Loss of these jobs threatens security
LAST WEEK more than 200 American Airlines mechanics — many of them based at LaGuardia and JFK Airports — rallied in Times Square with other members of the Transport Workers Union to protest the possible outsourcing and offshoring of their jobs.
Before I became a journalist specializing in airlines, I was an operations manager and licensed dispatcher who spent years working at both those airports — so I certainly feel TWU’s pain.
But beyond the loss of U.S. jobs, there’s a bigger concern: the threat to public safety and national security.
Most passengers don’t know it, but all U.S. airlines have at least some of their commercial planes maintained overseas — by unknown mechanics and far from the eyes of the Transportation Security Administration and the Federal Aviation Administration.
American Airlines was the lone carrier that didn’t, but that changed a few years ago.
For more than a decade, I've been investigating these issues, traveling to outside repair shops, and speaking to both inhouse and outsourced mechanics, as well as front-line FAA inspectors tasked with overseeing maintenance of U.S. airline fleets.
The domestic airline industry's stellar safety record is being threatened by the monetary incentive to offshore maintenance to locales such as Mexico, El Salvador, China, and Singapore.
Even the U.S. government acknowledges “critical exceptions” that effectively create two sets of rules on plane maintenance.
In the early 1990s, when I worked for Pan Am, a major mechanical job — an engine change on a Boeing 747 at JFK, for example — would be the job of 10 mechanics.
All 10 would be Pan Am employees, licensed by the FAA, and subject to security screening, substance testing, and fatigue policies. When the job was completed, one licensed mechanic signed the logbook to confirm the work was done properly.
Today, that same job could be done outside the U.S., by 10 unlicensed technicians who do not have to undergo FAA background checks, drug and alcohol screening or, I’ve been told, unannounced on-site spot checks.
When the job is done, one licensed airline mechanic has to sign a logbook to confirm the job was done right — and because that one final step hasn’t changed, the federal government maintains there is no difference in those two models.
It’s mind-boggling, given all the security precautions passengers are forced to undergo.
The airlines’ mad race to the bottom on cost-cutting isn’t just about tighter seats and higher baggage fees. Ultimately, it affects our safety and security, too. William J. McGee, an aviation journalist and airline passenger advocate, is the author of “Attention All Passengers.”