Report faults FAA over maintenance outsourcing

WASHINGTON -- Nine major U.S. airlines are farming out aircraft maintenance at twice the rate of four years ago and now hire outside contractors for more than 70 percent of major work, the government says. Contractors overseas handled one-quarter of the outsourced maintenance.

At the same time, U.S. oversight of repair facilities is lagging, the Transportation Department's inspector general found. Investigators said the Federal Aviation Administration has failed to closely track how much maintenance is outsourced and where it is performed.

Although the FAA has taken steps to improve, "the agency still faces challenges in determining where the most critical maintenance occurs and ensuring sufficient oversight," investigators said in the report this past week.

In airlines' effort to lower costs, the report said, they continue to shift heavy airframe maintenance from in-house mechanics and engineers to hundreds of repair companies.

Nine major airlines examined by the inspector general outsourced 71 percent of their heavy air frame maintenance -- repairs and servicing to an aircraft's body, wings and tail -- in 2007, compared with 34 percent in 2003.

Also, 27 percent of that work was performed at foreign repair facilities.

The airlines examined in the report were AirTran Airways, Alaska Airlines, America West Airlines, Continental Airlines, Delta Air Lines, JetBlue Airways, Northwest Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and United Airlines. American Airlines, the nation's largest domestic carrier, was not included, the inspector general said, because it handles most maintenance in-house.

The FAA relies heavily on the airlines -- and the repair facilities themselves -- to make sure outsourced repairs meet the air safety standards and requirements of the individual airlines.

The FAA requires each repair station to have a government inspection at least once a year, spokesman Les Dorr said. The report says those inspections often are not being conducted by agency inspectors most familiar with standards and requirements of the airline whose planes are being repaired.

As much as five years lapsed between visits to some major maintenance facilities by inspectors assigned to individual airlines. Inspectors not assigned to a specific airline may not be familiar with the special maintenance requirements of that airline's planes, which are often customized.

The report cited a foreign facility, which repairs engines for an unidentified airline, that had not been inspected by an FAA inspector assigned to that airline in five years, a period in which the facility had repaired 39 of the air carrier's engines.

The report recommends FAA require airlines to provide more complete information on the extent and location of outsourced repairs, ensure air carriers and repair stations are better able to spot and correct problems, and improve the documentation of inspection results.

The FAA agreed it needs to do more. "We actually concur with all the inspector general's recommendations," Dorr said. "We have procedures in place that already address some of the recommendations, and we have some projects in progress that address others."

One safety expert said the report shows that the FAA has a long way to go toward resolving the outsourcing issue.

"What this report tells me is there is still a big problem with oversight -- the FAA is not verifying that the oversight being provided by the air carriers is doing the job it's supposed to," said John Goglia, a former member of the National Transportation Safety Board.

David Bourne, director of the airline division for International Brotherhood of Teamsters, whose members include airline mechanics, said the FAA does not have enough inspectors to adequately oversee all the repair stations and their subcontractors, especially foreign repair stations. He said the lack of oversight extends beyond the adequacy of repairs to background checks of employees.

"You can see trouble brewing. It's a bad situation," Bourne said.

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On the Net:

Transportation inspector general's report: http://tinyurl.com/3ezoak