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McDonnell Douglas, formed by a 1967 merger, has consistently been one of the most profitable firms in the aerospace industry. While most competitors were just beginning to recover from a three-year-old slump, McDonnell Douglas profits last year rose 16% to $129.5 million, on sales of $3 billion. Unlike Lockheed and Grumman, the firm has avoided massive cost overruns on its Government contracts, through good luck and tight financial controls. Unlike Boeing, which has been concentrating its efforts on commercial airliners at a time when the airlines have too many seats and not enough passengers, McDonnell Douglas keeps about a fifty-fifty split between Government and commercial work. Its F-4 Phantom fighters are a mainstay of the U.S. Air Force, and the air arms of several other nations as well. Aerospace industry executives find it inconceivable that McDonnell Douglas would jeopardize its prestige by cutting corners on DC-10 safety.
Why, then, did the company oppose an airworthiness directive to improve the cargo door after the investigation into the Windsor incident and request less fundamental changes instead? McDonnell Douglas has given no official explanation. One reason may have been to avoid bad publicity for the DC-10, which was then a relatively new plane.
Another question is why the FAA acceded to the company's request. Former FAA Administrator John Shaffer, who dealt with McDonnell Douglas, says that a service bulletin is as effective as an airworthiness directive. That view seems questionable. House subcommittee records indicate that several planes were still not modified eight months after the bulletin had been issued. The bulletin did spell out clearly how an airline could take precautions to make sure that the cargo door was locked. They included fitting a support plate on the door, installing a window in the door so that a ground-crew member could tell if the latch hooks were properly engaged and posting locking instructions clearly in English. Tragically, as French investigators discovered last week, the ground crewman who sealed the door on the Turkish Airlines craft could not read.
More Backbone. To some critics, the incident seems characteristic of the way the FAA operates. The National Transportation Safety Board says that only about half the design changes it recommends ever become airworthiness directives. Critics complain that the FAA worries too much about the impact of its actions on industry profits. But Alexander Butterfield, the FAA administrator, has lately won praise for putting more backbone into the agency.
With the windup of the congressional hearings, the matter now moves to the courts. Relatives of two victims in the Paris crash have filed suits against McDonnell Douglas asking damages of $10 million. More suits are expected. The trials may force out answers to the remaining mysteries in the case—especially the question of why McDonnell Douglas records showed a door modification that had never been made.