WSJ: New Concerns on Plane Maintenance

The Wall Street Journal

THE MIDDLE SEAT
By SCOTT MCCARTNEY

New Concerns on Plane Maintenance

Government Report Says Significant Work Is Done By Noncertified Shops
December 27, 2005; Page D2

Would you want a maintenance shop that isn't certified by the Federal Aviation Administration replacing an engine on the plane flying your next airline trip? How about working on the flight controls or replacing aircraft doors?

The Department of Transportation's inspector general released a report last week documenting serious maintenance work done on U.S. airlines by maintenance companies that weren't FAA certified. The report also found that non-certified repair facilities are widely used. The practice is allowed: Airlines can outsource maintenance to noncertified contractors as long as the individual mechanics who do the work are FAA licensed themselves. The FAA said that most of the work is minor, like oil changes, and major work is only done in emergency situations.

But by looking at shops that do work for six airlines, the inspector general's investigation found otherwise, including the three examples above. Non-certified companies did major scheduled maintenance work, the inspector general said. The audit found six domestic and foreign facilities doing scheduled maintenance and 21 that performed maintenance "critical to the airworthiness of the aircraft." "Non-certified repair facilities are now performing more significant work than anyone realized," the report said.

The danger, Inspector General Kenneth Mead said, is that there just isn't the same level of oversight on the work. Noncertified repair facilities don't have to employ as many supervisors and don't have to have inspectors monitoring maintenance work as it is performed. FAA inspectors are supposed to visit the 5,000 foreign and domestic firms it has certified. In contrast, "neither FAA nor the six air carriers we reviewed provided adequate oversight of the work that non-certified facilities performed," the inspector general said. For consumers, there is no way to know if the airplane you're riding on has been serviced by a noncertified shop. This issue has already claimed lives. An Air Midwest plane flying for US Airways crashed in January 2003 in Charlotte, killing 21 people. The day before, the mechanics working for a noncertified maintenance shop incorrectly adjusted a flight-control system that contributed to the cause of the crash. The National Transportation Safety Board found Air Midwest's lack of oversight on the work and the FAA's lack of oversight on the airline's maintenance program were contributing factors.

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Write to Scott McCartney at middleseat@wsj.com

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113564665769631837.html (subscription)

get their bonuses from the money they're saving, everything's OK

:sarcasm:

that has pretty much broke the its mechanics union by using "others."