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Is Allegiant a Safe Airline? Using Data to Review 60 Minutes’ Conclusions
Based on the information provided by the FAA, it is very easy to analyze the data collected by 60 Minutes to determine if there is some context lost. The investigation utilized the Scheduled Difficulty Reports (SDRs) filed by Allegiant and seven other airlines, according to their reporting. All SDRs are available to the public for all U.S. airlines, as well as general aviation aircraft, which allows us to look at all incidents, their severity, and exactly where Allegiant falls in the mix. This… (visualapproach.io) Más...Sort type: [Top] [Newest]
This reporting is a fundamental reason I do not get my news from any of the broadcast or cable news networks. None of them deserve to be trusted. Get the articles and interpret for yourself. The graph referenced did a better job explaining the information. CBS could have made an attempt at credibility to have shown the same graph and list all of the airlines. Cherrypicking data is a weak attempt at proving a point. It's like saying average without stating whether the average is mean, median or mode. All are averages but with very large numerical results.
Just speaking from experience working on them as a previous fueler and a ramper at one station...they were always having problems, mx delays that would take hours (and in one case, 2 days) to fix. The MDs were beat up and in bad shape (as most are at DL and AA too), but overall they broke down the least for us. Now, the 57s while seemingly in better shape were the ones we always dreaded seeing. Those were the ones that would hog a gate for hours or days because something broke and it took days to ship the parts in on other airlines. At the time they didn't have many 320s yet so I can't speak on those. But overall, I would generally tell my family members to avoid flying them unless their schedules were flexible to unpredictable circumstances (LOL).
Yep that sounds about right. A lot of companies like Southwest when they first got into the business and starting up used older aircraft that other companies had thrown away. primarily the 737 200 and 300's. They had an average life on them of close to 25 years but Southwest has gotten better at an average life at 12.4 years now. So they have moved out a lot of the junk. not saying new aircraft don't fail but they have less frequency of failure due to not as many rotations and tone on them. The old adage rings true that you get what you pay for.
I have followed closely Allegiant since 2014, all their employee issues, aircraft maintenance issues. They are very fortunate there was no major disaster. My two issues, the story about Allegiant came out a year late and how the heck did the FAA give them a passing grade.
Why the FAA gave them a passing grade is by me. Her are some more interesting FAA facts about Allegiant.
On Allegiant Air’s worst night last year, mechanical breakdowns forced the airline’s planes to make one unexpected landing after another.
One flight had to land in Mesa, Ariz., after the captain’s instrument panel started smoking. Another returned to Las Vegas when the tail compartment overheated. Another circled back to Mesa because one of its power generators started failing. Another diverted to Idaho Falls when a fuel pump malfunctioned.
Before the night was finished on June 25, 2015, five Allegiant flights had been interrupted in four hours, all because different planes had failed in midair.
The Federal Aviation Administration collected records on all of the incidents.
But it didn’t order a single corrective action.
They call The FAA the “tombstone agency,” and decried it as an unwieldy bureaucracy that was slow to crack down unless spurred by disaster.
Today, little has changed.
Again and again in the past 20 years, auditors for the U.S. Department of Transportation have chronicled the FAA’s struggles to police the airline industry, pointing to staffing problems and a failure to analyze key data.
The FAA’s dealings with Allegiant Air — a low-cost carrier run by a founder of ValuJet — are a case study in those struggles.
On Allegiant Air’s worst night last year, mechanical breakdowns forced the airline’s planes to make one unexpected landing after another.
One flight had to land in Mesa, Ariz., after the captain’s instrument panel started smoking. Another returned to Las Vegas when the tail compartment overheated. Another circled back to Mesa because one of its power generators started failing. Another diverted to Idaho Falls when a fuel pump malfunctioned.
Before the night was finished on June 25, 2015, five Allegiant flights had been interrupted in four hours, all because different planes had failed in midair.
The Federal Aviation Administration collected records on all of the incidents.
But it didn’t order a single corrective action.
They call The FAA the “tombstone agency,” and decried it as an unwieldy bureaucracy that was slow to crack down unless spurred by disaster.
Today, little has changed.
Again and again in the past 20 years, auditors for the U.S. Department of Transportation have chronicled the FAA’s struggles to police the airline industry, pointing to staffing problems and a failure to analyze key data.
The FAA’s dealings with Allegiant Air — a low-cost carrier run by a founder of ValuJet — are a case study in those struggles.
About 300 pages of Federal Aviation Administration records for Allegiant show a pattern of safety problems that triggered a relatively large number of aborted takeoffs, emergency descents and emergency landings from Jan. 1, 2015, through this March. The Allegiant records were obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Robert MacArthur, owner of Alternative Research Services, a consultancy that caters to short sellers — investors who benefit when company share prices drop.
Allegiant had about nine times as many serious incidents over that period as Delta Air Lines had with similar types of planes of similar vintage — even though Delta was flying about three times as many such planes, according to a Washington Post analysis of FAA documents relating to both companies.
Allegiant had about nine times as many serious incidents over that period as Delta Air Lines had with similar types of planes of similar vintage — even though Delta was flying about three times as many such planes, according to a Washington Post analysis of FAA documents relating to both companies.