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The tail-wing jackscrews,
By Russ Lynch
suspected in the Alaska Air
crash, are replaced
Star-BulletinHawaiian Airlines pulled two of its 15 DC-9 jets out of interisland service over the weekend, after deciding to replace their tail-wing jackscrews, the part that may have caused the Jan. 31 Alaska Airlines crash that killed all 88 aboard.
Both were expected back in service late today, fitted with new equipment, said Keoni Wagner, a spokesman for Hawaiian.
He said the company's equipment inspectors noticed that the jackscrews on the two DC-9s looked a little different from the others. They put the difference down to normal wear, which they did not expect to cause trouble in flight, Wagner said.
"But those two we elected to remove completely and replace," because of the "sensitivity" of the inspections after the crash off the California coast, he said. That action was voluntary on Hawaiian's part and went beyond anything requested in the Federal Aviation order that require the inspection of nearly 1,100 aircraft with tail assemblies similar to that of the MD-80 that crashed.
A damaged jackscrew, which cranks the angle of the tail-wing assembly called a horizontal stabilizer, was found at the crash scene and although it has not been determined if it caused the crash, the crew had discussed stabilizer problems in flight.
"What we're finding looks normal to us and we have no concerns whatsoever about the safety of our equipment," Wagner said.
Wagner said today that Hawaiian did a voluntary visual inspection of its entire DC-9 fleet Wednesday night, after Boeing Corp., makers of the planes, asked operators to look at the stabilizer assemblies and let Boeing know of any anomalies.
"We didn't see anything wrong with any of them," he said.
After the FAA order two days later for a closer inspection, Hawaiian fully checked eight of its DC-9s Friday night and found one jackscrew that looked different. Another five aircraft were checked Saturday with a similar discovery on one of them, Wagner said.
The final two DC-9s in the fleet were examined last night, Wagner said. Inspectors contemplated replacing one jackscrew, but the most recent instructions from the FAA showed it was "completely fine" according to FAA guidelines, he said.
In fact the condition of those replaced earlier, before the new guidelines, appears to show that they would not have needed replacing either, Wagner said.
While 18 of Hawaiian's scheduled 150 interisland flights yesterday were canceled because the two aircraft were out of service, all passengers were accommodated on other flights at similar times, the airline said.
Hawaiian said it expected to be running according to its normal schedule today.
In Washington, the FAA said today that more than three-fourths of the planes covered by the jackscrew order have been inspected. The order applied to the MD-80 series, the MD-90, the DC-9 and the Boeing 717.
With some aircraft and some airlines still to be evaluated, the inspections caused replacements in three of AirTran's 44 planes, four of Alaska Airlines' 34, one of Continental's 69, one of Delta's 136, two of Hawaiian's 15, one of Northwest's 172 and one of TWA's 131 planes.
Alaska was still evaluating four other jackscrews that might have problems and Delta was evaluating two.
There were no reports of inspection-related flight disruptions today.
