Letters: Maintenance: Key to aircraft safety

This is a comment on an article titled" Loose screws not enough to make planes grounded," (the Post, March 28, p. 2)

As an airline pilot and instructor, as far as I know there are no useless screws on an airplane, for obvious weight reasons, therefore it is senseless to say that loose or missing screws on the bottom of a fuselage are "insignificant" problems.

If anyone remembers the Concorde tragedy in Gonesse, France that killed everyone onboard, it was due to FODS (foreign objects damage by loosened pieces of metal due to loose screws) from a Continental airliner that took off on the same runway minutes before. The US carrier was charged with manslaughter by a French judge, which is nothing short of a murder accusation. Having loose screws on an airplane is not something to be taken lightly and is very serious. It is a common misconception from politicians and from the public to think of aircraft or airplanes in the same way they think of cars when it comes to safety.

They are quite different, and should be treated differently. Although it is a common assumption that newer cars are safer than older one, it is not true for airplanes, and even, in certain cases, it is the opposite, especially when manufacturers use new technologies. As a matter of fact, it can take as much as 10 years to find and fix all the bugs and engineering mishaps of a newly designed aircraft. In older aircraft all bugs are known and hopefully fixed and when maintained properly they are as safe as new ones.

The reasons why most carriers buy new aircraft is mainly because of cost, the new technology makes them more efficient and not because they are safer. The key words are maintenance, maintenance and maintenance. ICAO convention, international regulations and maintenance procedures, although costly, have one goal in common and that is to save human lives.

One word about the statement: "Any malfunction of this unit will force the plane to use ground power for takeoff." is misleading. Referring to the APU or auxiliary power unit, this equipment does not have anything to do with take off power whatsoever, it is just a backup unit that produces electricity for ground operations and bleed air pressure used to start the engines on the ground. Flying without an APU is perfectly safe.

Angelo De Priocca
Jakarta