LAST week the British Civil Aviation Authority cleared DC-10s for flying again after they had been grounded following the Chicago air disaster.
spokespersons described the decision as a 'calculated risk'. But then human lives compared with the cost of keeping the DC-10s grounded [£350,000 a day in the case of Laker Airways):
Below we reonnt edited article the American Militant which pinpoints the role of profits in causing this and other disasters.
FACTS sifting surface about America's worst air disaster are fast confirming a trio of culprits: • McDonnell. Douglas Corporation, which signed and manufactured the DC-10 jet; • American. Airlines, which failed to adequately inspect and repair it;
federal govern ment, which consistently its unsafe features.
The trio's first sponse was to dismiss it as freak accident. Invesdiscovered beators three-inch bolt on the runway. The bolt was said to have split because of metal fatigue, turn causing the engine to drop off.
On 28 May, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered quickie inspections of all 138 domestic No interruption in service was planned for the planes, which carry some 135,000 passengers daily.
Meanwhile, in Chicago, two United Airlines mechanics Socialist Chällenge 28' June 1979 Page 10' Ernest Gigliotti and Lorin Schluter finished the FFA-required inspection, but decided Lacy would take it further.
removed the access panels and found cracks so big you could trip OVer them', said Gigliotti.
'Rivets were broken, fasteners were sheared. It gives you a funny feeling in the pit of your stomach to the extent of that Despite all the industry government experts Herblock/Washington Post "investigating' the crash, it was the mechanics' coveries that forced FAA to order all DC-10s grounded until inspections could be made.
On 1 June, the FAA announced that problems had been discovered nearly half of all DC-10s. Nonetheless, the majority were soon back in the alr On June, National Transportation Safety Board suggested that maintenance procedures might have caused the accident.
The engine is supposed to be lifted out of the pylon first, but it is faster - and thus cheaper — to do it all in one operation. can damage the pylon.
Finally, on mounting evidence of a basic design defect in the plane's engine forced the federal govern order all DC-10 jets operated by US grounded indefinitely The full scope of the problems can be traced back to 1970 when DC-10 was rushed production to beat out its wide-body competitors. Since then it has involved at seventeen serious dents.
This includes the worst single aircraft disaster world history the 1974 crash of a Turkish plane near Ermenonville, France, which killed 346 people.
The latter occurred after a rear cargo door fell off, a problem with the DC-10's design McDonnell Douglas the FAA were aware of in 1969 before the DC-10 was even ground-tested But will this tragedy at that dis- curtains for the DC-10? Not likely. 'Airlines aren't the • SULLY … to give up current fleets of DC-10s, if only because of the huge amounts of money already invested in the planes' predicted the Wall Street Journal.
But the two Airlines mechanics, had no interest the protecting industry profits but sought only to find the crash's cause, prove that catastrophe will be averted when working people run the county.