Killer ethics

Mercifully, and properly, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) refused to equivocate when it assigned blame for a crash that killed 88 people aboard Alaska Airlines Flight 261 and devastated this community.

Responsibility was squarely laid on Alaska for a failure to complete regularly scheduled maintenance and on the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for a dangerously permissive attitude toward delays.

The NTSB found a penny-pinching maintenance operation that could not have been allowed to operate without the acquiescence of the FAA.

At its most elemental, the January 2000 crash in the Pacific Ocean near Los Angeles resulted from the failure of a worn, insufficiently lubricated jackscrew assembly that controlled horizontal tail flaps.

More chilling, and just as deadly, was a pattern of what the NTSB called "widespread, systemic deficiencies."

The pilots flying vacationing passengers home from Mexico struggled to control their MD-83 before it went in a final, fatal dive.

The brutal truth is the pilots wrestled with something greater than the catastrophic breakdown of a vital part. Crew and passengers would perish because of willful neglect, signed off by the FAA without good reason, according to the NTSB:

"Federal Aviation Administration surveillance of Alaska Airlines had been deficient for at least several years."

A year ago, the flying public could not be sure that lax management by Alaska and timid oversight by the FAA had caused the terrible crash.

The NTSB made it painfully clear Tuesday the answer was "yes."

The flying public is still left hanging on two points: The jackscrew assembly still represents a potentially fatal flaw in the plane's design, and it has no redundant part for backup.

The NTSB staff also recommended another round of tough inspection of Alaska maintenance programs, but the board refused to act.

A crash that claimed 88 lives, and hints of persistent problems, clearly justified the time and investment.