Airline Mechanics Speak Out on Pressure to Ignore Safety Issues

UPDATE: February 12, 2019, 10:30 a.m. EST

A week after the CBS News report was released that found that mechanics are pressured by their managers and airlines to ignore safety risks, Democrat Senators Ed Markey and Richard Blumenthal sent a letter to the Acting FAA Administrator Daniel Elwell urging the FAA to investigate.

The lawmakers requested the FAA gather information on how many complaints the FAA has received on this subject and whether or not they’ve investigated such reports. They also requested information on how the FAA is holding airlines accountable and preventing them from pressuring mechanics or retaliating against those who speak out.

Markey and Blumenthal requested the information be provided to them by the beginning of March.

"A critical component to any effective maintenance plan is an adherence to maintenance protocols and a safety-centric environment that encourages mechanics to both identify and report safety concerns. When safety standards are violated, the FAA has the obligation to investigate allegations and require corrective action," the lawmakers wrote.

Read the letter here.

In an eight-month-long investigation, CBS News discovered that a significant amount of airline mechanics feel pressured by management to ignore potential safety problems on airplanes and this pressure could eventually result in a devastating accident one day.

While the U.S. aviation industry has had a period of safety in the last decade, with only one death involving a U.S. passenger airline, CBS News spoke to 26 airline mechanics from Southwest Airlines and American Airlines, and all said they feel the pressure to sign off on aircraft safety and ignore problems “out of their scope.”

According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), mechanics have complained about these pressures and have made formal complaints, like in 2017 when a Miami-based mechanic claimed he was retaliated against for reporting problems on a few planes that were then taken out of service.

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In cell phone video footage, the American Airlines mechanic tells a manager, "We're an accident waiting to happen.”

"You single out one guy because he's doing his job. What about all of us? What's going to happen to us when we do our jobs?" the mechanic can be heard saying.

According to CBS News, the mechanic in question is back on the job, though it seems he was taken off the job for a bit of time.

The mechanics blame the pressure from their managers on the economic reality of airlines, who can only make money when their planes are flying passengers. A safety issue that needs to be fixed could result in the grounding of a plane for some time, and therefore, no money for the airline.

Gary Santos, an American Airlines mechanic in New York, spoke to Kris Van Cleave of CBS News in an on-camera interview, claiming that he’s risking his job by doing so. He described the environment that mechanics are placed under as a “short-cut environment.”

Santos claims that if a mechanic is working on one issue and sees another safety problem, the airline managers don’t want him to make an official note of that additional issue.

"They try to pressure the individual not to write it up," Santos said.

"They'd rather you not report a maintenance issue?" Van Cleave asked.

"Right," Santos responded.

Santos isn't the only one with this experience. Other mechanics spoke to CBS News, but they didn’t feel safe speaking openly on camera, so the outlet altered their voices and hid their faces for their safety.

"If you're working, say, on a landing gear, lubing it, and you notice that a flap three feet away is leaking, and you write up the flap leak, you're beyond your scope," one mechanic said.

When they go beyond their scope, airlines have retaliated. There are several FAA reports that show this is the case among the two airlines since 2015, and there have been at least 31 other anonymous reports between 2015 and 2018.

"I've seen people walked off the job, held on suspension for a month or more because they've reported problems that they supposedly were outside their scope for finding," one mechanic said.

Another mechanic shared a shocking statement he has heard from airline managers.

He said, "You constantly have people over your shoulder questioning why it takes so long. 'Can't we skip a few steps?'"

"Have you had managers use the words 'can't we skip some steps'?" Van Cleave asked.

"Absolutely," the mechanic responded. "The pressure is there and, you know, the threats of termination and walking you off the airfield, as they would say, are very real and commonplace."

When asked what the significant issues that mechanics are being asked to ignore, one mechanic said: "Things that needed to be repaired. Worn tires, worn brakes, damage to the fuselage.”

Former National Transportation Safety Board member John Goglia said that there is definitely a problem if 26 mechanics are speaking out publicly, a move that’s absolutely unheard of.

"That's standing out on the top of the hill screaming at the top of your lungs," Goglia said, acknowledging "there's no question that there's a problem."

He said that the mechanics that CBS News spoke to aren’t the only ones feeling the pressure to ignore safety issues.

"You have two dozen. I've probably had over a hundred over the past three or four years that have called me with those kinds of complaints, and I'm talking about calls from every single airline," Goglia said.

Despite what the mechanics are saying, representatives of Southwest and American Airlines claim that safety is a top priority for them.

"You don't feel like your mechanics are being unduly pressured or threatened, chastised, criticized for finding issues that are out of scope?" Van Cleave asked Capt. Dave Hunt, Southwest's senior director of safety management.

"I think any issue that's brought forward to us is taken seriously, acted upon, investigated, and we act on those. So any way we hear about an instance, we carefully review those," Hunt said.

Van Cleave pointed out, "But you're stopping short of saying that's not happening.”

"Whenever we become aware of a safety-related event, we take them all seriously and we act on all of them the same way," Hunt said, still ignoring Van Cleave's direct question.

Senior Vice President at American Airlines echoed Hunt.

"Safety is part of the culture and they know if they don't do it safely, they're not to do it at all," Seymour said.

"Does it concern you that we're hearing a different account from a number of mechanics?" Van Cleave asked.

"It's not a concern for me because I think we have programs in place to make sure that they can report them," Seymour said.

"You say it's not a concern, we talked to a former NTSB board member who said based on the number of people we have talked to… and that several went on camera isn't just a red flag, he called it a field of red flags," Van Cleave said.

"What I will tell you is allegations have been made, but almost all of them have been dismissed. There have been some issues we've had to address, but again, there's never been an allegation made that American Airlines flew an aircraft that was unsafe," Seymour said.

Throughout this entire investigation, one question remained: Is it safe to travel on airplanes today?

Goglia said, "I get on them every day so I am not concerned—it's like climbing a ladder where the top rung may be an accident or a serious incident.”

“Every time you don't do something the way it's supposed to be done, you're climbing another rung in the ladder… and it takes several rungs when you start getting up there the risk starts to get severe."

For Goglia, he believes that while it may be safe to travel on planes today, with pressure on mechanics to ignore safety issues, it could build up over time and create significant risks for travelers in the future.

Van Cleave asked Santos, the brave mechanic who spoke out publicly, "Do you worry that pressure is going to result in an accident? Something is not going to get fixed?"

"Those things keep me up at night," Santos replied.