What a horrible article. This article starts with the assumption American=Good/Foreign=Bad. Complete with a scaremongering title.
"repair shops thousands of miles away, in developing countries, where the mechanics who take the planes apart (completely) and put them back together (or almost) may not even be able to read or speak English."
Because developing countries are worse at this? Jets are designed to be maintained. It's systematic work. "Take this cowling off. Unscrew that, check this. Replace that." It's not like they are making hard drives. Oh wait. Developing countries already do that.
"But the F.A.A. no longer has the money or the manpower to do this." Wait... That sounds like the gist of the article. "FAA underfunded and unable to check check maintenance facilities"
Vanity Fair carries on with some more scaremongering:
"There are 731 foreign repair shops certified by the F.A.A. around the globe. How qualified are the mechanics in these hundreds of places? It’s very hard to check."
I usually like reading Vanity Fair articles. But this one got my "It's not American" xenophobia hackles up.
"At Aeroman’s El Salvador facility, only one mechanic out of eight is F.A.A.-certified. At a major overhaul base used by United Airlines in China, the ratio is one F.A.A.-certified mechanic for every 31 non-certified mechanics. In contrast, back when U.S. airlines performed heavy maintenance at their own, domestic facilities, F.A.A.-certified mechanics far outnumbered everyone else. At American Airlines’ mammoth heavy-maintenance facility in Tulsa, certified mechanics outnumber the uncertified four to one"
They also explain that to be FAA certified, you must be able to read and comprehend English. This is because the maintenance books are all in English. Also of note, Southwest is one of the airlines that do this, and they are purely a domestic service.
This is less about xenophobia than FAA oversight. This is a real problem.
Except that the technicians used at the major overhaul base in China - by which I presume they mean the AMECO Beijing venture co-owned by Lufthansa Technik, a division of the well known major airline - are relatively unlikely to have FAA certifications not because they're incredibly lax, but because they're substantially more likely to have been certified by EASA (the European standards body) instead. Which has absolutely nothing to with language standards and absolutely everything to do with European companies not considering the FAA standards to be any more exacting or relevant than their own, and their US clients generally agreeing.
Their affiliated training centre presently has a capacity for 550 people - equivalent to 10% of their workforce - at any one time on EASA (not FAA) accredited Part 66 training courses, plus a further 400 people on type-specific training. They've been training their own staff based on an EASA approved German-designed training scheme since 1996, so its not like the desire for certified engineers or their adherence to European training standards is a new thing either.
Does the FAA have an equivalency rule in place for certifications? The crux of this article is not whether or not the EASA is just as good as FAA certification. Its about how the FAA has little to no oversight over maintenance in other countries.
FAA rules and EASA rules are largely the same. The crux of the article is not EASA vs FAA it's more about places outside of both FAA and EASA jurisdiction.
Assuming they actually have that certification. That's the kicker. I am happy with certification by a reputable organization (FAA or EASS,) however we're assuming those certifications. Just because Lufthansa co-owns the venture doesn't mean they spent the money to send all of those mechanics to an accredited certification program. The Lufthansa CEO is known for being cheap -- he's on record complaining about (and initially refusing to install) full flat business class seats in the new A380s because of the lost revenue from the extra space they would have required. I fly Lufthansa about a dozen times per year and generally feel confident about maintanence, however if the reason for this is cost savings, there's a real danger of even minor communications issues becoming deadly.
I'm going to go out on a limb and suppose that not sending many staff to the massive training facility they also own next door to ensure smooth operation of part of their $4bn per annum third party MRO business probably isn't on Lufthansa's cost- cutting list, and the airlines signing multimillion dollar contracts with them might be a little more informed and thorough in their due diligence on certifications and staffing than travel photographers trying their hand at journalism...
I would expect that this is not their choice to make, but maybe I'm wrong. What are the FAA's rules with regard to major aircraft maintenance for US domestic airlines like Southwest?
It's a bit more than "unscrew this, replace that". Even the relatively simple maintenance procedures often require multiple steps and referring to bunch of charts and tables. Something small like using incorrect torque setting can have disastrous consequences. Most of mx manuals are not available in languages other than English. And it has nothing to do with competence of overseas mechanics, it's just humanely impossible to memorize those procedures. So yeah it's kind of a big deal.
PS: Also from personal experience I can tell that US does have significantly higher training and work standards than certain other countries when it comes to aviation. I immigrated to the US from overseas, am currently employed in aviation industry and hold a dozen of aviation certificates and ratings including those from FAA.
