re: Allegiant Airlines - The most dangerous airline in the US

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I've been going to the factory and picking up brand new ones about once a month for about five years

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Do you ever go to Mobile to the airbus factory and pick them up?

What kind of overhauls are doing they doing at KBFM? I see 777's flying in there all the time.

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What constitutes a failure versus a malfunction? A high bleed air pressure would be a malfunction, not a failure... and this is very common across airframes. Instead of going for shock value and skewing numbers by lumping things together, I'd want to know how many engine failures they had

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Since the FAA made the move from enforcement to compliance, CBS filed a FOIA request to the FAA regarding allegiant and 7 other airlines to find the details about the failures/malfunctions. The other 7 airlines fully cooperated. Allegiant objected to their release. CBS basically got stonewalled by allegiant when they were trying to determine whether allegiant has cleaned up their act.

While the initial 99 incidents in 22 months were not itemized according to failure type by CBS, the denial of the records by allegiant sounds pretty damning. It also implicated the FAA for
A) not investigating fully the initial 99 failures
B) not investigating the firing of the pilot for following common sense regarding safety
C) switching from from punitive means of enforcement to a compliance based model
D) protecting allegiant from investigation after the change in model

Allegiant's own statement basically hides behind "we fully comply with the FAA" and "all of this malarkey is in the past"

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But they did get Allegiant’s data and still didn’t itemize it afterwards. There’s a reason for that also.

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oh there's no doubt that CBS needs it to sound shocking for viewership/buzz. But it doesn't excuse allegiant for a very questionable track record. consistent profits and growth at the expense of passenger safety doesn't play very well with me.

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Allegiant also knew about the news piece and it’s quite possible they didn’t comply out of spite (since they’re being sued by the fired pilot).

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Ignoring a minor news outlet I can understand, but whatever executive or PR person decided that they would ignore and actively impede CBS made a really bad call. If they were on the up and up they could have at least complied partially. Right now Allegiant is walking like a duck, acting like a duck, and quacking like a duck.

I’ve flown Allegiant multiple times to Pittsburgh and back and never had any problems. Never had any problems with Spirit, either.

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Im just pointing out that the truth is usually somewhere in between and that people shouldn’t bite hook, line, and sinker on pieces like this. But I do think it’s great news for consumers that the story cane out. At the very least Allegiant will have to be on its best behavior to try and convince consumers that it is a safe airline.

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Agreed. There are two sides to every story. There are ultra low-cost airlines in Europe that have similar issues and show up on sites like this all the time.

AvHerald - Tracking Incidents in Aviation

In fact I would add that everyone commenting on Allegiant's safety record should peruse this site (it is quite interesting to be honest). Here are two incidents on Delta's older 757s in one day.

LINK

LINK

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Do you ever go to Mobile to the airbus factory and pick them up?

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US deliveries/pickups on Airbus narrow bodies are in Mobile as of a few months ago, prior to that you'd have to go to Hamburg to pick up a new jet

Yeah Spirit would have charged them for using the overhead oxygen.

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Spirit Airlines is somewhere in the middle. Over the past couple of years, Spirit has experienced a few airborne maintenance incidents, and the airline lacks an optional IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) certification. However, Spirit has kept an accident-free record with an ever-growing passenger base. In 2015 alone, Spirit safely delivered nearly 18 million passengers — a 25% increase from 2014.

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Spirit had a captain die and FO get real sick from engine oil fumes leaked into the cockpit.

It was so serious spirit instituted a new policy for fumes in the aircraft.

Surprised the stock Did not get hammered even more. ALGT. I guess anyone early enough to see the 60 minutes line up ahead of time could’ve made some money. I mean it’s not like they were going to do a positive story on an airline.