May 27, 1996
MIAMI “How come they didn’t even know that one day this was going to happen? They wait until after this happens and then figure out what to do?” Dionne McClain raised these questions following the crash of ValuJet Flight 592.
Her fiancee was killed in the May 11 crash. All 105 passengers and 5 crew members died in the plunge of the 27-year-old DC-9. In the last two years ValuJet planes have returned to the airport of origin 68 times.
ValuJet is one of 20 “low-cost” airlines operating; some 20 more are waiting to start up. In two years the nonunion airline has grown from 2 to 51 planes. One way ValuJet cuts costs is by farming out maintenance to nonunion contractors, who pay workers much less and require them in some cases to work on many different types of aircraft for quick turnarounds.