I think routes, prevailing weather, average crew experience, average aircraft age, geographic (topographic features) , airspace complexity and about a thousand other things go into that accident statistics. I couldn't find solid numbers in my 2 min google search, but I would think English speaking countries are probably close to the top of the list in terms of safety.
Plus there is a difference when South Korean maintenance personnel work on South Korean planes flow by South Korean crews, than just sending a US plane to the lowest contract bid in the developing world.
It's more just rich places. Europe, North America and Australia/Japan have very good safety records, and some don't speak English natively.
These places all have highly developed regulatory bodies that communicate with manufacturers and each other. Most happen to enforce English to ease communication on safety related issues.
It's more that FAA Oversight=Good/Less FAA Oversight=Bad. Not only are less of these mechanics FAA certified but the geographical element is also a problem.
The vast majority of this maintenance is probably level D heavy checks where you almost literally pull the plane apart and put it back together. However if they are doing non scheduled maintenance that means they are flying thousands of miles with tons of deferred (broken) maintenance items to whichever developing country is doing the fixin.
I would argue that reading and speaking English IS a big deal when your working on a plane that is labeled, placarded, has instrumentation, has maintenance manuals written in English. You know the last time you sat on a plane and there was a mechanic talking to the pilots and you are thinking "what the hell are we waiting for"? You were waiting for the maintenance logs to be completed and for the pilot to take a full inventory of any deferred item and how it changed the way he will be operating the plane today. The pilot was also probably talking to the mechanic who gave him the scoop on how many times so and so item has been written up recently or whatever other applicable info (it's in the logs, but it's nice when the mechanic can draw your attention to certain things). A gigantic part of the maintenance process is documentation and talking to the mechanics that fixed the problem.
Xenophobic was the exact word that came to mind. I have a close personal relative who spent several years working for one of the airlines mentioned in the article at the Aeroman facility in El Salvador and pictured in that article. I've visited it myself several times. He has also worked at maintenance facilities in the U.S. The article reads xenophobic/sensationalistic.
What is so scary about planes being serviced/maintained at these locations as opposed to in the U.S.? Do they have factual data comparisons of maintenance issues at these sites including maintenance facilities in the U.S.? Or do we just assume that they're inferior and if the maintenance facility is in the U.S. there MUST be less of the issues described in the article and attributed to these remote facilities.
Is the article about the F.A.A. sucking at inspecting sites, and is that the fault of the airlines? Aeroman and other MRO's will all bend over backwards to keep airlines (and their regulators if required) happy with the work being done at their facilities, as it's great money and jobs for those areas. Maybe the article should be less scaremongering and more questioning about why the F.A.A. seems to suck so bad at their jobs (at least that's what I got out of the article, that's not my opinion at all).
The article also conveniently overlooks the vast number of other certifications that Aeroman has to uphold, as if somehow the likes of EASA can't be trusted to inspect aircraft maintenance facilities. I'm even more perplexed by the evidence-free assumption that "private contractors in the US" (a designation which includes an awful lot of divisions of household-name conglomerates) must somehow have worse hiring practices than airline-owned maintenance divisions. And the rather odd categorisation of Singapore as in the "developing world", which it isn't by any definition of "developed country" that permits the designation to be applied to countries populated predominantly by non-white people...
All the statistical evidence points to air travel being safer than at any point in history but.... scary anecdotes and foreigners
Also missing is any anecdotal recounting of maintenance mistakes in US service facilities, and there are no doubt plenty. I'll give you one, the problems that resulted in engines falling off of the DC-10 were caused by mechanics using an unauthorized "shortcut" in the process of removing and replacing engines.
I think you've missed the point. It's not about American/Foreign but the implications of outsourcing things to less developed countries.
My mom has a foundry here in Slovenia and at some point she decided to outsource production of some relatively easy stuff to China, because it seemed cheaper. Well, suffice it to say she stopped after the first batch arrived, in which only about 30% of products were up to standards, which are easy to track in die casting: a few precise measurements and an X-ray, all totalling 5 minutes of work.
So the point is (usually): underdeveloped countries === cheaper and less educated labour + less oversight + lower quality. A recipe for disaster. But as long as profits go up it's not a big deal, right?
> My mom has a foundry here in Slovenia and at some point she decided to outsource production of some relatively easy stuff to China, because it seemed cheaper.
Herein lies the reason. Chinese factories will manufacture things with as much quality as you want, provided you pay accordingly. Pay for a good product, you'll get a good product. Pretty much all of electronics you use, including the most high-end devices, was made in China. Most of the Western "Chinese = crap" stereotype seems to be because of Western companies, which pay for low-quality manufacturing.
