The Dallas Morning News
FAA inspectors overseeing American Airlines have been given until May 30 to complete 19 overdue inspections of the carrier, the latest sign that regulators are tightening supervision after lax oversight of Southwest Airlines was exposed. The inspectors will be looking at American's manuals and programs to make sure they comply with federal regulations, not doing hands-on inspections of aircraft. The decision follows criticism last week from Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who pressed top FAA officials about long-overdue inspections of Southwest and asked them to check whether similar problems existed with other airlines. An American Airlines spokesman said the work mostly looks at "systems and paperwork" and wouldn't interfere with the carrier's operations. American grounded 46 percent of its fleet earlier this month and canceled thousands of flights after inspectors raised questions about whether maintenance followed federal guidelines. The inspections, which are unrelated to the earlier maintenance problems, "have a very low probability of impact as far as operations go," said Tim Wagner, an American spokesman. "We understand they'll complete them by the end of May." Such "safety attribute inspections" of manuals and programs are required to be done every five years. Some critics have said in recent months that inspectors spend too much time performing paperwork audits instead of visually checking the way aircraft maintenance is performed.
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