6A MONDAY , DECEMBER 8, 2003 • • • THE CHARLOTTE OBSERVER | www.charlotte .com

over.For some repair station me-

chanics, in-house training is lessthorough than what airlines offer.Many mechanics at repair sta-tions are contract workers, ratherthan permanent employees, and“there is economic pressure tominimize training” for those tem-porary workers, according to a1999 study by researchers at theState University of New York atBuffalo.

In aircraft maintenance, inex-perience and poor training canprove deadly.

On Aug. 21, 1995, an AtlanticSoutheast Airlines turbopropwas flying from Atlanta to theMississippi coast, with 29 peopleaboard. Suddenly, the planelurched to the left and began los-ing altitude fast. A propellerblade had snapped in two.

For nine minutes, pilots foughtfor control. Passengers prayed asa flight attendant coached themto prepare for an emergencylanding.

Finally, the plane plowed into ahayfield in Carroll County, Ga.Nine passengers and a pilot ulti-mately died from injuries suf-

cluding that it’s harder for air-lines to ensure quality workwhen they farm it out to contrac-tors.

Aviation consultant BartCrotty, a former FAA inspectorwho has examined many repairstations, said he expects the out-sourcing trend will hurt the cali-ber of maintenance.

“But will it be to the degreethat it affects safety?” Crottyasks. “That’s the question.”

Problems found more often atrepair shops than airlines

About 4,600 U.S. repair sta-tions do outsourced work. Theyrange from four-person shopsthat repair propellers to sprawl-ing facilities that employ hun-dreds of mechanics and are au-thorized to work on every kindof jet.

Industry leaders say most me-chanics do excellent work, re-gardless of whether they’re em-ployed by airlines or contractshops.

“I think we’re all damn good atmaintenance,” said Sarah Mac-Leod, who helps run the Aero-nautical Repair Station Associa-tion, a group that representsthird-party shops. “…The realityof the industry is if you don’t doit well, you get sued.”

No formal studies have exam-ined how repair stations’ workcompares to that done by the air-lines.

But The Observer found thatwhen the FAA visits repair sta-tions, it is slightly more likely tofind problems.

When FAA officials inspectcontract stations, they find prob-lems that result in enforcementor follow-up action 5.4 percent ofthe time, according to one data-base with information aboutFAA inspections since 2000.That’s higher than the 3.8 per-cent rate the FAA found when in-specting airline maintenanceshops. In 2002, the differencewas slightly larger.

The enforcement actions in-clude cases where shops re-leased planes with problems thatcould affect flight.

The Observer derived the fig-ures from the FAA’s most com-prehensive inspection database.The database covers only a por-tion of inspections conducted atthe top 10 airlines, but includesthose at all other airlines and re-pair stations.

For smaller airlines, whichcan’t afford elaborate operationsfor heavy maintenance, contractrepair stations are a logical solu-tion. Often, experts say, contrac-tors can specialize, and can be-come better at some proceduresthan the airlines.

Executives at Greensboro-headquartered Timco AviationServices Inc., a leading repaircontractor that serves severalmajor airlines, say their work isas good as that done by the air-lines. They say flights are rarelycanceled or delayed as a result ofmechanical problems followingtheir overhauls.

Timco executives contendthey undergo more scrutiny thanairlines because, in addition toreviews by the FAA and theirown inspectors, their customerssend representatives to overseetheir work.

“There’s many more layers ofoversight for a company likeours than a typical air carriermaintenance facility,” saidTimco President Gil West.

Southwest Airlines out-sources about three-quarters ofits maintenance, more than mostairlines. Jim Sokol, the airline’svice president of maintenanceand engineering, said third-partyshops do work that is compara-ble in quality. “I think we’ve donea darn good job at controllingthat,” Sokol said.

Trend away from in-housework affects training, pay

Prior to the 1980s, airlines didalmost all their own mainte-nance. That changed with dereg-ulation and the increased avail-ability of leased aircraft, whichmade starting an airline easierand less expensive. Those start-ups didn’t have money to buildelaborate maintenance facilities,so they found third-party provid-ers.

More repair stations openedas entrepreneurs realized howmuch money could be made.And more major airlines turnedto those repair stations whenthey realized how much could besaved.

The trend radically changedairline maintenance.

At US Airways’ maintenancehangars, which are typical ofhangars run by major airlines,top mechanics earn about$62,000 a year, and virtually allare certified.

