-Cp
06-03-2007, 11:29 AM
An accident waiting to happen?
Outsourcing raises air-safety concerns
To save money, airlines have outsourced many of their operations, from baggage handling to onboard catering. But the latest trend has far greater consequences than who provides the food for your next flight. More and more, airlines are contracting out the work to maintain planes--fixing wheels, repairing engines, and more.
Indeed, commercial aviation in America is flying into uncharted skies: In 2005, the latest full year for which data are available, most of the 20 largest domestic airlines were outsourcing more than half of their major maintenance.
Contract repair facilities, especially those overseas, are subject to less oversight than in-house shops, with fewer screening programs for workers, fewer inspections, and loopholes that allow even more subcontracting.
At the same time, the Federal Aviation Administration, which is in charge of regulating airlines and promoting air safety, is reducing actual inspections of airplanes by its own staff as it moves to an electronic-surveillance system that relies more on statistical analysis and *reporting by the airlines themselves.
Airline-safety experts and others say they are concerned about the trend. Airlines are contracting out maintenance work to facilities that are not always certificated, says Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., House transportation committee chairman. "It's not being done with the same oversight," he says. "What we have is the potential of major failure."
John Goglia was the first FAA-certified mechanic to serve on the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates airline accidents, and he has similar worries: "You add up all these ticks of risk, and you could have a problem."
A Consumer Reports investigation already has found warning signs:
As the major airlines hire low-cost bidders in locations throughout the U.S., and in Mexico, El Salvador, China, Singapore, and the Philippines, among others, much of the work is being done by nonlicensed mechanics. The practice is allowed under federal rules, as long as one licensed employee signs off on the job.
A number of mishaps and reports of safety violations are showing up, causing concern among aviation experts. They are skeptical that sufficient safeguards are in place to make sure that airlines and others who are supposed to be monitoring the repair work do so adequately.
Security is a growing concern since repair facilities are not always subject to the same levels of screening as in-house operations. Arrests at some repair shops have snared terrorism suspects and undocumented workers, who were subsequently deported.
A CR analysis of flight data shows that airlines that outsource more tend to have more delays blamed on the airline. There seems to be a correlation, according to industry experts.
A series of reports has brought about little action. The Inspector General's Office of the U.S. Department of Transportation said in a December 2005 report: "Neither FAA nor the six air carriers we reviewed provided adequate oversight of the work that non-certificated facilities performed."
The FAA disagrees that safety is being compromised, saying the proof is in "today's ultra-low air carrier fatal accident rate." In a statement, the agency says, "There has been no indication that the margin of safety has been reduced because of outsourced maintenance."
RECENT SAFETY RECORD
The issues of maintenance and oversight have not gained widespread attention, in part because of the airline industry's safety record in recent years. There has not been a major deadly airline accident since 2001, when an American Airlines jet crashed in Queens, N.Y., killing 260 people onboard and five on the ground.
But there have been deadly accidents involving smaller commercial aircraft, and a Government Accountability Office report in September said that with four fatal accidents in fiscal 2006, the FAA would miss its air-safety goal for the year.
The issue especially pains Douglas and Tereasa Shepherd, whose daughter Christiana, a college student, was among 21 killed in a 2003 commuter-plane crash in Charlotte, N.C. The plane was operated by Air Midwest as a US Airways Express flight.
In May 2005, the Shepherds received some satisfaction during a ceremony attended by families of the Charlotte crash victims. Greg Stephens, president of the airline, read a public apology at the gathering. "Air Midwest and its maintenance provider, Vertex, acknowledge deficiencies," Stephens said. "This tragedy has caused us to investigate rigorously our policies and guidelines regarding aircraft maintenance, operation, and safety in general."
It was an unprecedented apology obtained in a hard-fought legal battle by the Shepherds. The National Transportation Safety Board said the plane lost control because of problems with an airfoil that was improperly serviced by the outside company. The NTSB placed blame on both the airline and the FAA for lack of oversight.
The Shepherds are skeptical that the tragedy has improved safety. Douglas Shepherd says, "The bottom line for these companies cannot be money. That has to change. Outsourcing with no oversight leads to loss."
Repairs and oversight
These have been hard years for the airline business. According to the trade group Air Transport Association, the U.S. industry lost $35 billion between 2001 and 2005. That has spurred big pay cuts, layoffs, and a trend toward contracting out some operations, including maintenance.
For decades, most major airline repairs were performed by airline employees licensed by the FAA and working at company facilities. To oversee this work, the FAA established regional offices around the country and assigned inspectors.
