NYT: United Faces $435,000 Fine for Flying Plane 23 Times Without Inspecting

United Airlines is facing a fine of $435,000 from the Federal Aviation Administration, which said Tuesday that the airline flew a Boeing 787 passenger airplane that was potentially unsafe nearly two dozen times on domestic and international flights in 2014.

A statement from the federal agency said that United mechanics replaced a fuel pump pressure switch on the plane on June 9 of that year after a flight crew documented a problem two days before.

“However, the airline failed to perform a required inspection of the work before returning the aircraft to service,” the F.A.A. said in its statement on Tuesday.

United operated the aircraft on 23 domestic and international passenger flights before inspecting it on June 28 the F.A.A. said, referring to its remarks as allegations. “Two of those flights allegedly occurred after the F.A.A. had notified United that it had not performed the inspection,” the agency said.

More here: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/31/...ytimes&smtyp=cur&mtrref=www.facebook.com&_r=0

Forget the Dr. Dao bludgeoning, this is the kind of shit with airlines that scares me.
 
Should be a stiffer penalty. Every few years one of these deferred maintenance things does cause a plane to crash.
 
787 costs $150M to replace

The fine for flying that plane while risking the lives of hundreds of human lives....$500K

🤔
 
That seems like a tiny fine

Like they pay millions for small settlements

But this plane could have had major issues and they said whatever 23 times
 
Absolutely insane level of corporate greed right there. Completely disregard for the safety of their passengers and employees. I already hated United for their shit service, but I will flat out never fly them again after hearing this.
 
Including two flights after the FAA warned them they hadn't done their inspections.


That should be a huge fine in itself.
 
That's an insignificant fine. I feel that there should be a much bigger punishment for putting the life of so many passengers in danger.
 
That fine needs another 0 or two at the end. Shit like this is just another reason why I hate flying. Who knows whether you're on the flight where money-grubbing fucks have their money-grubbing ways catch up to them.
 
435k? That's the cost of a modest sized home in many middle class suburbs. How the hell is that even a penalty for a giant company?
 
Fuck me, I used to work in aviation maintenance (I was an avionics technician in the Army), and if we ever forgot to carry out a daily flight servicing, we could expect to be royally fucked. The aircraft would not leave the ground without that being signed off.

We had one incident when I was in Afghanistan where the aircraft was urgently needed for a rescue mission (news report) and I was in the middle of the daily flight service on that aircraft. It did not leave the ground until I signed it off.
 
I'd have fined them 23x the full capacity of the plane, taking the average ticket price of their most expensive international flight as base value. 435k is almost literally nothing.
 
Could have been me on one of those flights in 2014.

Ridiculous they kept flying after even the FAA told them, and the 787 wasn't exactly known for reliability back then either.
 
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