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Govt. Makes Plane Tests Mandatory

Story Filed: Thursday, February 10, 2000 10:40 PM EST

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The government is requiring airlines to inspect the tails of MD-80 series jetliners and related planes -- about one-fifth of the nation's airline fleet -- for damage similar to what was discovered in the wreckage of Alaska Flight 261.

About 1,100 jets in the United States -- all MD-80s, MD-90s, DC-9s and Boeing 717s -- will be covered by an order that was being drafted late Thursday by the Federal Aviation Administration. The airlines will have three days to comply.

Boeing had recommended the inspections on Wednesday, and all major U.S. airlines already began an inspection process when the FAA decided to make it mandatory. Alaska Airlines grounded two planes Thursday after problems were found.

Passengers should expect minor delays, the FAA said.

``It's far more important that we get these airplanes inspected,'' said Tom McSweeny, the FAA's associate administrator for certification. ``We want it done right, and we want it done thorough.''

Alaska, which has 34 MD-80 series planes in its fleet, grounded two of the jetliners in Seattle and Portland, Ore., because metal shavings were found around the jackscrews -- which drive the planes' horizontal stabilizers and control the up-and-down direction of a plane.

Shavings indicate wear on a nut that travels along the screw.

The horizontal stabilizer, the jackscrew, nut, elevators and other components that adjust the plane's up-and-down pitch have been the focus of the Flight 261 investigation. The pilots reported trouble with the stabilizer and struggled to control the plane for at least 30 minutes before it crashed into the Pacific on Jan. 31, killing all 88 people aboard.

A 2-foot section of the jackscrew was recovered from the wreckage, and metal shavings found on it were determined to have come from the nut in the mechanism. It is unclear whether the damage was a possible cause or an effect of the crash.

Late Thursday, the Navy recovered the nut.

The recovered nut will be sent to Washington for extensive laboratory analysis -- as was the jackscrew assembly. The entire horizontal stabilizer assemblies from the two grounded Alaska jets will also be analyzed.

NTSB investigators also announced the Navy had recovered additional pieces of wreckage from Flight 261 -- including a 12-by-7 foot section of the vertical stabilizer.

Alaska has 34 MD-80 planes and 31 have been inspected, spokeswoman Heather Hiestand said. Of those, 26 were cleared and returned to service. The other five include the two that were grounded and three that are temporarily out of service while undergoing routine maintenance not connected to the investigation.

Some airlines were not immediately disclosing the results of their inspections, but Continental, Delta and Northwest -- with 377 jets to be inspected -- said they had found no problems so far.

Copyright ) 2000 Associated Press Information Services, all rights reserved.

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-- Dee (T1Colt556@aol.com), February 10, 2000

Answers

Yup, just heard it on CBS radio news.

The nut that brought down a jet. I guess my mechanic had a good point, when he said that you ALWAYS find a lost nut. Sometimes, it doesn't take much.

And you wonder why I'm a doomer... <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), February 11, 2000.