Diet to Summon JAL, Skymark Presidents over Maintenance Problems

TOKYO, April 6_(Kyodo) - The House of Representatives transport committee has decided to summon the presidents of Japan Airlines Corp. and Skymark Airlines Co. to a hearing next Tuesday to testify on maintenance errors and blunders found recently at the two carriers, panel sources said Thursday.

JAL President Toshiyuki Shinmachi, along with Haruka Nishimatsu, who is appointed as his successor, as well as Skymark President Shinichi Nishikubo will be called to testify during the four-hour session. The chiefs of the maintenance departments at the two airlines will also be summoned.

Skymark, a low-price carrier, has been undergoing a special inspection by the Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ministry since March after the company was found to have been flying a carrier past a nine-month repair deadline.

JAL was reprimanded in March by the transport ministry for flying a passenger aircraft for 10 days without conducting required inspections. It was also found that it later conducted a lax inspection on the plane.

Shinmachi attended a session of the House of Councillors transport committee in April last year after the government slapped an operational improvement order on the nation's largest carrier a month before over a series of irregularities.

Those problems included one involving a Japan Airlines International's jumbo cargo aircraft using the wrong main-wheel parts for more than eight years and another in which a passenger plane flew to New Chitose Airport in Hokkaido from Tokyo's Haneda airport while flight attendants forgot to make emergency slides operable.

It is the first time, meanwhile, for a Skymark president to be summoned by the Diet.