Also, consider that this "less developed country" builds nuclear reactors, has a space program, and runs better metro lines than most of Europe. They somehow manage not to screw all of this up more than anyone else.
> Chinese factories will manufacture things with as much quality as you want ... Pretty much all of electronics you use, including the most high-end devices, was made in China.
Agreed.
> Western "Chinese = crap" stereotype seems to be because of Western companies, which pay for low-quality manufacturing.
Eh? If I go on eBay/Aliexpress and order some consumer good, the only worthwhile thing I'm going to receive is the amazement at seeing exactly how far they skimped. I doubt choosing a more expensive listing would yield a better result. Nevermind the many stories I've heard of Chinese manufacturing autonomously substituting different part numbers on a BOM, causing a run to be reworked or scrapped.
This indicates the culture of "good-enough" cheapness belongs to China itself. Yes, it is possible to pay more (meaning supervise more) for quality production in China - if it weren't, everything wouldn't be made there. But this seems like getting quality in spite of Chinese customs.
> Eh? If I go on eBay/Aliexpress and order some consumer good, the only worthwhile thing I'm going to receive is the amazement at seeing exactly how far they skimped. I doubt choosing a more expensive listing would yield a better result.
I agree about Aliexpress (but note that general wisdom is, you don't buy consumer electronics there - on the other hand, electronics components like sensors, ICs, etc. are of perfect quality there). But most people in the West don't buy on Aliexpress, nor do they even know it exists. The general population's experience with Chinese manufacturing is all the crappy products they buy locally, that have the iconic "made in China" phrase written somewhere. Here you can blame the actual western companies that ordered production of this stuff.
I've been quite (pleasantly) surprised at the quality of electronic components/tools I've ordered off of Aliexpress/eBay. And yeah the leading indicator seems to be how consumer-focused the item is - A while back I did a test with 4 random 5V1A phone chargers, figuring one or two would be shoddy. The best of the lot could put out 600mA - I didn't even bother opening them up for visual inspection.
I attribute the popular refrain of "Chinese crap" to general simplemindedness bemoaning the state of the world. Your average person is not likely to focus on where a product is made when it works. Since everything is made in China, broken->"Made in China" is the association that gets made.
It's not like people aren't aware that it's the Western companies cheapening things, but they won't stop supporting them and the general unifying factor is still "China". Take something like Harbor Fright - it's clear that everything the store sells is "Chinese crap", yet they're still patronized by the people complaining the hardest. I think people just like to complain rather than act.
So that sort of negates the cost savings then doesn't it? Chinese manufacturing can be good, but that's due to process management. With aircraft, we're talking a much higher level of competency than assembly lines.
> So that sort of negates the cost savings then doesn't it?
Not necessarily - it still may be (and is) that good quality bulk manufacturing in China is cheaper than equivalent-quality manufacturing in the West.
> With aircraft, we're talking a much higher level of competency than assembly lines.
Why assume that they don't have it? They've proven they have competency at manufacturing (the very device you typed your comment on is most likely a proof of that), they've proven they can run big projects, high-tech projects, etc. I'm in China right now; I look around and don't see people afraid of elevators or subways or the shitton of skyscrapers they're paving the ground with here. The big cities look just the same as big cities in every "developed" country - where exactly does this assumption of their incompetence come from? They're people just as we are, with engineering schools just like the ones we have.
> Also, consider that this "less developed country" builds nuclear reactors, has a space program, and runs better metro lines than most of Europe. They somehow manage not to screw all of this up more than anyone else.
Not that I'm saying this is not true but you have to consider the sheer control of the media in China, would we hear about the screw-ups, you can cover just about anything up with that level of control.
They might not hear about them locally, but we probably would - China's control of media seems to be aimed more inward. I think we generally know about all of their big screwups in civilian sector.
Anyway, Western companies tend to also cover up as much as they can, and China is not North Korea. And they do have safety protocols.
Since China produces most of the electronics used in the US, you would be able to tell just how good a Chinese product can be even if the Chinese media is censored.
Think your Macbook Air is the best laptop you've ever used? That's made in China.
I think you just illustrated the problem with the article - you've turned a personal anecdote into a fairly ugly stereotype. There are a lot of well educated, highly skilled, and generally underemployed people in El Salvador, Mexico, and - yes - China.
I'll be concerned when I hear statistical evidence of higher failure rates from overseas shops. There are plenty of anecdotes of developed-country maintenance crews making serious mistakes - including one responsible for crashing a Concorde and killing everyone on board.
>you've turned a personal anecdote into a fairly ugly stereotype.
