BY GLEN SWANSON

MIAMI - On September 15 the U.S. Transportation Department rejected an appeal by the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) to review the process that led to ValuJet Airlines' clearance to resume operations. It marks the clearance of one obstacle to ValuJet Airlines flying again. ValuJet was decertified following the May 11 crash of Flight 592 into the Florida Everglades that killed 110 people and the ensuing federal investigation, which found the discount airline's safety record and maintenance procedures unacceptable.

Federal regulators tentatively cleared the airline to resume operations August 29. The AFA, which represents 40,000 flight attendants at 26 airlines, blasted that decision, and on September 4 asked for a federal investigation into how it was made. "This appears to be a whitewash of the most horrendous safety record in the airline industry," AFA president Patricia Friend was quoted as saying in the August 30 Miami Herald. "The DOT [Department of Transportation] is apparently poised to disregard its duty to protect the safety of the traveling public and the crew members."

The flight attendants union has been pushing for public hearings on ValuJet's safety record and in July filed a formal report with the DOT. The report explains that the airline's "accident rate was seven times higher than the industry average" and says that between Feb. 6 and May 16, 1996 there was an average of one unscheduled landing every other day.

The report recommends that ValuJet's CEO, Robert Priddy, and its chief operating officer, Louis Jordan, be removed from the company. Susan Clayton, president of the ValuJet council of the AFA told the July 24 Miami Herald, "Our first and foremost concern is safety." Clayton charged that management put their priority on "pursuing an overly aggressive growth strategy, establishing `an absolute commitment to finding the lowest cost providers, regardless of quality,' obsessing over fast turn- around times and hiring inexperienced, unqualified managers to oversee safety operations," the Herald article continued.

Company officials responded by saying, "This latest move reflects a whole new level of desperate behavior by a union that has clearly violated the trust of its members by abandoning the wishes of ValuJet flight attendants." They also condemned the union's demands as "an outrageous attempt to involve the Department of Transportation in labor matters."

The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported on August 23 that a 21- page internal Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) document that it had obtained indicated that ValuJet had misled the government about its fleet re-inspection. The article also reported that one of ValuJet's DC-9s was found to be so corroded the plane's manufacturer would not allow it to fly again. This report led the AFA to amend its DOT safety complaint to include the Plain Dealer article.

Other airline workers are discussing the flight attendants protest of ValuJet's start-up. At United Airlines in Miami a kitchen worker said, "The flight attendants should know the safety conditions best of all, they are the ones up there all the time."

"I think it's significant that the workers speaking out most about safety at ValuJet are the ones organized in a union - the flight attendants." said a United mechanic.

ValuJet management is pushing for the startup and hopes to resume service to five cities with seven aircraft.

As of September 14, the price of ValuJet stock had fallen 29 percent in the past year. Barbara Beyer of AvMark, an aviation consulting firm, commented, "Every day it drags along, it costs ValuJet millions of dollars more."

Glen Swanson is a member of International Association of Machinists Local 1126 at Merrill-Stevens Dry Dock in Miami.  
 
 
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