According to FAA data, theagency conducts about 200 in-spections a year at the Charlottehangar, and more than 400 annu-ally in Pittsburgh, where the FAAoffice that oversees US Airwaysis located.

At about 80 repair stations cer-tified to work on large airliners,however, the FAA does an aver-age of about eight inspections ayear, The Observer found. Onlyabout half of the mechanics arecertified.

According to a recent surveyby Airline Maintenance maga-zine, line mechanics, who repairproblems reported by pilots anddo routine maintenance checks,earn an average of $36,300 a yearat repair stations – $20,000 lessthan those at major airlines.Third-party contractors tend tohire less experienced mechanicsand must cope with higher turn-

fered in the fiery crash. Crash investigators faulted

Hamilton Standard’s Rock Hillrepair shop, which inspected thepropeller blade about a year ear-lier. Investigators concluded thatworkers at the Rock Hill plantfailed to detect corrosion thatlikely caused the blade to snap.

The National TransportationSafety Board found that the in-specting technician didn’t havethe required training. Many ofthe station’s inspectors were ex-perienced in the automobile in-dustry, not aviation.

“There was tremendous pres-sure in the Rock Hill, S.C., plant,with the emphasis on movingthose blades through the processrather than ensuring that eachblade was correctly inspected,”said Jim Hall, then NTSB chair-man, following the board’s in-vestigation.

Atlantic Southeast declined totalk about the crash.

In the years since the accident,the Rock Hill plant has closed,and Hamilton Standard hasmerged with another company tobecome Hamilton Sundstrand.The company acknowledged

that some of its procedures thenwere inadequate, according toHamilton Sundstrand spokesper-son Peg Hashem. She said thecompany launched an extensiveprogram to “ensure that such afracture did not happen again.”

After deadly crash, FAA told to increase oversight

Less than a year after the At-lantic Southeast crash, tragedystruck again.

In May 1996, a maintenancecontractor at Miami Interna-tional Airport improperlystowed oxygen generators in thecargo hold of a ValuJet DC-9.Soon after takeoff, the generatorscaught fire and the plane crashedinto the Florida Everglades, kill-ing all 110 aboard.

After the crash, the NTSB ad-vised the FAA to improve itsoversight of contract stations.Critics and watchdog groupshave made the same recommen-dation ever since.

In another report issued earli-er this year, the U.S. Transporta-tion Department’s inspector gen-eral’s office concluded that theFAA still doesn’t adequately

oversee maintenance contrac-tors, and hasn’t kept up with thegrowing outsourcing trend.

The audit found that the FAAhad overlooked problems at 18 of21 repair stations that govern-ment inspectors examined. Re-pair stations were using im-proper parts and outdated manu-als, auditors found. They alsodiscovered some stations didn’tfix problems found in past in-spections, and had insufficientlydocumented whether workerswere qualified and trained.

Instead of increasing its scru-tiny of repair stations, the FAAhas inspected them less in recentyears, The Observer found. Thenumber of FAA inspections of re-pair stations dropped more than20 percent from 2000 to 2002, ac-cording to a database analysis.

FAA officials say fewer inspec-tions don’t necessarily equate toinadequate surveillance. Theysay inspectors are doing a betterjob focusing on areas where risksare highest.

They say they’re also workingto improve their scrutiny of re-pair stations. For example, theyare trying to improve communi-cation among the FAA officesthat monitor those stations, ac-cording to Jim Ballough, the di-rector of flight standards.

“We’re going to see how wecan leverage our folks a little bet-ter to do that oversight,” Bal-lough said.

Repair stations play role inkeeping regulations outdated

The regulations the FAA triesto enforce are outdated, too.

Changes aimed at moderniz-ing repair station regulationshave been delayed for years,largely because of station opera-tors’ concerns. The first revision,effective in January, would re-quire repair stations to revampthe manuals they submit to theFAA.

Another change, scheduled for2005, would require all repair sta-tions to have FAA-approvedtraining manuals.

But another proposal, whichwould have required repair sta-tions to have quality assuranceprograms, was shelved after in-dustry representatives said itwasn’t necessary and would addto their costs.

All the major U.S. airlines arerequired to have quality assur-ance programs.

Harder to guarantee quality of work performed off-site

Studies have found it’s harderfor airlines to ensure good main-tenance work when they farm itout.