You seem to be implying that this personal anecdote isn't representative of a larger trend, which is strange.
It's certainly possible to do business with developing countries, but one has to be especially careful with regards to work quality. This is neither new or xenophobic. Claiming otherwise is absurd.
With aviation and other life-and-death products, I find these concerns to be especially relevant.
Moreover, I (respectfully!) contend that your comment is a prime example of political correctness pushed to a dangerous extreme. Just because it's a stereotype doesn't mean it isn't mostly true, unpalatable though that thought may be. It so happens that Chinese people eat a lot of rice, and Chinese manufacturers have a rich history of cutting costs by deceitfully degrading quality. These two statements are neither false nor bigoted.
> You seem to be implying that this personal anecdote isn't representative of a larger trend, which is strange.
In what sense does a single data point represent a trend?
> It's certainly possible to do business with developing countries, but one has to be especially careful with regards to work quality.
You also need to be careful of work quality from developed countries. There is no shortage of examples of shoddy work being done in developed countries.
>In what sense does a single data point represent a trend?
It doesn't. It's the other way around: a single datapoint can be congruent or incongruent with an observed and measured trend. This is the case with the present example.
>You also need to be careful of work quality from developed countries.
You always have to be careful of craftsmanship, but to imply that there's no systematic variance as a function of national origin is disingenuous at best and insane at worst.
Again, I'm positively flabbergasted by the extent to which people want to play with words and run in circles around such issues, especially given the extent to which these problems are documented.
Has it really become that taboo to observe that certain countries have a poor track record, on the whole? Am I only allowed to criticize my home country, now?
There are many highly competent people and organisations in "developing" countries. It only makes sense to evaluate things on a case by case basis. Making blanket generalisations is not constructive as there are countless cases where naive generalisations and prejudices turn out to be false.
>I'm arguing that we should only consider evidence.
This is false, and borders on an outright lie, as evidenced by the fact that you're actively endorsing the dismissal of documented evidence on accounts of political correctness.
I invite you to re-read this entire conversation, and the absurdity of your comment will be apparent.
I have zero interest in "political correctness". I'm in favour of considering data at a finer granularity than you are in order to obtain a more accurate picture. Consider the example of someone who is an expert on a particular subject and happens to live in a country which on average has a poor education system. Is it better to use the generalisation about that country having a poor education system, or the more detailed case-specific facts?
>I'm in favour of considering data at a finer granularity than you are in order to obtain a more accurate picture.
I understand where you're coming from, but interactions are only interpretable after you've considered the main effects. To be sure, I'm not advocating that people not employ finer-grained measures, but in evaluating risk, you must consider overall trends (if only to discover that your specific case is an exception).
Moreover, a healthy intellectual environment demands that we be able to discuss large trends without being accused of bigotry.
>Is it better to use the generalisation about that country having a poor education system, or the more detailed case-specific facts?
This is a false dichotomy. It's note one or the other. I will -- again -- repeat my arguments:
1. We should consider both large trends and specific cases.
2. Considering general trends -- which necessarily imply some non-trivial degree of generalization -- is not xenophobic in and of itself.
3. Willful ignorance (in the sense of "ignoring") of large trends is a Bad Thing.
I'm willing to believe you have no interest in political correctness, but then I must insist that your rhetoric is in contradiction with your values. You're ultimately endorsing something you oppose.
> You seem to be implying that this personal anecdote isn't representative of a larger trend, which is strange.
If you let me chime in: by odd coincidence, we use a Slovenian contractor for aluminium die casting of our products. We have troubles with missed deadlines, non-negotiated requirements (like rising minimum batch size years into production) and poor communication.
Does our isolated experience represent a trend with, shall I call it, Eastern Europe?
> I'll be concerned when I hear statistical evidence of higher failure rates from overseas shops.
The issue seems to be getting that evidence, when the airlines have a strong disincentive not to report broken planes and the FAA finds it hard (for reasons of resources and the mechanics of travelling to a distant facility) to surprise-inspect facilities. That's not unique to offshored facilities, though.
There are very clear requirements for reporting certain in-flight failures, and very clear requirements for dispatching with some equipment inoperative. In addition, log books can be inspected by the FAA for patterns of failure, or for information after a specific failure.
I think this is a complete non-issue for everyone except US-based Airframe & Powerplant mechanics. If you're worried about aviation safety, don't fly on regional carriers in Eastern Europe, South America, or any third-world country. Flying on any major (for flights operated by the major, not under a codeshare) is the safest form of long distance travel by quite a wide margin.
