
U.S. airlines have shifted maintenance work to developing countries - 2a0c40
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/11/airplane-maintenance-disturbing-truth
======
imaginator
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.

~~~
tzaman
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?

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _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.

~~~
noir_lord
> 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.

~~~
TeMPOraL
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.

------
pjc50
The other day this anecdote was going around on metafilter, the "DC 2 1/2":
[http://www.cnac.org/aircraft02.htm](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."_

------
ptaipale
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.

------
yarper
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.

------
stevenstremciuc
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.

------
lucaspiller
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.

------
ucaetano
I usually read VF and New Yorker articles pretending to be an aristocratic
American from a century ago:

"Dear Lord, we are flying in airplanes maintained by heathen savages in
faraway nations? This is absolutely shocking, I demand changes now!"

------
tomcam
I'd like to say something more useful here, but... Holy shit. And congrats to
Vanity Fair, of all places,for committing actual journalism.

~~~
CaptainZapp

      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.

------
abalashov
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:

[http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/03/27/globalpo...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/03/27/globalpost-
flying-safe/70534422/)

[http://qz.com/318534/despite-a-spike-in-deaths-2014-has-
seen...](http://qz.com/318534/despite-a-spike-in-deaths-2014-has-seen-the-
fewest-plane-crashes-in-the-modern-aviation-era/)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/business/2012-was-the-
safe...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/business/2012-was-the-safest-year-
for-airlines-globally-since-1945.html)

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.

------
JSeymourATL
Perhaps the airlines should start outsourcing to Cuba.

Cuban mecánicos are world renown for their bang-up work keeping old-timey
Detroit built 30s-40s-50s era cars on the road for years.

------
mikelyons
From a Boeing Senior Manager:

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.

------
gkanai
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.

~~~
intopieces
What would consumers do with this data? It doesn't appear that this is
illegal. What recourse do we have against this?

~~~
johnchristopher
Voting with our feet.

~~~
intopieces
I'm not sure many consumers have much choice on the matter. Most just go for
whatever is cheapest.

~~~
johnchristopher
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.

------
narrator
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.

~~~
notahacker
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.

~~~
brc
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.

------
tomohawk
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.

~~~
brc
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.

~~~
ubernostrum
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.

