According to Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) data American Airlines (AA) has been experiencing in-flight engine shutdowns far more than other domestic airlines. A pilots’ union notes that the AA “engine incident rate is 15 percent higher than our nearest competitor, Delta.”
The Allied Pilots Association (APA), which represents American Airline pilots noted that, “Historically, AA typically recorded fewer than 10 engine failures/in-flight shutdowns per year. However, in 2008, that rate jumped to 24. Now already in 2009, we’ve already had 12 engine events, including one this week on a DCA-bound 737 that ended up in an emergency diversion to IAD.”
The union has been in discussions with American Airlines about this “disturbing safety trend” for the past year. They note that in spite of assurances by management that these engine shutdown problems would be corrected, the trend has yet to be reversed. If in-flight engine shutdowns continue at the current pace, 2009 will break last year’s unenviable record.
The APA release intimated that costs savings are the driving force rather than passenger (and pilot) safety.
Recent incidents such as the Hudson River landing, the upstate New York crash and the Air France crash are all shining a spotlight on airline safety. Management should be prohibited from cutting corners on any safety element — including the cost of maintenance or experienced pilots. One tragic accident more than wipes out all the incremental little cost savings gained from unrestrained cuts in areas of safety.
Let’s hope that American Airlines figures out why their jet engines are unexpectedly shutting down during scheduled flights with load factors in the 80 percent range. Something is out of whack with the current engine maintenance even though it is done in-house by AA.
There were a flurry of newspaper articles about inflight engine failures right after the Miracle on the Hudson, but the spotlight on airline safety was turned off until last week’s Air France disaster.
At the time, quoted in the Wall Street Journal, a spokesman for American Airlines, a unit of AMR Corp., said the carrier was investigating and intended to get to the bottom of the engine shutdown incidents, but he declined to comment on specific maintenance issues. “We don’t typically get into individual maintenance history” of airplanes involved in such incidents, he said.
Since then, engine shutdown events have continued according to federal records. Averaged over the last eight months, American Airlines has had planes experience three engine failures per month — far more than any other domestic airline.
During that eight-month period, FAA records showed American had 23 failures, Delta had 17, United 15, US Airways 10, Continental 10, Southwest seven and Northwest seven.
Pilots have told me that having an engine shutdown is one of the most disturbing emergency events they face. The plane is designed to fly on only one engine, but it unnerves pilots, nonetheless, to have an engine suddenly stop during flight.
Fortunately for the airlines, passengers rarely know if there has been an engine shutdown event unless they are forced to land at an alternate airport. However, I’ll bet dollars to donuts that the flying public would register more concern if they knew the truth about the frequency of these engine shutdown events.
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