Industry veterans say there was a time when a dozen employees working on an airplane were all FAA-licensed mechanics. Now, they say, it's not uncommon for a dozen nonlicensed workers at an offshore facility to complete major maintenance--such as engine changes, structural repairs, and flight-systems overhauls--overseen by one certificated mechanic.
Even when the repair station does have an FAA certificate, there are big loopholes. The FAA acknowledges there have been recent instances in which a repair-station operator has had the certificate revoked and shortly afterward was granted one in a new business. The agency is considering some new rules.
The changes in maintenance cause concern for top officials. Mark Rosenker, chairman of the NTSB, gives the FAA generally good marks on airline-maintenance issues. But Rosenker says with the increased use of overseas facilities by the airlines, the FAA might need to change how it oversees the maintenance work on airplanes. "It's time for the FAA to get into the 21st century and adjust to that," he says.
In recent years, the FAA has moved toward an electronic surveillance system, dubbed Air Transportation Oversight System (ATOS), that relies less on inspection and more on statistical trends. CR obtained an internal FAA memorandum dated June 13, 2006, detailing specifics of ATOS as it pertains to outside maintenance facilities. The memo states: "As the focus of ATOS is on systems-based inspections rather than event/activity-based inspections, air carrier hubs and employee domiciles will generally play no role in this determination." In other words, say critics, resources are being assigned to big-picture computer models, rather than inspectors "kicking tires" up close.
But several FAA inspectors interviewed by Consumer Reports said they are concerned about relying so heavily on computer modeling to ensure airline safety. A common theme is that they could not function as safety inspectors without inspecting the repair facilities.
In part, the new system relies on airlines to serve as the eyes and ears of the FAA. But that can have its pitfalls. In 2001, the FAA proposed a $200,000 fine against United for allegedly operating a jet for 17 flights after outside maintenance contractor TIMCO, based in Greensboro, N.C., "failed to properly reinstall fuel-system components." The fine was reduced, as often happens, to $33,000. Mary Schiavo, the DOT's inspector general from 1990 to 1996, says, "Airlines can't self-inspect. We see it in other countries where there is no oversight, and there is a much higher accident rate."
The FAA is part of the DOT, and the inspector general's office publishes periodic reports on issues of policy and operations. One such report, released in December 2005, raised questions about the level of oversight. The report stated that the FAA never inspected approximately 1,400 noncertificated repair facilities, including 104 foreign facilities. At the same time, the FAA last year lost about 200 inspectors, or 6 percent, from attrition.
Nick Lacey, FAA's director of flight standards from 1999 to 2001, says the FAA might not be able to keep up with the proliferation of maintenance bases. Lacey says, "If you asked the FAA, 'Are your air carriers more compliant with regulations today than yesterday?'" the agency would not know.
A spate of problems
The most visible battleground for the new system has been Northwest Airlines. With a fleet of 369 planes, it has struggled through labor negotiations, culminating in a strike by its maintenance staff that reduced the number of in-house mechanics from about 3,600 to 900.
Documents obtained by Consumer Reports show the FAA recorded 56 separate maintenance violations against Northwest between July 2005 and January 2006. They included a serious instance in September 2005 when a DC-9 jet was trying to land and the wing flaps retracted on their own, creating a potential loss of control of the airplane during its descent. The pilots had to reset the flaps to land safely. The flaps retracted on their own again after landing.
During the same month, NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System issued a lengthy Alert Bulletin warning of a "critical" problem with wheel and tire assemblies, which Northwest had outsourced. The bulletin said, "Technicians reported finding broken, loose, and missing wheel tie bolts on wheels built up by a contract-maintenance facility."
A spokesman for Northwest, Roman Blahoski, says that the majority of violations had been resolved and that the wheel problem had been discovered by Northwest and fixed. He said that whether technical problems result from work done in-house or not, "our quality systems are designed to find them and fix them with minimum disruption to the traveling public."
But Linda Goodrich, an FAA inspector and a vice president of the Professional Airways Systems Specialists, a union that represents FAA inspectors, says that the airline industry has been emboldened to do more outsourcing and that the facilities abroad are a special problem. "They're laughing at us," Goodrich says. "The inspector is basically rendered useless overseas. Northwest is the epitome of this."
Maintenance servicing by outsourced repair shops has become an issue at several other airlines as well. George Miller, a Houston-based lead technician for Continental Airlines and a member of the Aircraft Maintenance Technology Society, says that in his experience, two or three out of 10 planes that Continental gets back from outside shops need more work in-house. He adds, "If we keep outsourcing, then we're going to have a real problem on our hands."
Continental disputes that assessment, saying it has representatives checking all major maintenance work. "Our success can be measured by the performance results. We have excellent maintenance reliability," spokeswoman Julie King says.