On the small private planes that I fly, we have annual inspections where the airplane is carefully inspected and in order to do that, lots of disassembly and re-assembly is required. It's inherently dangerous, and I do an extremely careful pre-flight and will not take passengers on the first flight post-maintenance. I've found an oil line only finger tight (dumped oil directly onto the exhaust at any speed over 1700 RPM), various electrical and avionics anomalies, and other smaller mechanical issues. And in my case, this is all done by FAA-certified, English-speaking, hard-working, dedicated A&Ps right here in the good old USA. That you can find examples of maintenance errors from overseas repair shops is unsurprising; it's because you can find it from any repair shop.
The irony is that if you were to say in the US "I outsourced some work to Slovenia", they'd probably consider it "less developed".
Cheaper is nearly always poorer quality wherever you go. China is certainly capable of extremely high quality work (iPhone!), it's just that they market on a low-cost basis instead.
> My mom has a foundry here in Slovenia and at some point she decided to outsource production of some relatively easy stuff to China, because it seemed cheaper. Well, suffice it to say she stopped after the first batch arrived, in which only about 30% of products were up to standards, which are easy to track in die casting: a few precise measurements and an X-ray, all totalling 5 minutes of work.
So your expectation is that you can do it cheaper elsewhere to the same level of quality? There is high quality manufacturing in China and many companies do that. You can't expect to the the level of quality you want sending some plans over to a remote country to a dumping price.
For how good Chinese manufacturing can be just look at your apple computer.
> For how good Chinese manufacturing can be just look at your apple computer.
The difference between Apple and FAA? Apple has nearly unlimited resources, so they can be present on site to make sure quality is top notch. FAA does not. Oversight makes all the difference.
The FAA is not the only body in the world that pays attention to aircraft maintenance. Do you honestly think that airlines paying upwards of $500k for a maintenance check on a >$30 million asset that can do even more financial damage to their reputation have fewer resources and less interest in maintaining standards than the company that sells you a $500 phone which you'll probably trade in after 2-3 years.
First of all this discussion was about the mother of the person I replied to, not the FAA. Secondly this is not a question of money as it is a question of volume and communication. Manufacturing is not plane maintenance, it's about making a profit from margins. If you are willing to sacrifice a bit of your profit for a higher quality product and you have a large enough volume that producing in China even makes sense then you will be able to perform basic quality control.
Any outsourcing only makes sense if you have a high volume of goods. I can have a better quality control producing something here locally than to outsource it to the other side of the pond, even if the country is technologically more advanced than my own just because I lose the ability to oversee the process.
None of that is relevant to the FAA though. The FAA has a funding problem. It should play absolutely no role where planes are maintained. This is a general problem in the US where governmental oversight is traditionally badly funded. Even the IRS has not nearly enough employees for the job they do.
Also Apple can reject faulty products before they enter distribution. A faulty airplane repair isn't generally noticed until they sift through the wreckage.
> where the mechanics who take the planes apart (completely) and put them back together (or almost) may not even be able to read or speak English.
Are completely American (or English-speaking anyway) centric and complete scare mongering. English may be the "language of aviation", but that doesn't mean that repair manuals are not allowed to appear in any other language. The picture the article paints is a bunch of idiotic foreigners staring at English instructions, unable to comprehend them.
Airbus is essentially a French and German company - do you think every maintenance technician and assembly technician on the assembly line speaks good English? It's not beyond the capabilities of either the big aircraft manufacturers or the large maintenance companies to translate the information their workers need into their local language. It also means you can employ the best people for the job, rather than just people who speak good English.
As far as I understand, the reason this is a problem is because the FAA requires English language proficiency.
Within that context, this is an anecdote about the ineffectiveness of the FAA at enforcing its regulations, which is troublesome regardless of whether that particular regulation makes any sense, because one typically imagines most regulations regarding aircraft maintenance are probably worth enforcing.
(fwiw, I agree with you that this particular regulation probably doesn't make sense, as long as manuals are available in the technician's language. And the article's tone is off-putting. But I think there's a sane and completely rational reason to be concerned by the fact that mechanics don't speak English. It's more of a canary (in light of relevant regulations) than an actual problem unto itself. The solution is probably to bring regulations into the 21st century, and then actually enforce them.)
Unfortunately it's not just the manuals that are in English.
The prior work is written up and signed off in English, the pilot/cabin tech logs will all be written up in English. The current AD/SBs (usually extra maintenance/fixes) will all be issued in English and so on.
Further to that you have to write the work up in English, and get it signed off and declared safe to fly in English too.
