Diary of a Disaster - Alaska Airlines Inc. Flight 261

Chief Executive, The, Oct, 2000 by Christopher SPRINGMANN, Jennifer PELLET

As the airline worked to help its employees and friends and family members of those on board the flight cope with the tragedy, an NTSB investigation into its cause--standard post-crash procedure--was launched. The investigation, in turn, intensified media scrutiny.

Day Two

February 1, 2000, L.A. Times:

"Alaska Airlines has been the subject of an Oakland, CA, federal grand jury investigation over maintenance and repair records for some MD-80s in the past year... John Kelly, chairman and CEO, said the plane involved in the crash was not the subject of any investigation."

The investigation cited by The L.A. Times involved Alaska Air's Oakland, CA, maintenance facility. It was reportedly prodded by a whistle-blowing insider, lead mechanic John Liorine, who alleged in October of 1998 that Alaska managers had signed off on maintenance work that was never performed.

As speculation about Alaska Air's maintenance practices and the cause of the crash began to snowball, Kelly took steps to alleviate any concerns about the rest of the airline's fleet. On February 10, after the NTSB announced that Flight 261's stabilizer jackscrew--a major component on the Boeing MD-80's horizontal stabilizer--showed signs of damage, both Alaska Airlines and American Airlines announced plans to inspect 318 MD-80 and MD-90 jetliners in service (34 of which were Alaska planes) for damaged horizontal stabilizers.

Meanwhile, grieving for the crash victims continued. Kelly attended memorial services held by Alaska Air on the shores of the Pacific. He joined friends and family members of the passengers and crew of Flight 261 as they each kissed a flower and placed it in a wooden chest that was carried by helicopter to the crash site and released into the water.

For Kelly, the moment was powerful. "We looked across the sea and hugged and cried together," he said later.

Day 45

March 15, from Alaska Air:

"Sixty-four mechanics at Alaska Airline's Seattle maintenance base assert in a letter to John Kelly that they had been pressured, threatened, and intimidated' into cutting corners on safety."

By spring, despite efforts to cooperate with ongoing federal investigations centering around the January crash and its maintenance record-keeping procedures, Alaska Air was under siege. Several West Coast newspapers were aggressively covering the ongoing development and more than six lawsuits had been filed against Alaska Air on behalf of crash victims' families.

Particularly disturbing was the letter from 64 maintenance workers citing six cases when mechanics believed a plane was returned to service before it should have been. In one case, two mechanics said that over the course of seven hours, they were repeatedly pressured by management to sign off on a plane in Spokane and, when they refused, a different team was sent in to sign off on the plane so it could be flown--sans passengers--back to Seattle.

The company viewed the letter as a wake-up call. Kelly responded by announcing plans to hire a team of 13 outside safety experts to perform a comprehensive audit of the airline's safety measures, establish a telephone hotline to his office for employees with safety concerns, and recruit for a new post: VP of safety. Throughout, Alaska steadfastly maintained that the concerns raised by the mechanics were rooted in failed communications--that no planes had taken off without proper preparation and approvals.