Tim Hafer, a former mechanic for United Airlines, became a whistle*blower, telling the FAA that unlicensed administrative assistants were signing off on repairs. The FAA closed the case after sending a letter of correction. Hafer is still contesting his termination from the airline, which United had said was for other reasons. Hafer says, "You would expect a mechanic to be licensed and you would expect everyone working on the plane to be certified and trained. And it's not the case."
Alaska Airlines outsources 92 percent of its major maintenance and has had troubles too. The FAA proposed $1,004,500 in sanctions for maintenance discrepancies between 2003 and 2006.
Fred Mohr, Alaska's vice president of maintenance and engineering, acknowledges the FAA's actions but says, "Safety and compliance are paramount to Alaska Airlines." Concerning Alaska's outsourcing, he says, "I would tell any passenger, 'Rest assured, this work is being done by the best people in their field.'"
SECURITY CONCERNS
The issue of contracting out airline maintenance also raises security issues for an industry still reeling from terrorism. At SASCO/ST Aerospace, a maintenance contractor in Singapore that served Northwest, an employee suspected of having Al Qaeda connections was arrested along with 14 others in late 2001. The Singapore government says that the suspect was doing reconnaissance of the facility and that he later helped in the investigation.
Even domestically, repair-station employees and subcontractors are not subject to the same scrutiny as airline workers. In March 2005, immigration agents arrested 27 undocumented workers employed as aircraft mechanics for the maintenance contractor TIMCO.
Marshall S. Filler, the managing director/general counsel of the Aeronautical Repair Station Association, a trade group, says outsourcing is not a negative, although he agreed that the FAA could use more resources to improve oversight of facilities. Of illegal workers being used, he says, "It doesn't prove anything--it may highlight there are some holes to fill."
Aides to Rep. Oberstar said it could be time for his transportation panel to hold hearings on the issue of certification of outside repair stations and employees, which are regulated under Part 145 of the federal aviation rules.
Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, believes that the standards should be made uniform, to equally apply whether the work is performed by the airline or an outside company. CU also suggests that steps be taken to prevent shrinkage of the FAA inspectors' ranks.
Oberstar says the situation might warrant a change: "It's a recipe for failure."
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/travel/airline-safety-3-07/overview/0307_air_ov_1.htm (Membership Required)
Outsourcing raises air-safety concerns
To save money, airlines have outsourced many of their operations, from baggage handling to onboard catering. But the latest trend has far greater consequences than who provides the food for your next flight. More and more, airlines are contracting out the work to maintain planes--fixing wheels, repairing engines, and more.
Indeed, commercial aviation in America is flying into uncharted skies: In 2005, the latest full year for which data are available, most of the 20 largest domestic airlines were outsourcing more than half of their major maintenance.
Contract repair facilities, especially those overseas, are subject to less oversight than in-house shops, with fewer screening programs for workers, fewer inspections, and loopholes that allow even more subcontracting.
At the same time, the Federal Aviation Administration, which is in charge of regulating airlines and promoting air safety, is reducing actual inspections of airplanes by its own staff as it moves to an electronic-surveillance system that relies more on statistical analysis and *reporting by the airlines themselves.
Airline-safety experts and others say they are concerned about the trend. Airlines are contracting out maintenance work to facilities that are not always certificated, says Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., House transportation committee chairman. "It's not being done with the same oversight," he says. "What we have is the potential of major failure."
John Goglia was the first FAA-certified mechanic to serve on the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates airline accidents, and he has similar worries: "You add up all these ticks of risk, and you could have a problem."
A Consumer Reports investigation already has found warning signs:
As the major airlines hire low-cost bidders in locations throughout the U.S., and in Mexico, El Salvador, China, Singapore, and the Philippines, among others, much of the work is being done by nonlicensed mechanics. The practice is allowed under federal rules, as long as one licensed employee signs off on the job.
A number of mishaps and reports of safety violations are showing up, causing concern among aviation experts. They are skeptical that sufficient safeguards are in place to make sure that airlines and others who are supposed to be monitoring the repair work do so adequately.
Security is a growing concern since repair facilities are not always subject to the same levels of screening as in-house operations. Arrests at some repair shops have snared terrorism suspects and undocumented workers, who were subsequently deported.
A CR analysis of flight data shows that airlines that outsource more tend to have more delays blamed on the airline. There seems to be a correlation, according to industry experts.
A series of reports has brought about little action. The Inspector General's Office of the U.S. Department of Transportation said in a December 2005 report: "Neither FAA nor the six air carriers we reviewed provided adequate oversight of the work that non-certificated facilities performed."
