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The FAA grounded the DC-10s until their pylon assemblies could be inspected for cracks and faults. The jets were barely back in the air again when the confusion was compounded. The Safety Board had discovered the possibility that the inspection process itself might be creating a problem. During the searches, some airlines had adopted the time-saving practice of dropping the engine and the pylon from the wing as a unit and using a fork lift to move the assembly. McDonnell Douglas' maintenance manuals recommend removing the engine first, then the pylon, and remounting them one after the other. The Safety Board suspected that using a fork lift in this operation, which is restricted to a tolerance of one-sixteenth of an inch, could have caused banging that in turn damaged vital parts.
Once again, Bond acted tentatively. He grounded only the DC-10s that had been inspected by the short-cut method using the fork lift. The half steps by FAA gave Bond's critics an opening to demand more sweeping action. The Airline Passengers Association, a highly commercial Texas-based company that sells flight insurance, baggage tags and "prestigious membership" certificates to air travelers, sought an order in two separate actions in a Washington federal court requiring the FAA to ground all DC-10s until the plane's problems were solved. One judge deferred to the decision of the FAA. But Judge Aubrey Robinson, acting independently, disagreed. He granted a grounding decree, declaring that those who chose to fly should be protected. Otherwise, he said, they could suffer "irreparable damage," while "all the airlines lose is money."
In light of what was to happen, the FAA then proceeded to make itself look both defensive and overconfident. It urged Judge Robinson to delay the grounding until the agency could present a case showing that it had acted prudently. The judge agreed, postponing his order until a hearing set for the following day.
Bond had gone to London on his way to attend the biennial Paris Air Show. Even before his agency's lawyers reached him to inform him of the judge's action, he had learned more startling news from his Washington advisers: definite hairline cracks had been found by American Airlines mechanics in the aft bulkhead fitting on two DC-10s (see diagram). Not only had the two jets been previously cleared, but fork lifts had not been used in their inspections. The same bulkhead, which had held a bolt that broke, was cracked on the doomed jetliner.
Bond flew back to Washington on a supersonic Concorde and at a jammed press conference announced his grounding order. Those latest cracks, he said, "changed my certitude from the position of high likelihood of no risk to a sufficient likelihood of risk" in the entire DC-10 engine-and-pylon assembly and its attachment to the wing. Even the process by which that part of the plane's design had been certified as airworthy by the FAA would be reviewed. Bond said he was fully aware of the possible impact on the manufacturer, the airlines and the rerouted passengers. "I did not come by the decision lightly. My concern is for safety."