FAA proposes fining United $1 million for skipping safety steps

By Gregory Wallace, CNN

Airline regulators on Monday proposed slapping United Airlines with a $1.15 million fine for safety concerns about how it operated some 777 planes.

United removed an important safety measure — checking the fire warning system — from its list of actions that crews must complete before each flight of the 777s, the Federal Aviation Administration said Monday. The airline failed to make the fire-warning checks between June 2018 and April 2021, according to the agency.

“The inspection is required in the maintenance specifications manual” of the Boeing-made 777s, the FAA said in a statement. “Removal of the check resulted in United’s failure to perform the required check and the operation of aircraft that did not meet airworthiness requirements.”

United called the check “redundant” and said a 2018 change to its procedures dropping the fire system inspection was approved by the FAA at the time. The airline said it “immediately updated its procedures” when the FAA later said the check must be performed by the pilots.

“The safety of our flights was never in question,” the airline said in a statement.

An official familiar with the matter said the fire-system check was dropped when United consolidated its procedures for the 777 and 787. A 787 computer performs the check automatically, the official said.

United, in its statement, said the check is now also “performed automatically by the 777.”

A $1.1 million fine would be a pittance for a major airline like United, which had $7.2 billion in cash on its balance sheet at the end of last year — enough to pay the fine 6,500 times over. United returned to profitability after two years of deep losses caused by the pandemic.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.