The FAA disagrees that safety is being compromised, saying the proof is in "today's ultra-low air carrier fatal accident rate." In a statement, the agency says, "There has been no indication that the margin of safety has been reduced because of outsourced maintenance."
RECENT SAFETY RECORD
The issues of maintenance and oversight have not gained widespread attention, in part because of the airline industry's safety record in recent years. There has not been a major deadly airline accident since 2001, when an American Airlines jet crashed in Queens, N.Y., killing 260 people onboard and five on the ground.
But there have been deadly accidents involving smaller commercial aircraft, and a Government Accountability Office report in September said that with four fatal accidents in fiscal 2006, the FAA would miss its air-safety goal for the year.
The issue especially pains Douglas and Tereasa Shepherd, whose daughter Christiana, a college student, was among 21 killed in a 2003 commuter-plane crash in Charlotte, N.C. The plane was operated by Air Midwest as a US Airways Express flight.
In May 2005, the Shepherds received some satisfaction during a ceremony attended by families of the Charlotte crash victims. Greg Stephens, president of the airline, read a public apology at the gathering. "Air Midwest and its maintenance provider, Vertex, acknowledge deficiencies," Stephens said. "This tragedy has caused us to investigate rigorously our policies and guidelines regarding aircraft maintenance, operation, and safety in general."
It was an unprecedented apology obtained in a hard-fought legal battle by the Shepherds. The National Transportation Safety Board said the plane lost control because of problems with an airfoil that was improperly serviced by the outside company. The NTSB placed blame on both the airline and the FAA for lack of oversight.
The Shepherds are skeptical that the tragedy has improved safety. Douglas Shepherd says, "The bottom line for these companies cannot be money. That has to change. Outsourcing with no oversight leads to loss."
Repairs and oversight
These have been hard years for the airline business. According to the trade group Air Transport Association, the U.S. industry lost $35 billion between 2001 and 2005. That has spurred big pay cuts, layoffs, and a trend toward contracting out some operations, including maintenance.
For decades, most major airline repairs were performed by airline employees licensed by the FAA and working at company facilities. To oversee this work, the FAA established regional offices around the country and assigned inspectors.
Industry veterans say there was a time when a dozen employees working on an airplane were all FAA-licensed mechanics. Now, they say, it's not uncommon for a dozen nonlicensed workers at an offshore facility to complete major maintenance--such as engine changes, structural repairs, and flight-systems overhauls--overseen by one certificated mechanic.
Even when the repair station does have an FAA certificate, there are big loopholes. The FAA acknowledges there have been recent instances in which a repair-station operator has had the certificate revoked and shortly afterward was granted one in a new business. The agency is considering some new rules.
The changes in maintenance cause concern for top officials. Mark Rosenker, chairman of the NTSB, gives the FAA generally good marks on airline-maintenance issues. But Rosenker says with the increased use of overseas facilities by the airlines, the FAA might need to change how it oversees the maintenance work on airplanes. "It's time for the FAA to get into the 21st century and adjust to that," he says.
In recent years, the FAA has moved toward an electronic surveillance system, dubbed Air Transportation Oversight System (ATOS), that relies less on inspection and more on statistical trends. CR obtained an internal FAA memorandum dated June 13, 2006, detailing specifics of ATOS as it pertains to outside maintenance facilities. The memo states: "As the focus of ATOS is on systems-based inspections rather than event/activity-based inspections, air carrier hubs and employee domiciles will generally play no role in this determination." In other words, say critics, resources are being assigned to big-picture computer models, rather than inspectors "kicking tires" up close.
But several FAA inspectors interviewed by Consumer Reports said they are concerned about relying so heavily on computer modeling to ensure airline safety. A common theme is that they could not function as safety inspectors without inspecting the repair facilities.
In part, the new system relies on airlines to serve as the eyes and ears of the FAA. But that can have its pitfalls. In 2001, the FAA proposed a $200,000 fine against United for allegedly operating a jet for 17 flights after outside maintenance contractor TIMCO, based in Greensboro, N.C., "failed to properly reinstall fuel-system components." The fine was reduced, as often happens, to $33,000. Mary Schiavo, the DOT's inspector general from 1990 to 1996, says, "Airlines can't self-inspect. We see it in other countries where there is no oversight, and there is a much higher accident rate."
The FAA is part of the DOT, and the inspector general's office publishes periodic reports on issues of policy and operations. One such report, released in December 2005, raised questions about the level of oversight. The report stated that the FAA never inspected approximately 1,400 noncertificated repair facilities, including 104 foreign facilities. At the same time, the FAA last year lost about 200 inspectors, or 6 percent, from attrition.
