Joe White (lawyer)

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Joe White is a lawyer, a native of Stephenville, Texas, and was involved in maintenance during the American Airlines Flight 191 crash on 25 May 1979. A former American Airlines employee, White was outspoken about the risky maintenance techniques practiced on the DC-10 engines in the months before the crash.

Beginning his career at the American Airlines overhaul base in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1968, White was later assigned to monitor work done on the DC-10. During this time, White noted in his personal records starting in 1977, that American Airlines practiced an unorthodox procedure in order to change the engines on the plane, likely to cut labour costs.

The DC-10 has three engines: one bolted to the tail, the other two attached to pylons on opposite wings. Instead of removing the engine from the pylon, and then the pylon from the wing, workers were removing the pylon and engine, as a unit, from the wing, using forklifts entirely unsuitable for this purpose. The resulting handling would weaken the aluminium pylon through repeated stress it was never designed for. This procedure was also practiced by Continental Airlines.

On March 30, 1979, this procedure was applied to an engine on aircraft N110AA, and the pylon on the left wing detached, eventually destroying the airplane.

The National Transportation Safety Board investigated this procedure after finding a 10-inch fracture on the pylon that had become detached from the wing; On June 6, 1979, the Federal Aviation Administration inspected all operating DC-10s, finding similar damage in planes for both American and Continental Airlines. It was concluded in December that the accident had been due to "maintenance-induced damage".

In 1981, an American Airlines attorney, David Wheeler, interviewed White, then a Boeing 727 supervisor and law student, concerning his memos from 1977, demanding that he not mention them in court. On July 7, White was suspended from the company for suspected dishonesty, accusing him of cheating on his time card by being paid while at school. Publicly attacked, White lost his family farm, suffered abuse from his neighbours, and filed a federal case for defamation and wrongful termination in 1987.

During the case, White's co-workers testified on both sides. Most notably, Bill Fey, who developed the forklift procedure for American, testified he had received only one memo from White prior to the crash, and that it was largely unrelated to the procedure itself. Fey went on to be a managing director for the company. Furthermore, an American Airlines vice-president, D.G. Davison, claimed that White had acted in "the most flagrant abuse of time cards and the most dishonesty that I have seen in my career in the aviation business". A handwriting expert later found that the time cards in question were not written by White.

The jury concluded that White had been fired for his refusal to commit perjury, but did not rule in White's favour concerning the defamation. American Airlines later settled with him for an undisclosed amount. Joe White lives in Ramona, Oklahoma.