A recent Northwestern Uni-versity study found that withthird-party maintenance, “thecommunications channels be-come much more complex, andhence there is greater scope forerror.”

The State University of NewYork study came to similar con-clusions, saying that removingthe maintenance operationsfrom the airline “must introducean error potential which is ab-sent from in-house operations.”

But the researchers found noevidence that a group of mechan-ics at a large repair station mademore errors than a group at a ma-jor airline.

In some ways, repair stationshave a more complicated jobthan airline shops. Many stationsserve multiple airlines, each withits own maintenance rules. TheSUNY researchers found morethan 20 maintenance manuals atone repair station.

Experts argue standards canslip when repair work is done bycontractors who are removedfrom an airline’s operations.

In a 1996 memo to co-workers,a former maintenance managerat Timco pointed to potentialproblems.

“It appears that the lack of dis-cipline in following proper pro-cedures, even knowing to followproper procedures, is terriblylacking in the Foreman and Pro-ject Manager ranks. It’s get thejob done, I’ll shortcut the proce-dures and by the way I’m not ac-countable for them…,” reads thememo, which is cited in lawsuitsagainst the company. “Somebodyneeds to hit these people over thehead with a 2 by 4.”

Timco has been under newmanagement since 2001, and itsofficials say those criticismsdon’t apply now.

“What I can say today, at least,is that we have a very strong fo-cus on quality and safety,” saysWest, the company president.

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SOURCE: NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD, FAA, MECHANICS WM PITZER/ NEWS GRAPHICS EDITORCopyright © 2003 The Charlotte Observer

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Training, oversight scrutinized–––––––

Planes from 1A

FAA Maintenance Oversight: Years of Criticism

For more than 15 years, watchdog groups have faulted the Federal Aviation Administration for failing to keep close enough tabs on airlinemaintenance. Among the reports:

A 1985 report by the Congressional Gener-al Accounting Office discovered troublinggaps in the FAA’s airline safety inspectionprogram. It found wide variations in thenumber of FAA maintenance and opera-tions inspections between regions andcarriers.

A 1987 GAO study found the FAA’s systemfor inspecting airline safety procedureswas inadequate. The report criticized theFAA for failing to pay enough attention tohow the “fiercely competitive, deregulatedenvironment” could affect maintenance.

On April 28, 1988, the passenger cabin ofan Aloha Airlines 737 tore open in flight,killing a flight attendant and injuring 61passengers. The National TransportationSafety Board faulted the airline’s mainte-nance program and the FAA’s failure to ef-fectively monitor it.

A 2001 study by the DOT inspector gener-al’s office found the FAA isn’t doingenough to ensure airlines monitor theirown maintenance programs.

Another inspector general report, issued in2002, found shortcomings in the AirTransportation Oversight System (ATOS),the FAA’s new system for monitoring ma-jor airlines. Among other things, the reportfound that many inspectors lacked confi-dence in the program and needed bettertraining to carry it out.

A 2003 report by the GAO found that theFAA’s training curriculum for airline me-chanics is obsolete and has not changedsignificantly in more than 50 years.

In July, an inspector general study foundthat the FAA has failed to effectively over-see the contract repair stations that nowdo about half of all maintenance work onthe nation’s commercial planes. Again, theauditors recommended that the FAA paymore attention to repair stations and en-sure its inspectors have the time and re-sources to do the job. “While these recom-mendations were made over six years ago,we found that the same weaknesses in re-pair station oversight prevail today,” the re-port found.

A 1994 report by the U.S. Department ofTransportation inspector general’s officefound widespread use of unapproved partsand outdated manuals at contract repairstations that maintain planes for airlines.The report concluded the FAA should domore in-depth inspections of repair sta-tions, or run the risk of substandard main-tenance in those shops.

On May 11, 1996, a ValuJet DC-9 crashedinto the Florida Everglades, killing all 110aboard. Investigators found a maintenancecontractor had improperly stowed oxygencanisters, which caught fire in the plane’scargo hold. The NTSB concluded ValuJethad not properly overseen its contractmaintenance program, and criticized theFAA for failing to adequately monitor theairline’s maintenance.

In 1998, the GAO found shortcomings inthe FAA’s surveillance of contract repairstations. The FAA typically relied on indi-vidual inspectors to monitor repair sta-tions, even though teams of inspectors

were far more likely to find systemicproblems, the report found.

ARE PLANES WE FLY MORE AT RISK?