Monday's crash of an Alaska Airlines MD-83 jetliner marred the record of one of the most widely used aircraft types in the world, a twin-engine jet that has established a solid safety history.
Alaska's upkeep of its MD-80 series aircraft has been the subject of a probe by a federal grand jury in San Francisco, and the Federal Aviation Administration last year examined whether Alaska executives falsified records to cover up faulty maintenance of MD-80s.
For the Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday March 29, 2000 Home Edition Part A Page 3 Metro Desk 3 inches; 72 words Type of Material: Correction
Alaska Airlines crash--An Alaska Airlines crash story on Feb. 1 misstated the number of accidents involving DC-9 aircraft. Federal data show that the model had 160 incidents since 1983, including 20 with fatalities. Based on faulty federal data, the story also erroneously reported there were fatalities in an MD-90 crash last year in Taiwan. Because of an editing error, the story said the Alaska MD-83 that recently crashed received its last heavy maintenance check this January, rather than a year earlier.
Boeing Co.'s MD-80 series of mid-range jets comprises nearly half of Alaska's fleet. Boeing and the former McDonnell Douglas Corp. made more than 2,270 of the MD-80, MD-90 and DC-9 models, all closely related in design and almost exclusively built in Long Beach. Only Boeing 737s are more widely used, according to Boeing data.
An Alaska spokesman said the aircraft that plunged suddenly into the Pacific on Monday was built in 1992 and had logged 26,584 hours of flight time. Mechanics performed a "service check" on the airplane Sunday, but airline officials declined to disclose the reason for it late Monday.
Mechanics completed a basic "A" check on the plane Jan. 11, and a more exhaustive "C" check Jan. 13, an Alaska spokesman said.
MD-80 Series a Mainstay
Boeing inherited the MD-80 and MD-90 series passenger aircraft models when it purchased McDonnell Douglas--which manufactured the MD-80 at its Long Beach plant. In November 1997, Boeing said it would phase out the aircraft.
Before it was acquired, McDonnell Douglas had come to rely heavily on the MD-80 series, which helped it return to profitability in the mid-1980s after more than a decade of financial losses.
The MD-83 model has been involved in 11 previous air and ground incidents, none of them fatal. The DC-9 has had a total of 145 incidents, 20 of which were fatal accidents. A DC-9 crashed into a Cerritos residential neighborhood in 1986, after a midair collision, killing 82 people. The MD-90 has been involved in one fatal accident, which killed 78 in Taiwan last year.
The grand jury probe into Alaska Airlines' maintenance practices was launched after a leader of the union representing the airline's mechanics reported alleged maintenance violations to federal authorities in 1998.
FBI agents and U.S. Transportation Department investigators seized maintenance records and computerized data from Alaska's Oakland and Seattle repair facilities that December.
