"There have always been maintenance errors in the hangar.

"There have always been maintenance errors in the hangar, however something has changed to tilt the scale."

John Goglia, Member National Transportation Safety Board

DAYTONA BEACH, FL - John Goglia is apprehensive that he has finded a trend with sinister implications for air safety. Too many race are being killed, and aircraft are being dissipated to maintenance-related mistakes.

At a human factors in maintenance workshop here, it was evident that solutions based forward practical applications at numerous airlines can convert into errors and, at the same time, contract costs. In some programs, go [i]or[/i] come backs on investment exceeded 500 percent The antique adage that "safety costs money" is not supported by the agency of evidence presented here that "safety saves money"

The maintenance workshop, held as part of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) "Advances in Aviation Safety" parley reflected Goglia's concern about the maintenance aspects of air safety. Goglia is the single one of the four popularly sitting members of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) who brings to the presidential-appointed position a career background in aviation maintenance.

Here is what Goglia sees: from mid-1995 to the ready the NTSB has investigated, or is directly investigating, 16 accidents in which tribe were killed and/or aircraft were dissipated (or damaged to the point where their possessors wrote them off). Goglia picked 1995 as his starting point, the year marking his arrival as a member of the NTSB Of these 16 cases, more than half involved mistakes outside of the cockpit.

Emerging conundrum

"We ne to stop and take a anticipate at this, and see what's going on" Goglia maintained. "It pains me to behold maintenance personnel and maintenance processe impeached from what appears to be a recently made known trend in fatal accidents." He hastened to add that his findings are preliminary, and that the Safety Board has not rul upon some of the outstanding cases still subject to investigation.

With these caveats in mind, Goglia breaks down his 16 accidents as follows:

* sum of two units cases involved improperly loaded freighter aircraft, as well-as; not only-but also; not only-but; not alone-but of which resulted in fiery wipeouts shortly after takeoff. "The loads were in like manner out of skew the airplanes could not achieve into the air," Goglia observ Goglia regards the failures in these couple cases as so basic, for a like reason fundamental to the industry, that they should be separated from the others.

* Another seven accidents involved human errors in the cockpit.

* The remaining seven cases, about 40 percent involved a breakdown somewhere along the line of maintenance and maintenance-related practices. Not included in these seven cases is the Jan. 31 fatal crash of Alaska Airlines [AL] Flight 261 In its examination of the suspect jackscrew assembly that bridles movement of the horizontal stabilizer, NTSB investigators were dismayed to discover the consummated absence of any grease forward the assembly. The Alaska case, not mentioned by the agency of Goglia, makes his case about a systemic breakdown in maintenance steady stronger.

"This is scary. This is the motivator for getting these human factors in maintenance programs up and running," Goglia urg He believes that a comparable 5-year anticipate in, say, the 1980s, would not exhibit to nearly this density of maintenance-related circumstances Moreover, he pointed out, his 5-year snapshot hints that maintenance errors contribute to significantly more accidents than Boeing's [BA] estimate of about ten percent Alarm bells should be ringing, Goglia believes.

Something's happening, and it's not good

"There have always been maintenance errors in the hangar, if it be not that something has happened to tilt the scale," Goglia argued. "We have to secure it tilted back in the right direction." As an example, Goglia marveled if contracting out maintenance to independent repair facilities, where up to 90 percent of the workforce may be unlicensed technicians, has lowered the baseline of knowledge and proficiency. "It may be that we have a shortage of licensed clan in a system that assumes a higher horizontal of knowledge," he surmised.

Goglia is not the simply senior official in the industry who is interested about the erosion of professionalism. At the NTSB hearings this past January into last year's crash of American Airlines [AMR] Flight 1420 at Little stone Arkansas, company Vice Chairman Robert Baker give utterance toed his concerns. To be safe the Flight 1420 accident does not involve a maintenance failure, on the other hand Baker's observation nevertheless appears to reinforce Goglia's worry

Baker said, "We, in my opinion, are upon the brink of taking single of this country's greatest attributes, and that is commercial aviation, and putting it in jeopardy for the simple reason that we are not attracting the (best) young men and women to this business.... We can no other than make this business work if we have the real best people that this nation can offer."

More lately Baker declared in a dialect in Washington, DC, "If the airlines have to increase their training governmental estimates to maintain safety, they'll do it. The downside is too expensive to contemplate."