Do You Know Where the Plane You’re Traveling in Has Been Repaired?

by Mike Hall, Dec 15, 2009

When you step aboard a flight on a U.S. airplane, you probably assume that plane’s major maintenance work has been performed by certified mechanics at the one of the carrier’s U.S. hangers. That’s not necessarily so.

The nation’s major airlines now send more than 20 percent of their planes to repair stations in developing counties, including those in central America, Africa and Asia for major maintenance, including, complete overhauls where the aircraft is stripped to the bare metal then put back together.

Transport Workers (TWU) President James C. Little says it’s time to blow the lid off the “airline industry’s dirty little secret” of offshore maintenance:

Our union is going to tell the public that offshoring means your plane has a lower standard for maintenance. It means the licensure and security standard for the mechanics and their helpers who worked on that aircraft is questionable, and it means that federal regulators had limited access to facilities where the plane was repaired.

This week, TWU aircraft mechanics and other TWU members are on Capitol Hill distributing “boarding passes” to lawmakers and others outlining the growing trend by airlines to offshore their aircraft repair and highlighting the potential safety and security problems. The union plans similar actions at major airports and also will mount an advertising campaign.

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) has offered an amendment to the FAA reauthorization bill to tighten up the rules on the overseas stations, that she calls ”an aviation safety risk.”

Right now, maintenance is being performed at foreign stations that the Federal Aviation Administration has not certified or inspected. To think that these types of stations are doing work on the airplanes that carry Americans across the country and around the world every day is incredibly scary.

While the offshore facilities must be certified by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) before U.S. carriers are allowed to send their planes there for work, the FAA’s oversight, inspections and rules are far more lax than required in the United States, says TWU.

For example, in this country, only licensed mechanics are allowed to conduct repairs. But FAA rules for offshore repair stations require that only supervisors—not workers doing the hands-on repairs—have mechanics’ licenses.

U.S. aircraft mechanics generally work with the airline repair manual open in front of them and follow detailed procedures. According to recent congressional testimony, the majority of the workers in third-party repair bases are not only not licensed mechanics, large numbers of them lack the ability to read the English-language manuals supplied by the airlines.

Steve Luis, an aircraft mechanic and president of TWU Local 514 in Tulsa, Okla., calls the offshore repairs “scandalous.”

The level of oversight in these offshore repair facilities is scandalous. We have heard reports of kids as young as fourteen working on planes and we have seen evidence that in some cases you may have a 100 or more workers doing repairs inspected by one licensed mechanic.

In the United States, FAA inspectors are not only in most major maintenance facilities on a daily basis to monitor work and repairs but can make surprise inspections at any time. Luis, a mechanic at American Airline’s Tulsa repair station, says:

Under our international treaties and aviation rules, the FAA has to give a week’s notice before they are allowed to visit these repair facilities. In contrast, on any given day, we have four or five federal inspectors on site at our Tulsa maintenance base.

The level of security is not as high at foreign repair stations. Employees are not required to undergo the same type of rigorous background investigations or drug test U.S. workers must.

Says TWU’s Little:

We hope the Senate closes these loopholes that allow U.S. carriers to run away from long-established safety and security practices. This isn’t about free trade or fixing a plane that breaks down overseas. We need to fix a breakdown in safety and security that threatens millions of Americans and especially frequent flyers like members of Congress.

For more information on airlines offshoring their repair work, click here for a recent three-part series on NPR.

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