A top SkyWest official responding to reports of safety lapses cautioned the airline's 1,600 pilots about incidents of wing tips striking the runway, improper procedures and an overloaded baggage compartment.
Brad Holt, the St. George-based airline's chief of operations, in a May 4 memo said the incidents are "cause for concern."
No specific dates were given, but the memo listed the following safety violations:
An overloaded baggage compartment caused an aircraft to rotate on its own during takeoff roll.
A wing tip struck a runway during crosswind landing. The crosswind may have exceeded aircraft capability.
A failure to follow procedures and use the preflight checklist led to improper engine operation.
Poor weather conditions, low visibility, ice, unstable approach and a pilot whose "low" experience in an aircraft type led to a hard landing. A wing tip struck the runway resulting in substantial damage to aircraft.
"Recently our airline has been under scrutiny by the (Federal Aviation Administration) for several incidents. There are some common links in each of these incidents which lead me to believe that we should take a closer look at our safety culture with the possibility of changing some of our training programs, policies and procedures," Holt said in the memo.
Holt on Friday confirmed that the memo, faxed earlier in the week to The Salt Lake Tribune, is authentic, but emphasized the incidents were minor and no one was injured. The memo, he says, shows SkyWest's commitment to safety.
"All airlines are always under scrutiny by the FAA every single day," Holt said, adding that sending out the memo was nothing unusual. "It's part of 15 years of (safety) memos that have gone out."
SkyWest system chief pilot Jim Breeze described Holt's memo as "trying to be proactive, to rally the troops."
Mike Fergus, an FAA spokesman, declined to discuss specifics about the SkyWest incidents but said the agency looks more closely at any airline when it perceives incident patterns that could point to a safety problem. "Generally, this is something the FAA does when concerns are raised," Fergus said.
However, Fergus stressed in an interview with the Deseret Morning News, what happened at SkyWest is "not an usual thing as far as air operators are concerned across the country."
The FAA sent a memo to SkyWest regarding incidents that occurred during the 18-month period, which Fergus said likely triggered Holt's internal memo. Those memos "are not super frequent," Fergus said, "but they're not infrequent. I just don't want to see this thing blown out of proportion."
"Yes, we have a little more focus on SkyWest because of what they themselves have already deemed unacceptable, because of some incidents that have taken place in a period of time they deemed unacceptable, but this kind of thing is not unusual," Fergus said. "At the same time, we are giving it (SkyWest) extra focus, because — at times — these things possibly could lead to safety issues."
Holt said in the memo that "each of the mishaps is classified as 'loss-of-control' incidents. . . . The decisions made in these cases very possibly could have been made at least partially because of our culture of getting the job done."
The memo did not mention a March 16 incident in which a SkyWest Embraer EMB-120 sustained minor damage when it slid off a Cedar City runway during its takeoff roll, according to the National Transportation Safety Board report. The pilot acknowledged to the NTSB, "I lost control of the situation."
Jim Hall, an aviation safety consultant who is a former NTSB chairman, said any of the incidents mentioned in Holt's memo could have led to a serious accident.
Holt's memo said the airline is doing a complete internal evaluation, looking at the possibilities of "incorrect policies, flaws in our procedures or lack of training."
As major airlines strive to cut costs, they have turned to mostly nonunion regional airlines such as SkyWest to fly connecting flights.
SkyWest, the nation's largest independently owned regional carrier, has been growing rapidly through partnerships with Delta, Continental and United Airlines. Financial analysts say SkyWest has proven it has the corporate culture to handle connecting flights far more cheaply than the major airlines.
SkyWest has 45 regional jets on order to meet its growth.
But Hall said rapid growth and pressure to control costs can become a safety issue. In the 1996 crash of a ValuJet plane in the Florida Everglades that killed 110, cost-cutting and difficulty overseeing safety in a rapidly growing airline were cited as contributing factors.
Contributing: Jenifer K. Nii