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But any action by the FAA has been on hold since an Oakland grand jury began investigating similar charges. The inquiry involves several Alaska Airlines employees suspected of "pencil whipping"--falsifying, in the parlance of the industry--documents to indicate that maintenance checks had been done on some MD-80s when they were not. According to sources close to the investigation, the inquiry was widened recently after federal investigators suspected that more planes had not been properly checked. There has been no suggestion that the plane that crashed last week was part of any investigation. But the question remains: Was there some problem with the plane, particularly its horizontal stabilizer, that the airline should have caught?
Alaska Airlines insists the investigation of its maintenance practices is aimed only at a specific kind of final check that is "above and beyond" what is required by the plane's manufacturers. CEO John Kelly insists that in no way did any of the alleged missteps affect passenger safety. "My daughter flies on my airline; my wife flies on my airline," says Kelly. "No one is trying to get away with anything."
Aviation watchdogs have been baring their teeth in the aftermath of two high-profile crashes in 1996--ValuJet in Florida and TWA off the coast of New York. Regulators have been increasingly willing to bring criminal charges against airlines and their employees for negligence and deliberate disregard of safety guidelines. Federal prosecutors won a criminal conviction of aircraft-maintenance company SabreTech in December in connection with the hazardous material that allegedly caused the ValuJet crash, which killed 110 people. The same month, American Airlines pleaded guilty to criminal charges--and paid $8 million in fines--for illegal handling of pesticides and other hazardous materials at Miami International Airport. "If felony and prison haven't been in the professional vocabulary of my clients to date," says Douglas Fellman, a Washington lawyer who defends aviation companies, "they belong there now."
Defenders of the airline industry say the new get-tough approach is an overreaction. They say it is unfair to airlines and their employees to make minor paperwork mistakes a crime. And they argue that it may hamstring accident investigations, since pilots, mechanics and air-traffic controllers worried about jail time might refuse to cooperate. In fact, critics say, the airlines may be discouraged from doing the extra safety checks that could get them in trouble for what they uncover. Fellman says the new prosecutorial intensity has led him to recommend that his clients "rethink the detailed audits" they traditionally do on their operations, so as to avoid providing grist for prosecutors.
In the case of Flight 261, investigators have recovered a wealth of material at the crash site that may provide some vital clues to what happened. The plane's two black boxes--the flight-data recorder and cockpit voice recorder--have been found. And a robotic device located at least part of the highly suspect stabilizer on the ocean floor.
--Reported by Cathy Booth/Los Angeles, Sally B. Donnelly/Washington, David S. Jackson/Port Hueneme and Michael Krantz/San Francisco