Other parts of the world already operate on non-English, e.g. Russia. They use the same aircraft we do but in an entirely different framework. However their framework does not necessarily apply if you want to get an aircraft cleared to fly in Europe (EASA) or the states (FAA).
The point seemed to be that FAA don't really know who and how the planes are serviced and maintained. It's not a proposition of foreign work being inferior per se: it's just that FAA don't really know if the quality of work is high enough, and that it's expensive and resource-hungry to inspect foreign facilities, and that it's also impossible to do inspections without giving an advance warning.
Makes sense. But I wonder if they can't just state that only FAA certified maintenance that, further, has been regularly inspected by FAA staff is acceptable for US airliner fleets. If it's hard to inspect foreign facilities then let the airlines deal with the problem, by either bringing maintenance back to FAA soil or by paying for the FAA presence overseas.
Why is it a horrible or xenophobic article ?
It says it very clearly "The Federal Aviation Administration is supposed to be inspecting all the overseas facilities that do maintenance for airlines—just as it is supposed to inspect those in America. But the F.A.A. no longer has the money or the manpower to do this." This is a legitimate concern for whoever is relying on F.A.A. to do its part well after letting other repair shop do the work.
How will people know if not told what is going on ? I was assuming the same when they said they are taking the aircraft for repair when I got stuck because of a repair issue. I think the point is to read with an open mind and appreciate the issue than being so judgmental.
Given the fact that the FAA seems overstretched and underfunded as it is, there are perfectly legitimate issues to be raised about the prospect of an additional geographic, cultural, and (quite significant) cost barriers being placed in the way of the work they have to do -- and on top of this, about the issue of permanently exporting a considerable number of high-paying middle class jobs. You can't just paint these concerns xenophobic scaremongering.
It's not like they are making hard drives. Oh wait. Developing countries already do that.
Making airplanes is a bit more sensitive a matter than making hard drives. Do I need to explain why?
Aircraft maintenance is extraordinarily serious business.
I don't see xenophobia in the article- I see "the logistics of inspection are now more complex." This also includes basic requirements such as drug testing and security screenings of employees.
In some of these countries, the war on drugs has left the governments in an uneasy place.
But behind that is that the FAA is severely underfunded. This is a fact.
> Because developing countries are worse at this? Jets are designed to be maintained. It's systematic work. "Take this cowling off. Unscrew that, check this. Replace that." It's not like they are making hard drives. Oh wait. Developing countries already do that.
Jets carry living people. Hard drives carry data. People's live require a higher standard of care than data. If the instruction manuals are written in English only then how can a non-English speaker possibly have read them?
Most of the non-Chinese I know that have read Art of War don't fully understand it. Further, I've seen/heard discussions on the work go nowhere because all parties had not read the same translation. Of course, Your (Air) Mileage May Vary.
Except instruction manuals are not poetry - it's not difficult to translate them, and all of tech shares a common language (of math and engineering drawings) anyway.
The GP's point was that there exist this job called "translator" - we've figured out how to enable communication across language barriers a very, very long time ago.
Do official translations exist of these manuals? The certification that the workers in the non-US repair shops don't have is in English only. This is not a job where you want even the remotest chance of an error to exist in the manual.
I know that the prevailing opinion on this site is that all regulation is bad. However, for something like flying which is a matter of life and death regulation is literally a life saver.
Nowhere is this argument implying that regulation is bad. If those maintenance works are legal and the plane is still able to legally fly then it means that yes, somehow those non-US repair shops got the required resources to perform the necessary repairs with accordance to the standards and regulations.
Or rather no one has yet noticed whether or not the repairs are up to standard and because the US authorities can't inspect the facilities because they are abroad no one can know unless they are not up to standard and it leads to an incident.
NB I'm absolutely not implying that there is anything wrong with the maintenance. I'm implying that the US authorities would not know if there was.
The other day this anecdote was going around on metafilter, the "DC 2 1/2": http://www.cnac.org/aircraft02.htm where for wartime expediency reasons a DC-2 was fitted and flown with a DC-3 wing on one side, which was about 5 feet shorter. The article contains this sentence:
"Disaster was close, too close; the mechanics mated the wing, bolts went in, the two butted nicely, they called me to tell me the bottom would not pull up butt to butt, although all bolts went through. Upon inspection, I found that Douglas inspecotors failed to see that the bottom wing bulb angles were not properly trimmed, thus the gap. I complimented our Chinese mechanics. Men of lesser experience might have tried to pull the angles together and a fatal crash would have followed. Douglas was advised via Andy Priester. I cannot praise our Chinese mechanics enough. Once trained and well led, they could be compared to the very best."
