Questions About Eastern

By Janice Castro

Ever since the airlines were deregulated nine years ago and fierce fare wars erupted, some passengers have been concerned that cost-conscious carriers might feel compelled to cut corners on the maintenance of their aircraft. Such fears have reached a new peak amid the recent burst of publicity about airline problems, including numerous unscheduled landings caused by mechanical failures. The Federal Aviation Administration and the airlines firmly deny that safety standards have generally deteriorated under deregulation. But an unflattering spotlight is now being focused on the maintenance practices of one major carrier: Eastern Air Lines. Eastern's mechanics say they are under enormous pressure from management to work fast on the ground so that planes can spend more time in the air earning money. Supporting that charge, the airline's pilots since June have written more than 1,000 letters of complaint to the FAA and hundreds to Congress about Eastern's allegedly sloppy maintenance.

Serious accusations have been made by John King, a twelve-year veteran mechanic at Eastern's Logan Airport maintenance base in Boston, who was fired three weeks ago after he went public with complaints he had made to the FAA. Last week King described three incidents that he said occurred in Boston in May:

-- When a new engine was put on Eastern Airbus No. 208, the normal equipment- installation tests, which typically take several hours, were skipped to free the plane for service. Despite that, King says, the foreman signed a work sheet indicating that the engine had been checked out.

-- Mechanics servicing another Airbus spotted a fuel leak in a pylon connected < to an engine and recommended that it be repaired quickly because of the potential of fire. But a foreman, saying he had not seen the leak, overruled the employees, according to King, and the plane took off. Since the reported leak was not cited in the aircraft's maintenance record, mechanics at other airports were not alerted to double-check for the problem.

-- At a departure gate, mechanics discovered that a loose bolt had punched a hole in a 727's fuel tank, causing a leak. King says the hole was plugged with an unauthorized, quick-hardening plastic sealer so that the plane could depart. A supervisor concealed the improper patch job by not recording it in the aircraft's logbook. The hole was not correctly repaired with a metal plate until later that week.

According to King, Eastern foremen have a good reason to defer maintenance: they can earn bonuses for getting planes out of the hangar fast. Under an Eastern incentive program started in January, the airline's employees set performance goals for themselves, subject to management approval. In the case of the Boston maintenance station, the goal is to make sure that less than 4% of all flights miss their scheduled departure times because of delays resulting from repairs, preflight loading, cleaning or the like. King says one supervisor earned an extra $800 through the incentive program in the first three months of the year. While some airlines offer performance incentives to employees like reservation clerks, Eastern seems to be the only one extending such a program to its mechanics.

Eastern insists that its incentive plan in no way compromises safety, which, says Vice President Robin Matell, "always has been and will continue to be Eastern's No. 1 priority." In its letter of dismissal to King last month, the airline said he had made "false statements," and attributed the charges to his "ill feelings toward the company" after he was fired a year ago for allegedly sleeping on the job. King denied then that he had done so, and was reinstated after arbitration.

This is not the first time that Eastern's maintenance has come into question. Last February the airline agreed to pay a $9.5 million penalty for more than 78,000 alleged violations of federal regulations. Many of the citations involved record-keeping flaws and other technicalities. Now the FAA is conducting a new investigation of Eastern's maintenance operations at Logan. Explains Roger Myers, an FAA spokesman: "We have to make sure that cost cutting or other problems at the airline are not affecting safety."

Eastern employees say the airline's standards took a turn for the worse after it was taken over last year by Frank Lorenzo's Texas Air, which has also acquired Continental, People Express and Frontier to become the largest U.S. airline company. Lorenzo's management and marketing strategy has long been to cut costs and reduce fares. Eastern employees are now being pressed to accept deep new wage reductions.

Since March, pilots have reportedly refused to fly numerous Eastern planes until repairs were made. Says Pilot J.B. Stokes: "We are not going to back off this issue. If management wants the safety campaign to stop, ((then it should)) fix the planes and stop intimidating the crews."

Eastern argues that its maintenance performance has been distorted by disgruntled employees who are trying to force the company into granting better pay and easier working conditions. The pilots' refusal to fly planes allegedly in need of repairs, says Matell, amounts to a "labor slowdown disguised as concern for passenger safety."

Airline experts say the maintenance record of the industry as a whole has been good, though spotty at times. American was fined $1.5 million by the FAA in 1985 for 26 maintenance violations. But carriers will always face a difficult trade-off between saving money and being extra thorough about maintenance. Alfred Kahn, the Cornell economist who pioneered deregulation when he was head of the Civil Aeronautics Board under President Carter, points out that the "airline business has never been very profitable" and admits that the weakest carriers "are bound to try to cut corners." That makes it imperative, says Kahn, for the FAA to be adequately funded and to be vigilant enough to ensure that deregulation does not lead to a decline in air safety.

With reporting by Jerome Cramer/Washington and Lawrence Malkin/Boston