Thursday, February 16, 2012

American Airlines Mechanic Accused of Sabotage Amid Labor Dispute: Carrier says dispute with its workers has caused over 1,200 delays, cancellations

The Wall Street Journal 
By Alison Sider
Updated September 6, 2019 4:49 pm ET


A mechanic for American Airlines Group Inc. is accused of trying to sabotage a plane just before it was scheduled to carry 150 passengers from Miami to the Bahamas in July.

The mechanic, Abdul-Majeed Marouf Ahmed Alani, told federal investigators that he superglued a piece of foam to block a module that reports speed, pitch and other critical flight data, according to an affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Miami on Thursday.

American and its mechanics are in the middle of contentious contract negotiations. The dispute has escalated, with American suing the unions that represent its mechanics in May and accusing them of causing an operational crisis by slowing down repairs and refusing overtime. American says the slowdown has caused more than 1,200 delays and cancellations.

Mr. Alani told investigators that he was upset over the contract negotiations—which have been dragging on since 2015—and that the stalemate had affected him financially, according to the affidavit. The company has said a new contract would include wage increases.

Mr. Alani claimed his goal wasn’t to harm passengers but rather to prompt a delay or canceled flight in hopes that he would receive overtime work.

American Airlines Flight 2834 never took off. Pilots received an error message when they powered up the plane up and then sent it for an inspection, where another mechanic discovered the obstruction in the plane’s air data module system.

American put passengers on another aircraft and notified federal law-enforcement officials, a spokesman for the airline said.

David Seymour, American’s senior vice president of integrated operations, described the incident as “extremely serious” in a message to employees.

“Fortunately, with appropriate safety protocols and processes, this individual’s actions were discovered and mitigated before our aircraft flew,” he wrote.

Investigators homed in on Mr. Alani after reviewing video footage of someone pulling up next to the plane in a white pickup truck and accessing a compartment under the cockpit. Three other mechanics helped identify him.

Mr. Alani has worked for American since 1988, the carrier said, adding that he has been suspended.

Mr. Alani was arrested Thursday and is being charged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida with “willfully damaging, destroying, or disabling an aircraft,” according to court documents. He appeared before a magistrate judge Friday afternoon. His next scheduled appearance on the government’s request for pretrial detention is scheduled for Wednesday. An attorney for Mr. Alani didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Last month a federal judge agreed with American that the workers were deliberately slowing down work and ordered them to stop. The carrier, which is based in Fort Worth, Texas, has asked the judge to sanction the unions, saying they flouted the court’s preliminary orders.

The unions have denied the allegations and appealed the ruling. The two sides are scheduled to return to the negotiating table later this month.

John Samuelsen, president of the Transport Workers Union, one of the bodies representing American’s mechanics, has been a fierce critic of the airline in recent months, but condemned the alleged tampering.

“The Transport Workers Union is shocked by the reported allegations of airplane sabotage by an employee,” Mr. Samuelsen said. “If these allegations of sabotage are true, they are outrageous and indefensible and we fully condemn such actions.”

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