Grand Jury Investigating Airline

By MICHELLE LOCKE Associated Press Writer

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) - A federal grand jury has been investigating a whistle-blower's complaints of maintenance irregularities at the Alaska Airlines servicing center in Oakland.

With three fatal crashes in six decades of flying, Alaska Airlines has one of the best safety records in the business and airline officials say the alleged violations involved record-keeping only, not safety issues.

However, the grand jury is investigating a senior mechanic's allegations of irregularities in maintenance and repair records for a handful of MD-80 jetliners. The Federal Aviation Administration also was investigating the airline, said Mitch Barker, an FAA spokesman.

Barker declined Tuesday to discuss details of the FAA investigation, which he said is on hold pending the outcome of the federal grand jury probe. However, he said the jet that crashed Monday carrying 88 passengers was not involved in the probe.

The downed airplane was a Boeing MD-83, part of the MD-80 series aircraft built by McDonnell Douglas that is the workhorse of Alaska Airlines' fleet.

FAA records show the company's maintenance procedures came under scrutiny in late 1998 after an Alaska Airlines senior mechanic, John Liotine, said the inspection of an MD-80 jetliner had gone awry and fallen behind schedule, resulting in instructions to less-experienced mechanics to perform some tasks out of sequence to save time.

Liotine told The Seattle Times he told a company vice president about serious maintenance irregularities in early December, then went to the FAA after the executive failed to act.

In a written statement to the FAA, Liotine wrote that the company did not correct problems and lacked ``interest by our management to honestly deal with these causes.''

The FAA inspector in Oakland concluded that Alaska allowed two MD-80 jets to be flown 844 times from Oct. 7, 1998, through Jan. 19, 1999, ``in an unairworthy condition'' because portions of document maintenance records remained unfilled.

The FAA discussed recommending that the mechanic licenses of three airline supervisors in Oakland be revoked and the company be fined $44,000. But Barker said Tuesday there had been no formal penalty notice issued because of the grand jury investigation.

Liotine's union later removed him as president of its local in Oakland and Alaska placed him on leave with pay for a period last fall. He told several news organizations that he does not want to talk about the investigation.

Until Monday's crash of Flight 261, the most recent Alaska Airlines fatal accident was in 1976, when one person died as a Boeing 727 overran a runway at Ketchikan, Alaska. In 1971, 111 died when an Alaska Airlines 727 crashed into a mountain on approach to Juneau, Alaska.

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