Air Force pressed to make L-3 pay after fire traced to loose nut

[unhappycamper]

http://hamptonroads.com/2015/10/air-force-pressed-make-l3-pay-after-fire-traced-loose-nut

Air Force pressed to make L-3 pay after fire traced to loose nut
By Tony Capaccio | Bloomberg News
© October 8, 2015

WASHINGTON

A lawmaker is pressing the Air Force to make L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. pay as much as $62 million in damages from an aircraft fire that investigators linked to a loose nut that company maintenance workers failed to tighten in the plane's oxygen system.

The rear cabin fire on an RC-135 Rivet Joint intelligence aircraft during takeoff on April 30 at Offut Air Force Base in Nebraska aborted the training mission, risking the lives of 27 personnel. A picture in the official Air Force report on its accident investigation showed "a dark hole burnt through the center of the aircraft," according to the lawmaker, Representative Jackie Speier of California.

Speier, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services oversight and investigations subcommittee, said in a letter Wednesday to Air Force Secretary Deborah James that her concern stemmed from Air Force documents about L-3's "mishandling of the RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft maintenance, which caused" the fire.

"Who will pay for the damage caused by this accident and any remedial actions taken as a result of it?" she asked. "Has the Air Force made any effort to recoup the cost" of the accident from L-3? the lawmaker asked.