Nick Lacey, FAA's director of flight standards from 1999 to 2001, says the FAA might not be able to keep up with the proliferation of maintenance bases. Lacey says, "If you asked the FAA, 'Are your air carriers more compliant with regulations today than yesterday?'" the agency would not know.
A spate of problems
The most visible battleground for the new system has been Northwest Airlines. With a fleet of 369 planes, it has struggled through labor negotiations, culminating in a strike by its maintenance staff that reduced the number of in-house mechanics from about 3,600 to 900.
Documents obtained by Consumer Reports show the FAA recorded 56 separate maintenance violations against Northwest between July 2005 and January 2006. They included a serious instance in September 2005 when a DC-9 jet was trying to land and the wing flaps retracted on their own, creating a potential loss of control of the airplane during its descent. The pilots had to reset the flaps to land safely. The flaps retracted on their own again after landing.
During the same month, NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System issued a lengthy Alert Bulletin warning of a "critical" problem with wheel and tire assemblies, which Northwest had outsourced. The bulletin said, "Technicians reported finding broken, loose, and missing wheel tie bolts on wheels built up by a contract-maintenance facility."
A spokesman for Northwest, Roman Blahoski, says that the majority of violations had been resolved and that the wheel problem had been discovered by Northwest and fixed. He said that whether technical problems result from work done in-house or not, "our quality systems are designed to find them and fix them with minimum disruption to the traveling public."
But Linda Goodrich, an FAA inspector and a vice president of the Professional Airways Systems Specialists, a union that represents FAA inspectors, says that the airline industry has been emboldened to do more outsourcing and that the facilities abroad are a special problem. "They're laughing at us," Goodrich says. "The inspector is basically rendered useless overseas. Northwest is the epitome of this."
Maintenance servicing by outsourced repair shops has become an issue at several other airlines as well. George Miller, a Houston-based lead technician for Continental Airlines and a member of the Aircraft Maintenance Technology Society, says that in his experience, two or three out of 10 planes that Continental gets back from outside shops need more work in-house. He adds, "If we keep outsourcing, then we're going to have a real problem on our hands."
Continental disputes that assessment, saying it has representatives checking all major maintenance work. "Our success can be measured by the performance results. We have excellent maintenance reliability," spokeswoman Julie King says.
Tim Hafer, a former mechanic for United Airlines, became a whistle*blower, telling the FAA that unlicensed administrative assistants were signing off on repairs. The FAA closed the case after sending a letter of correction. Hafer is still contesting his termination from the airline, which United had said was for other reasons. Hafer says, "You would expect a mechanic to be licensed and you would expect everyone working on the plane to be certified and trained. And it's not the case."
Alaska Airlines outsources 92 percent of its major maintenance and has had troubles too. The FAA proposed $1,004,500 in sanctions for maintenance discrepancies between 2003 and 2006.
Fred Mohr, Alaska's vice president of maintenance and engineering, acknowledges the FAA's actions but says, "Safety and compliance are paramount to Alaska Airlines." Concerning Alaska's outsourcing, he says, "I would tell any passenger, 'Rest assured, this work is being done by the best people in their field.'"
SECURITY CONCERNS
The issue of contracting out airline maintenance also raises security issues for an industry still reeling from terrorism. At SASCO/ST Aerospace, a maintenance contractor in Singapore that served Northwest, an employee suspected of having Al Qaeda connections was arrested along with 14 others in late 2001. The Singapore government says that the suspect was doing reconnaissance of the facility and that he later helped in the investigation.
Even domestically, repair-station employees and subcontractors are not subject to the same scrutiny as airline workers. In March 2005, immigration agents arrested 27 undocumented workers employed as aircraft mechanics for the maintenance contractor TIMCO.
Marshall S. Filler, the managing director/general counsel of the Aeronautical Repair Station Association, a trade group, says outsourcing is not a negative, although he agreed that the FAA could use more resources to improve oversight of facilities. Of illegal workers being used, he says, "It doesn't prove anything--it may highlight there are some holes to fill."
Aides to Rep. Oberstar said it could be time for his transportation panel to hold hearings on the issue of certification of outside repair stations and employees, which are regulated under Part 145 of the federal aviation rules.
Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, believes that the standards should be made uniform, to equally apply whether the work is performed by the airline or an outside company. CU also suggests that steps be taken to prevent shrinkage of the FAA inspectors' ranks.
Oberstar says the situation might warrant a change: "It's a recipe for failure."
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/travel/airline-safety-3-07/overview/0307_air_ov_1.htm (Membership Required)