emery Worldwide is a subsidiary of CNF Inc., the former Consolidated Freightways. It also builds truck trailers and carries freight by truck and ship, and provides logistics services.

F.A.A. officials said today that the agency had been intensely monitoring Emery since the beginning of 2000 and acted now because it had built a strong legal case and had "a lack of confidence in the carrier's ability or willingness to perform," said Ava L. Mims, the deputy director of the F.A.A.'s Flight Standards Service.

But an official of the Air Line Pilots Association, the union that represents the approximately 500 pilots at Emery, said the final straw might have been what happened to a DC-8 with a broken fuel gauge on a flight last week from Sacramento to Dayton. One engine shut down for lack of fuel, and the crew decided to land at St. Louis because they did not know how much fuel the plane was carrying.

A company spokesman said he was not aware of that flight.

The union official, Capt. Thomas G. Rachford, said that in the last year and a half the Emery fleet had had 3 depressurizations in flight, 2 occasions on which jet engines stopped working, 25 occasions in which engines overheated, and one case of a main cargo door opening during takeoff. "We were convinced we were going to kill somebody," Mr. Rachford said.

Ms. Mims said the F.A.A. built its case partly on information in complaints from the pilots. Those pilots will now be without work for at least a month and probably much longer. In all, 800 people will be furloughed, the company said.

Mr. Rachford, who said he had flown for Emery for nine years, said that his union would seek to have Emery pilots paid even though the airline was grounded. Senior pilots are paid about $130,000 a year, he said.

Mr. Rachford said that Emery had recently laid off some pilots and wanted to lay off more, and might be seeking to return to the days when all its freight was carried by contractors.

But James R. Allen, a company spokesman, denied that this was the company's strategy and said Emery intended to fly again.

Mr. Allen added, however, that under the terms of the shutdown agreement, the F.A.A. would take the next month to determine what steps Emery would have to take to resume flying.

"We have to take into consideration how much that will cost, and how long it will take," he said. "We need to consider whether these conditions are realistic." He said the company realized it had problems but had been addressing them, and was surprised by the ultimatum it was given last Saturday, to shut down for an "interim" period or face permanent revocation of its certificate to fly.

The company will do what is in the best interest of shareholders and customers, he said, and the F.A.A. "may put a set of conditions on us so onerous that it's not possible."

Last week the company was operating 38 planes, he said, 30 of its own and 8 under contract; tonight it will also fly 38, all contractors, he said.

"There's a recession, not a shortage of aircraft," he said.

Ryanair flies 10 aircraft that it leases from Emery and that are painted in Emery's colors, but are operated under Ryanair's certificate, according to Ms. Mims. They will not be affected by the agreement. Other carriers also fly on a contract basis.

Mr. Allen said that Emery Worldwide Airlines existed to carry the freight of a related company, the Emery Worldwide Freight Company, and that until this week, 60 percent of the Emery cargo was shipped on the Emery airline and 40 percent on other planes or by truck. The company specializes in packages of 70 pounds or more, he said.

Mr. Rachford said that parceling out the shipments among other small carriers would not help safety; it would multiply the number of operations that the F.A.A. would have to oversee, he said.

[MajorOverhaul]

It comes from the top, I remember when I informed a CEO that I had to remove a L-1011 from service to comply with a pressure deck AD. he did not understand why we had to comply with it, I told him that it would take 1000 man hours, he asked if we got 1000 mechanics could we do it in a hour.

"There is never enough time to do it right, but always plenty of time to do it over"

[ 15 August 2001: Message edited by: MajorOverhaul ]