Additional Airplanes Pulled From Service Following Latest Incident

A third American Airlines 757 has been found to have loose seats during a flight, causing the airline to pull additional aircraft from service. In all, the airline says 47 airplanes were temporarily grounded while their seat attachments were checked.

The most-recently-reported incident came during a flight last week from Dallas-Fort Worth, TX, to Vail, CO. It actually occurred prior to the incidents reported over the weekend. Since then, four additional aircraft have been found to have loose seats during the inspections. All but 11 of the airline's 757s that were grounded for inspection have been returned to service, according to a report from Dallas television station KTVT.

The airline is still determining how the seats were improperly re-installed after regular maintenance. The airline's VP of Safety David Campbell told the station that questions such as "was it properly installed, was there wear" remain. The airline has officially blamed the problem on improperly installed locking mechanisms.

But the local president of the Transport Workers Union said the problems only began appearing after American began outsourcing the work to reconfigure its seats last month. "We've been doing these seats forever, and we haven't had problems with them done in house," said Gary Peterson.

Campbell countered that he did not think that using contract maintenance facilities was the issue, but also does not implicate the internal maintenance team. "It's a failure that we've not yet understood," he told KTVT.

In a statement, American said "The FAA is aware of our internal review and its findings, as well as the steps we are taking to proactively address the issue. We continue to work closely with the FAA.
 
"American regrets the inconvenience that this maintenance issue may have caused customers on affected flights.  Safety is – and always will be – American’s top concern,” the statement said.

(American Airlines 757 photo from file)

FMI: www.aa.com