Friends have been asking me about “The Disturbing Truth About How Airplanes Are Maintained Today,” a December 2015 article in Vanity Fair. Here are some excerpts:
In the last decade, most of the big U.S. airlines have shifted major maintenance work to places like El Salvador, Mexico, and China, where few mechanics are F.A.A. certified and inspections have no teeth.
Over the past decade, nearly all large U.S. airlines have shifted heavy maintenance work on their airplanes to 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. US Airways and Southwest fly planes to a maintenance facility in El Salvador. Delta sends planes to Mexico. United uses a shop in China.
The airlines are shipping this maintenance work offshore for the reason you’d expect: to cut labor costs. Mechanics in El Salvador, Mexico, China, and elsewhere earn a fraction of what mechanics in the U.S. do. In part because of this offshoring, the number of maintenance jobs at U.S. carriers has plummeted, from 72,000 in the year 2000 to fewer than 50,000 today.
The work is labor-intensive and complicated, and the technical manuals are written in English, the language of international aviation. According to regulations, in order to receive F.A.A. certification as a mechanic, a worker needs to be able to “read, speak, write, and comprehend spoken English.” Most of the mechanics in El Salvador and some other developing countries who take apart the big jets and then put them back together are unable to meet this standard. At Aeroman’s El Salvador facility, only one mechanic out of eight is F.A.A.-certified. At a major overhaul base used by United Airlines in China, the ratio is one F.A.A.-certified mechanic for every 31 non-certified mechanics. In contrast, back when U.S. airlines performed heavy maintenance at their own, domestic facilities, F.A.A.-certified mechanics far outnumbered everyone else. At American Airlines’ mammoth heavy-maintenance facility in Tulsa, certified mechanics outnumber the uncertified four to one.
A little background… If you hire a mechanic under a shade tree, he or she must be an FAA-certificated A&P. If the goal is to get a signed-off annual inspection, that person must have an FAA IA certificate. If, on the other hand, you hire an FAA-certificated Repair Station to do the work, at least some of the work can be done under the supervision of FAA-certificated employees. The shop’s overall practices have to be approved but individual employees need not be.
Labor is not the only cost when aircraft maintenance is performed. Parts have to be purchased. Components are typically sent out for overhaul to subcontractors, e.g., when an overhauled engine is installed it is not the mechanics at the maintenance shop who did the overhaul, and those subcontractors may get the lion’s share of the total fee. FAA bureaucracy has to be complied with. The aircraft has to be ferried to the shop and the crew somehow shipped back.
Having done some flying in Latin America I don’t think that saving on hourly wages is the main motivation here. There are a lot of things that are easier and more obviously cost-effective to offshore. Being a good aircraft mechanic requires a high IQ, attention to detail, and a fondness for paperwork. The Mexicans, Panamanians, and Argentines that I’ve met who worked at the airport took a tremendous amount of pride in their jobs and were conscientious about their work (e.g., maintaining Robinson helicopters in Panama City for Helipan).
A guy who teaches mechanics for a large U.S. aircraft manufacturer told me that every year the quality of the Americans who come to the class is lower. Thus it may simply be the case that there are no longer 72,000 Americans who want to do this kind of work and can do it well, at least at the middle-class wage that the airlines offer (about $30/hour before overtime, benefits, etc.; see the American Airlines contract).
If the foreign maintenance shops were doing a bad job the result would be a lot of squawks and grounded aircraft (a typical maintenance error would not result in a crash but rather the pilots rejecting the aircraft based on a warning light or a failed test). Thus I think it is safe to infer from the continued use of foreign shops that they are doing pretty good work.
“Vanity Fear”
Bravo!
This story rounded the blogs many years ago, yet still there are rarities like S&S Turbines who maintain vintage aircraft engines in Canadia. Everyone knows the best planes are made by Embraer in Brazil. It may be newer airplanes take a lot less skill to maintain, higher airfares being mainly due to rising CEO compensation & taxes.
Airfares are anything but high, IMO. I find them incredibly reasonable for the utility and safety they represent.
OK, you’ve assuaged our fears about the mechanics, but what about the parts? I would be particularly concerned about this in China, where fakes abound.