FAA Faulted Over Outsourced Maintenance

Report Says U.S. Oversight Of Repair Facilities Lags, As Airlines Increasingly Hire Contractors

(AP)  Nine major U.S. airlines are farming out aircraft maintenance at twice the rate of four years ago and now hire outside contractors for more than 70 percent of major work, the government says. Contractors overseas handled one-quarter of the outsourced maintenance.

At the same time, U.S. oversight of repair facilities is lagging, the Transportation Department's inspector general found. Investigators said the Federal Aviation Administration has failed to closely track how much maintenance is outsourced and where it is performed.

Although the FAA has taken steps to improve, "the agency still faces challenges in determining where the most critical maintenance occurs and ensuring sufficient oversight," investigators said in the report this past week.

In airlines' effort to lower costs, the report said, they continue to shift heavy airframe maintenance from in-house mechanics and engineers to hundreds of repair companies in the United States, Canada, Mexico and countries in Central America and Asia.

Nine major airlines examined by the inspector general outsourced 71 percent of their heavy air frame maintenance - repairs and servicing to an aircraft's body, wings and tail - in 2007, compared with 34 percent in 2003. Also, 27 percent of that work was performed at foreign repair facilities.

The airlines examined in the report were AirTran Airways, Alaska Airlines, America West Airlines, Continental Airlines, Delta Air Lines, JetBlue Airways, Northwest Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and United Airlines. American Airlines, the nation's largest domestic carrier, was not included, the inspector general said, because it handles most maintenance in-house.

The FAA relies heavily on the airlines - and the repair facilities themselves - to make sure outsourced repairs meet the air safety standards and requirements of the individual airlines.

The FAA requires each repair station to have a government inspection at least once a year, spokesman Les Dorr said. The report says those inspections often are not being conducted by agency inspectors most familiar with standards and requirements of the airline whose planes are being repaired.

As much as five years lapsed between visits to some major maintenance facilities by inspectors assigned to individual airlines. Inspectors not assigned to a specific airline may not be familiar with the special maintenance requirements of that airline's planes, which are often customized.

The report cited a foreign facility, which repairs engines for an unidentified airline, that had not been inspected by an FAA inspector assigned to that airline in five years, a period in which the facility had repaired 39 of the air carrier's engines.

The report recommends FAA require airlines to provide more complete information on the extent and location of outsourced repairs, ensure air carriers and repair stations are better able to spot and correct problems, and improve the documentation of inspection results.

The FAA agreed it needs to do more. "We actually concur with all the inspector general's recommendations," Dorr said. "We have procedures in place that already address some of the recommendations, and we have some projects in progress that address others."

One safety expert said the report shows that the FAA has a long way to go toward resolving the outsourcing issue.

"What this report tells me is there is still a big problem with oversight - the FAA is not verifying that the oversight being provided by the air carriers is doing the job it's supposed to," said John Goglia, a former member of the National Transportation Safety Board.

David Bourne, director of the airline division for International Brotherhood of Teamsters, whose members include airline mechanics, said the FAA does not have enough inspectors to adequately oversee all the repair stations and their subcontractors, especially foreign repair stations. He said the lack of oversight extends beyond the adequacy of repairs to background checks of employees.

"You can see trouble brewing. It's a bad situation," Bourne said.

[sjc_1]

According to some, that is the free market. If some airlines crash a lot, people will stop flying them...problem solved!

[tucson23]

Is there any area of government oversight that the Republicans have not weakened so that big business can make more money?

[arohanui-2009]

Nothing will chaange til a plane load of innocent people fall out of the sky in a crowded area.

[jtormey3]

bobbysturgell.com
%u201CCount Bobby Sturgell%u201D
Episode #3: Sturgell And His Feckless FAA Publicly Joke About The Game They Play With American Passenger Safety, Federal Funds

In Episode #3, shiftless Sturgell again finds himself in charge of FAA, responsible for aviation safety.

%u201CBobby%u201D decides he is suddenly a stand-up comedian, joking about a failed FAA program putting jumbo-jet flights over densely-populated residential areas known as "NY/NJ/PHL Airspace Redesign%u201D, run by a %u201CProject Manager%u201D and former air traffic controller named Steve Kelley who once worked a mid-air air-crash that killed 6 people %u2013 a project which as of July 2007 wasted over US$53,500,000 of funds, and by now has probably wasted over 9-figures'' worth of money and resources. How is it that Bobby finds %u201Chumor%u201D in his waste of resources of every level of government, while he and FAA broke the law doing so? Sturgell thinks it%u2019s FUNNY that Airspace Redesign are %u201Cfull attorney employment initiatives%u201D? Those same resources could have been used to help citizens avert the mortgage crisis and purported need for financial bail-out. Those same resources could have been used in a pro bono commitment to feed the poor and help wounded war veterans. And YOU, Bobby Sturgell, think that kind of governmental waste putting us all in the harm%u2019s-way of unnecessary aeromercantile jet-paths, is somehow a JOKE?