Investigators blame maintenance crew of American Airlines for fire in engine of Flight 1400

Investigators of the United States National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) have blamed the maintenance workers of American Airlines for the emergency landing of Flight 1400 at Lambert-St Louis International Airport in St Louis, Missouri, the United States, on September 28, 2007.

The NTSB said that American Airlines’ maintenance crew failed to follow proper procedures before the flight took off from Lambert-St Louis International Airport, resulting in the MD-82 plane’s left engine catching fire during the departure climb.

The affected Flight 1400 returned to Lambert-St Louis Airport. The plane’s nose landing gear failed to extend in the first attempt to land, but the second landing attempt was successful.

All the 143 people on board were safe, but the aircraft suffered considerable damage.

In a press release, the US National Transportation Safety Board said its investigators found that the affected plane’s left engine had experienced “repeated trouble” as many as 10 days before the incident at Lambert-St Louis Airport took place. During those 10 days, maintenance crews of American Airlines had replaced a start-valve in the engine 6 times, and, on the day of the emergency landing, the left engine again failed to start and had to be started manually before Flight 1400 took off.

The investigators concluded that mechanics of American Airlines failed to maintain properly a metal air-filter that broke up and “the destruction of the filter resulted in a series of other mechanical problems, including a bent pin, which led to the valves being replaced and helped cause the engine fire.”
The NTSB maintained that the maintenance oversight system of American Airlines “failed to catch these repeated problems.”

Making the problem worse, the flight crew did not follow emergency checklist procedures when the fire broke out in the engine after takeoff, NTSB’s investigators found out.

Kitty Higgins, a member of the US National Transportation Safety Board, said in the press release: “It seems to me it was a series of people taking short-cuts that accumulated on this particular day into what could have been much more catastrophic.”

American Airlines, a subsidiary of the AMR Corporation and headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, the United States, has been in trouble of late: In March 2009, a jet of American Airlines had to make an emergency landing at New York’s John F Kennedy International Airport after one of the engines failed soon after taking off from LaGuardia Airport nearby. After the incident, pieces of one of the two engines were found embedded in the plane’s fuselage and metal debris fell on the roof of a plumbing shop.

In August 2008, the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had fined American Airlines $7.1 million for continuing to fly planes even after safety-related problems had been reported and also for violations related to drug-testing.

According to the FAA, American Airlines not only delayed repairs on two of its MD-80 planes after problems were reported with their autopilot systems but also flew these jets 58 times, violating federal aviation regulations.