Frontier Airlines Faces FAA Penalty For Noncompliant Planes

In yet another example of its growing vigilance against aircraft maintenance violations and safety infractions among U.S. carriers, the Federal Aviation Administration today said it proposed a $380,000 penalty against Frontier Airlines for operating several Airbuses that were not fully compliant with federal regulations.

Denver-based Frontier, now owned by Indianapolis-based Republic Airways Holdings, operated Airbus A318s and A319s on around 900 flights in 2009 and 2008 with seat-back safety placards presenting outdated information that did not reflect the carrier's deployment of "dual-aisle access to the over-wing emergency exits," FAA said today.

FAA under the Obama administration has stepped up its tenacity in fining carriers for maintenance violations, and since March 2009 the agency has proposed nearly $30 million in civil penalties for U.S. airlines.

This year alone, FAA proposed to charge Northwest Airlines—now a part of Delta Air Lines—$1.45 million for operating for more than two years 32 Boeing 757s that did not undergo proper inspections of windshield wiring. That followed a series of fines levied against American Airlines for several maintenance infractions totaling more than $1 million in proposed fines, which itself was only a month after FAA hit its American Eagle subsidiary with $2.9 million in penalties.

In 2009, FAA also proposed fining Southwest Airlines $7.5 million, United Airlines $3.8 million and US Airways $5.4 million, among others, for varying offenses. For comparison's sake, the FAA in the last year of the George W. Bush administration announced just more than $17 million in civil penalties, centered on two high-profile maintenance snafus that forced Southwest and American airlines to ground planes.