Northwest broke rules as FAA looked on, U.S. finds

LITTLE ROCK — Northwest Airlines Corp., now part of Delta Air Lines Inc., had a “systemic” failure to comply with federal safety directives and regulators were lax in pursuing enforcement, U.S. investigators found.

Northwest had a 10-yearhistory of not following Federal Aviation Administration directives, the Office of Special Counsel said in a letter delivered Thursday to President Barack Obama. Transportation Department investigators weren’t able to determine if the airline had complied with more than1,000 directives, Associate Special Counsel William Reukauf said.

The FAA “should have pursued enforcement action,” Reukauf said. The FAA’s own inspectors “were reluctant to recommend civil penalties because they believed the regional office was too lenient,”he wrote.

The report renews criticisms that the FAA was overly collaborative with carriers in recent years. The agency came under fire from lawmakers in 2008 for allowing Southwest Airlines Co. to fly 46 planes without requiredinspections.

In Northwest’s case, the Transportation Department inspector general found in 2009 that the FAA allowed the airline to operate 61 Boeing Co. 757 aircraft for more than three months without following a maintenance directive designed to limit the possibility of a fuel-tank explosion, the letter said.

Delta spokesman Anthony Black said in an e-mail the report is being reviewed. “As always, we will fully cooperate with the government agencies to ensure our core values of safety, quality and compliance are not compromised,” he said. Atlanta-based Delta, the world’s largest carrier, bought Eagan, Minn.-based Northwest in 2008.

The FAA said in a statement that inspectors “not associated with Northwest” reviewed Delta’s management of the former Minnesota carrier’s operation earlier this year. “We believe that system is sound,” the agency said. “We continue to monitor the carrier’s performance in this area.”

As a result of the investigation, the FAA has proposed suspensions of 10 days and 5 days for two employees who helped oversee Northwest, according to the letter.

Mark Lund, an FAA inspector who worked in the agency’s Bloomington, Minn., office, filed a whistle-blower complaint with the Office of Special Counsel, which referred the matter to the Transportation Department for an investigation in November 2008.

Investigators found that the agency’s failure to discover 14 instances of directive noncompliance in 2008 showed “serious deficiencies in FAA’s regular oversight,” according to Reukauf’s letter.

The FAA accepted 12 voluntary disclosures of noncompliance in fiscal 2007 and 2008, thus exempting the carrier from enforcement actions and possible fines, Reukauf said.

Regulators “should not have accepted the voluntary disclosures, not only because it was contrary to FAA guidance, but because of NWA’s history of noncompliance,” Reukauf said, referring to Northwest.