The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.7           February 17, 1997 
 
 
Boeing Has To Admit 737 Rudder Problems  

BY EDWIN FRUIT AND SCOTT BREEN
PITTSBURGH - On January 15, Boeing announced it would modify the rudders on all existing models of the 737 airplane. The announcement was made by Vice President Albert Gore on behalf of Boeing at a White House-sponsored aviation safety and security conference in Washington, D.C.

For several years now, a malfunctioning rudder has been suspected as the main cause of two crashes of Boeing 737 airliners -United Flight 585 in Colorado Springs in 1991 and USAir Flight 427 outside Pittsburgh in September 1994 - which together claimed 157 lives. Boeing maintains that mechanical problems with the rudders were not responsible for these accidents. Michael Denton, Boeing's chief project engineer for the 737, suggested instead that the flight crew was to blame for the USAir accident, telling the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on January 16 that "with appropriate flight crew action, that airplane should have been recoverable."

Gore, however, told the conference that rudder changes emerged from the investigation of those crashes, which "have identified improvements that could help eliminate the chance of rudders playing a role in future accidents."

Boeing has agreed to pay for retrofitting all 2,800 Boeing 737s in service around the world. New power control units and redesigned bolts are to be installed by October 1999, and the revised yaw damper and rudder limiters are to be installed by the fall of 2000. The estimated cost to Boeing of $140 million for manufacturing replacement parts is a tiny portion of Boeing's cash on hand of $5.3 billion. The airlines will pay the labor expenses to install the parts, estimated at an additional $27 million. According to Denton, the upgrades could be done by the airlines overnight during maintenance checks.

Rudder repairs were ordered in 1994
For several years now, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has recommended that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Boeing redesign the rudder controls on the 737. In March 1994, the FAA ordered the rudder power control be redesigned and that old units be replaced by new ones by 1999. At that time the airlines complained they would need five years to make the changes, which would cost about $1,100 per plane. After the Pittsburgh crash in the fall of 1994, the carriers stepped up their timetables for replacements.

During hearings on the Flight 427 crash, held in 1994- 95, NTSB chairman James Hall said Boeing had not told the board everything it knew about "incidents" involving these planes. In fact, Boeing had compiled a list of more than 180 in-flight upsets over the past 25 years - 35 of them in 1993 and 1994 alone - that could have been connected to the rudder control system. In contrast, the FAA database showed just 43 such incidents between 1974 and 1994.

A second round of hearings on the crash of Flight 427 in November 1995 revealed empirical evidence that there was a malfunctioning rudder on the doomed plane. According to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, witnesses from the FAA and Boeing repeatedly asserted that a rudder hardover was "an extreme improbability" and said safety did not dictate design changes in the plane. The Airline Pilot's Association disputed that claim, pointing out that the FAA's review itself observed rudder hardeners and system jammings at full deflection during testing.

Arthur Wolk, a lawyer representing families of Flight 427 passengers, declared, "The NTSB board is incompetent and the FAA is in bed with Boeing." According to the attorney, faulty designs in the rudder system make a rudder hardover "not an extreme improbability. It is a likelihood."

The FAA's contradictory aims of promoting the airline industry and promoting airline safety were exposed most recently in the Valujet crash in Florida last year. Inspectors' warnings about Valujet's operations were ignored by higher-ups and 62 percent of employees said in an FAA survey last year that they often hesitate before speaking their minds for fear of retaliation.

Boeing explains its decision to make the rudder repairs now as "making a safe plane even safer." The company, however has come under growing pressure to make these changes in the last three months. Flowing from its investigations of the Pittsburgh and Colorado Springs crashes, the NTSB issued 14 recommendations for sweeping improvements in the plane's rudder controls last October.

A few weeks later, the Seattle Times ran an in-depth, five-part series on the Boeing 737's rudder problems, entitled "Safety at Issue: the 737." It documented the mechanical and design problems with the 737's rudder control system, the plodding course of the accident investigation, and implied a possible cover-up by both Boeing officials and the government agencies involved.

Boeing tries to deny safety problems
Unable to persuade the Times's editors to kill the story, Boeing strenuously denied any possibility of the rudder control system ever malfunctioning. Then, on November 1, Boeing publicly admitted that its own testing had shown that the 737's rudder could jam and cause it to dive out of control. It issued a "service bulletin" to the airlines to immediately inspect the 737s for a jammed valve. The FAA then ordered emergency inspections of the rudder system on every U.S.-registered Boeing 737 to take place within 10 days, and to follow them up with regular inspections.

According to John O'Brien, the air safety director for the Air Line Pilots Association, who worked with Boeing investigators, the aerospace giant had a long internal debate over whether to make the changes. Their decision had "a lot to do with public perception," O'Brien stated.

With an enormous back log of orders ($79.2 billion for commercial airliners at the end of 1996), increasing competition from the European airplane manufacturer Airbus, and a merger with McDonnell-Douglas still to hurdle government hearings, Boeing's decision preempted any possible government action that could further damage its public image.

At the same time, they hoped to recoup some lost public relations ground by professing concern for the public's safety. In this, they received a boost from the White House. Gore publicly thanked Boeing for acting voluntarily. "They [Boeing] are going to begin retrofitting those planes, largely at their own expense and without a government mandate," the vice president beamed.

Others maintained a different view. Michael Hynes, an independent crash investigator, said, "I think somebody finally explained the political facts of life to Boeing. There is nothing we've learned about this airplane in the past 90 days that we didn't know years ago."

Edwin Fruit is a member of IAM Local Lodge 1976 in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania, and works for USAir at the Pittsburgh International Airport. Scott Breen is a member of IAM District 751 and an aerospace mechanic at Boeing's Everett plant.  
 
 
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