Word: evergreen
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...unfortunates left behind to mind the store are left with scant new material to fill their daily or weekly slate. Print leans heavily on "evergreen" profiles, loosely pegged features, and shoe-leather research pieces like the New York Times' barrage of census stories. One of those landed so high on the page last week that Scott Shuger, longtime author of Slate's Today's Papers, dubbed it "an August news drought classsic." Television, meanwhile, scours the arid landscape for naturally sprouting (and hopefully telegenic) phenomena like the heat, sharks, or Al Gore's beard. On a good day, says Washington...
Bowles and other AFX employees say Evergreen's mishandling jeopardized crucial flight-safety items such as smoke detectors and flight-control systems. Bowles says Evergreen failed to find one of the most worrisome defects: corrosion in a vital structure. AFX discovered that bolts in the rear pressure bulkhead--the essential internal wall that supports the plane's airframe--were badly corroded...
...also claims Evergreen botched repairs of the aluminum skin of the plane so badly that it distorted the information fed through the system that helps maintain the 747's separation from other planes. Then, AFX contends, Evergreen falsified test results to cover up its misdeeds. Mechanics at Evergreen also allegedly left an unusual--and potentially dangerous--array of items (including a screwdriver, an Evergreen security ID and even an Evergreen lapel pin) loose inside the fuselage. "It is a shocking litany of blunders," says Bowles, who is asking for $10 million in damages...
Bowles chose to have repairs done at Evergreen in part because the 747 he bought was already stored there and needed work before it could fly. A conflict quickly emerged. Leigh Abbott, AFX's representative at Evergreen, says he was not allowed to veto work, change a work order or challenge the time and parts charges--standard industry practices. "It was unlike any facility I've ever been in," says Abbott, a former line mechanic. "I could see that work had not been done when Evergreen claimed it was. When I challenged them, it was as if I was wrong...
...amazement, Abbott says, he discovered that Evergreen had drilled a hole in the wrong place in a flap track on the left wing, creating a serious flight-safety risk by weakening the entire track. (The flap track supports one of the four flaps on the plane, a critical flight surface.) In another case, also described in the lawsuit, Evergreen was instructed to inspect and lubricate the flap carriage on the wing. (Lubrication is an essential flight-safety issue: failure to lubricate an internal part properly is thought to be the leading cause of the Alaska Airlines crash...