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Unless you've been living in some kind of sealed bubble, you've heard about last week's fiasco at American Airlines. Thousands of canceled flights, tens of thousands of stranded passengers, millions of dollars in lost revenues. And you probably even know that the MD-80 planes were grounded because of some kind of problems with wiring.
But what does the wiring actually do? And why has the Federal Aviation Administration waited until now to start freaking out about it?
The wiring in question powers a pump that delivers fluid to the MD-80's auxiliary hydraulic systems, which power some of the plane's components. The FAA didn't have issues with the condition of the wires themselves, what gave them anxiety was the way the bundles of wiring were attached to the MD-80s' wheel well walls.
In 2006 the FAA released what is called an airworthiness directive giving the airlines very specific instructions about attaching the wiring bundles. It's a fascinating, fast-paced read, and answers burning questions like:
- How far apart should the bundles of wires be when attached to the wheel well wall?
- Should the knots on the lacing cords be closer to the open wheel well or the wheel well's back wall?
- Do the retention clips holding the wiring harness to the wheel wells need to face forward or backward?
It may all seem like a bunch of meaningless minutiae, but the Allied Pilots Association says that it matters. The wiring bundles are located near the plane's fuel tanks, and failure to follow the FAA directive could result in a wire shorting out and sparking. Which could result in jet fumes igniting. Which could cause an explosion in the fuel tank. Which, as you can imagine, could be a really bad situation.
So if the airworthiness directive took effect in 2006, why didn't the inspections happen then? The short answer is that FAA inspectors have been slacking off. It recently came to light that the FAA's cozy relationship with Southwest Airlines had resulted in maintenance lapses at that airline, so the agency decided to get tough. And they that figured random, unannounced safety checks would be one way to show just how tough they are.
But isn't this all a little ridiculous? I mean, American had been flying its rapidly aging MD-80s for well over a year after the FAA directive went into effect. Was it really necessary to paralyze American's operations by grounding the whole fleet at once? Why couldn't they have conducted the inspections on a rolling basis?
Was this a case of the FAA trying to save face, or did they do the right thing?
Photo courtesy of Associated Press