Hey, that's good. I mean, if those countries are "developing countries", not just "underdeveloped countries". So we avoid the usual tone where "developing" actually means "not developed and never going to develop".
70 years ago hardly anyone was thinking that they'd drive a car made by a Japanese company. 30 years ago hardly anyone was thinking they'd do their daily correspondence through a smartphone that was manufactured in China. 20 years from now hardly anyone will think twice about flying in a plane whose regular maintenance is done in Mexico, China, Romania, Estonia or whatever -- and possibly even designed and made in China. (After all, 25 years ago not that many were thinking that the British Airways plane they flew was actually maintained by cheaper labour from Finland, and today we fly in planes made in Brazil, which many also call a "developing country".).
But this article... cheap xenophobic fearmongering.
Most comments on here regarding xenophobia etc seem to be missing the overall point of this article.
The real issue is that these companies and individuals cannot be held accountable by the FAA. Usually every single item of work can only be officially signed off (which makes you legally responsible for it) by somebody the regulator considers qualified to do so. If it later turns out that that particular job was done incorrectly a paper trail follows directly to the individual(s) responsible. Not surprisingly this kind of accountability makes your average engineer very diligent.
If you have a lot of engineers that are not accredited and so cannot legally approve work (someone comes in and rubber-stamps everything), or are based in a country with a sketchy legal system you're gonna have a bad time upholding standards, regardless of how "good" the engineers are and the quality of their English. It would be xenophobic if the FAA was freaking out about work done in Europe, Canada, Australia etc too - but it isn't.
I can't speak for every one of the facilities mentioned in the article, but for one of the airlines mentioned that has work done in the Aeroman facility in El Salvador, the airline staffs American F.A.A. certified mechanics with decades of experience to oversee the operations performed at the facility.
Whether or not the maintenance is any good, as a passenger the best airline I've flown with in terms of apparent maintenance (i.e. everything looks like it works) and cleanliness is Emirates. I flew with BA a couple of months ago (in business) and the aircraft were filthy and very old.
Vanity Fair, of all places,for committing actual journalism
That's not really surprising. Vanity Fair has a long, storied history of great longform journalism and some of the most vernerable American journalists wrote / write for them.
I dunno, reads like a tabloid smear piece to me, and I suspect I used to speak with more representatives of aircraft MRO facilities per week than the author has managed in their life...
Seemed like a whole lot of scary intimation and not much in the way of facts. Sure, a couple anecdotes of maintenance issues, but no evidence that the rate is any higher than it is in the US.
Seems like every other paragraph contained something like this: "Then everything is put back exactly where it was, at least in theory." Suggesting imminent life-threatening danger, without having to worry about any pesky facts to back it up.
VF from its inception had contributed its share to good quality journalism and boasted of many distinguished thinkers, including Hitchens, as its regular contributors.
Although somewhat alarming on the face of it, it's hard for the untrained observer to say whether this merits deep systemic concern or whether it's largely more scaremongering about things being done in foreign places.
1. The article cites numerous examples of problems in recent years that have been attributed somehow to improper maintenance in developing world facilities, but doesn't discuss the statistical or historical incidence of maintenance errors for domestic aircraft maintenance and overhauls.
Could it be that these problems, however sensational they sound when juxtaposed with China or El Salvador, have always been with us? At roughly the same rate?
2. Despite the fact that this trend has been seemingly ongoing for more than a decade now, recent statistics suggest that the last decade has been unprecedentedly safe in the history of aviation:
Of course, it's possible we are the beneficiaries of uncannily favourable coincidences, but the point is, there's an explanatory burden in why, if offshore maintenance were truly the problem the article insinuates it is, it doesn't make a more pronounced actuarial mark.
3. Despite the sensation that discussions of flight safety evoke (due perhaps to our sense of its innate precariousness, at some instinctual level), it may well be that airplanes are by far not the most quantitatively-statistically significant thing built or maintained in the developing world to which we entrust our safety.
Except for those with a preternatural knack for somehow avoiding travel by automobile, we have, do, and will again entrust our lives on a daily basis to assembly code written by Japanese, Korean, and probably Chinese programmers. A great deal of manufactured products, industrial materials, and other artifacts of modernity are manufactured in the developing world. If this alone were truly a life-and-limb disaster in the making, as the article implies, one would think it would be reflected in widespread mortality of all sorts, everywhere.
Actual, with the volume of airplanes sold to non-domestic carriers the need to have foreign companies maintain them is very important. It is important that the global capability to fix/repair and maintain the airplanes grows with the demand in order to assure safe reliable flight. The world is full of MRO’s, (maintenance repair and overhaul) centers for many years. So this is not new.
