Bangkok--8 Feb--eTurboNews
The Professional Airways Systems Specialists (PASS), AFL-CIO, the union that represents more than 11,000 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) employees, today called the findings of a new investigation by Consumer Reports (March 2007) a "wake up call to the FAA." The article, titled "An accident waiting to happen?" explores the air safety concerns arising from the increasing trend of outsourcing maintenance and inspection responsibilities.
Consumer Reports found that while airlines are increasing their reliance on overseas maintenance facilities, which are subject to less oversight and fewer inspections, the FAA is reducing the actual number of inspections of repair facilities and airline oversight in general, causing the margin of safety to decrease as airlines contract out more than half of their maintenance work. The article highlights that domestic and foreign repair stations are relying on staff that is not licensed and does not undergo security screenings. Also emphasized is the FAA's growing reliance on statistical-based analysis rather than physical inspections of repair facilities. Most troubling, states Consumer Reports, is that this is happing concurrent to the FAA allowing the number of safety inspectors responsible for overseeing the industry to dissipate through attrition.