I've noticed this- even Manila is increasingly a location for this sort of maintenance work.
I think there should be a place where we as customers can easily see where carriers we may be considering are maintaining their planes and if they have appropriate regulation and oversight for that work.
But would they go for the cheapest if it was the most insecure and that information clearly presented when booking flights ? I believe they at least could and would balance the risks then.
Of course I agree we all have a different economic power (I, for one, have never set foot on a plane) but I have the feeling most of the HN crowd could discriminate between companies.
The greatest economic mystery of the last 50 years is "why is everything so cheap in developing countries?". It's surprising that more people aren't fascinated by this mystery.
Why is it so cheap for workers at this plant to obtain a vocational education and support themselves? Why is it so cheap to operate the plant? What is the ultimate cost driver in developed countries that makes everything so much more expensive?
What's odd is that some developing countries, like Angola, are absurdly expensive.
It's not been a mystery at all for about 200 years, that might be why.
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776:
"If a foreign country can supply us with a commodity cheaper than we ourselves can make it, better buy it of them with some part of the produce of our own industry employed in a way in which we have some advantage. The general industry of the country, being always in proportion to the capital which employs it, will not thereby be diminished ... but only left to find out the way in which it can be employed with the greatest advantage."
The ultimate cost driver in developed countries is low salaries and low to zero costs of real estate, which are of course interlinked.
There's nothing especially odd about Angola. It's cheap to live in... if you're happy with an Angolan standard of living and the unusually high probability of being subject to violent crime in most parts. A risk which means that the minority of comfortable and safe places to live in and shops which import luxuries local people can't afford (like many basic foodstuffs...) can charge what they like to expats that don't have a lot of choice and do have cost-of-living adjustments and danger money added to their already high-by-Western-standards oil-worker salaries.
The role of absurdly high real estate costs is something that is very infrequently discussed, but very important. As all businesses rely on land, labour, energy and resources, a big increase in any of those three has flow on effects.
Developed counties like the US were once low-tax, low-regulation outsourcing destinations with comparative advantages that outweighed even higher shipping costs.
I hate to see these jobs go overseas, but that's the high cost of over regulation.
This article's main example is of a maintenance problem with a foreign aircraft maintained and flown outside the US. It's unclear what the FAA could do about that.
Also, the article cites incidents, but has no evidence as to whether this is better or worse than the previous heavily regulated and unionized system.
I can cite my own anecdotes passed on to me by family members who were commercial pilots in the US about shoddy maintenance by US mechanics, and how these problems seemed to mysteriously spike when a new labor contract was on the table.
If there's a real problem here, too bad the article doesn't get to it.
Without knowing the details I suspected unions would be partially responsible. I know that the incidence of 'accidents' spikes remarkably around negotiation time. The last time I read about this, the airline was fighting the unions when suddenly two 747s 'accidntally' collided while under tow in lax. What a surprise.
Unions in negotiation, in the airline business, don't crash planes into each other, and you should feel ashamed for suggesting that they would.
The actual common tactic is using a variant of work-to-rule. Normally, maintenance crews can "backfill" their bureaucracy a bit after the physical work on an aircraft is done, which means the plane is going back into service while they file the paperwork.
During a protest action, instead they refuse to release the plane for service until every last bit of relevant paperwork has been filled out, signed, stamped, filed in triplicate and multiple receipts issued for it, which can involve tracking down a lot of people all over the airport to fill out and sign things. Which is technically what the procedures require, but basically never happens outside of a time when the maintenance union wants to gain leverage over the airline.
If you've ever been on a flight which had minor maintenance done at the gate, and then sat for 45 minutes while they "waited on the logbook", that was likely a work-to-rule action by the union.
"repair shops thousands of miles away, in developing countries, where the mechanics who take the planes apart (completely) and put them back together (or almost) may not even be able to read or speak English."
Because developing countries are worse at this? Jets are designed to be maintained. It's systematic work. "Take this cowling off. Unscrew that, check this. Replace that." It's not like they are making hard drives. Oh wait. Developing countries already do that.
"But the F.A.A. no longer has the money or the manpower to do this." Wait... That sounds like the gist of the article. "FAA underfunded and unable to check check maintenance facilities"
Vanity Fair carries on with some more scaremongering:
"There are 731 foreign repair shops certified by the F.A.A. around the globe. How qualified are the mechanics in these hundreds of places? It’s very hard to check."
I usually like reading Vanity Fair articles. But this one got my "It's not American" xenophobia hackles up.