Industry Insights

The Last Aircraft Mechanic

Called for computer technical service lately? Chances are, like me, you got someone in a foreign country whose "English" you couldn't even understand. Welcome to the global economy. Engineering and technical jobs are pouring out of the U.S. to third world nations at an ever-increasing pace and you and I are about to be caught in that trap. Why are the jobs leaving our shores? Three reasons spring to mind. First, these countries place a great deal of emphasis on engineering and technical education of their youth. We don't. Second, the U.S government allows, no, encourages, American companies to embrace outsourcing of technical services as a means of staying competitive in the world markets. Third, the World Trade Agreement has opened the floodgates of cheap overseas labor to fill every job that can be outsourced globally.

That brings us to the present globalization of airline heavy maintenance. These airplanes have huge range and savings are proportionally larger if they shop globally. United Airlines, for example, opened a state-of-the-art overhaul facility in Indianapolis just five years ago. Competitive pressures, however, led it to close the facility and shop around for heavy maintenance. In October, United announced that it signed an agreement with Ameco Beijing to perform heavy maintenance on United's Boeing 777 fleet. United has, in fact, outsourced all heavy maintenance in a bid to resume profitable operations.

What is Ameco? An FAA Part 145 certificated repair station partnership of Lufthansa Technik and China Airlines, located at Beijing Capital Airport. Ameco's engineering and overhaul work is fast, and above all, cheap. Ameco has also, coincidentally, gained contracts that collectively put more than 8,000 A&P mechanics out of work.

Now you may be wondering how a Chinese company managed to obtain an FAA repair station certificate? Actually, in China it's a piece of cake. The Chinese government wisely decided when it was just launching a civil aviation industry to model it after the U.S. inasmuch as we were at the time the most obviously successful country in this area. This resulted in a set of regulations that are mirror images of the FAA regs. Even though they are written in Chinese, the numbering system is identical to the FARs, so it is relatively easy to interpret.

Thus, any repair station that is certificated by the CAAC (Chinese regulators) to meet the Chinese regulations also meets the FARs almost by definition. Under Part 145.53 b) they are entitled to an FAA certificate.

This is where the system falls apart. In many foreign nations, there is intense political pressure for the local civil aviation authority to make this certification for the sake of national pride and local jobs. Although the FAA field offices are supposed to monitor these repair stations, in many cases there are no manuals written in a language that FAA inspectors read and understand. China is an exception.English is a required language in all public schools and FAA surveillance of Chinese repair stations is far more thorough than one finds in some domestic locations. Wages in China are, on average, less than ten cents on the dollar, however.

The FAA has the certifications it needs from the foreign authorities and has a fully covered butt. Everyone's happy...except the highly trained U.S. technical personnel who lose their jobs because their company can't compete in the repair station business with offshore firms paying less than a tenth of what they do, with none of the OSHA regulations and Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes. Drug testing and security regulations that apply to U.S. companies are in many cases completely absent in foreign countries.

In less than a decade, most heavy maintenance has moved beyond our shores. Northwest Airlines closed its heavy maintenance base in Atlanta, United's heavy maintenance facilities are fast becoming ghost towns, and the low-cost carriers have always outsourced their overhaul and D-check work. This leaves the A&P doing line maintenance work at the airlines and corporate fleets.

Completion centers will also be increasingly outsourced as more foreign repair stations in Mexico and Central America also lose airline business to Asia. They will be the new business jet repair and "re-rag" facilities of choice in the next decade.

As demand for A&P mechanics lessens, A&P schools will find it less profitable to comply with the FAA reporting burdens. As they close their doors, that will leave the rest of us to assume an ever-increasing share of an ever-shrinking aircraft maintenance market.

Howard Fuller is a pilot, A&P/IA, former DOM, and worked as senior auditor for an aviation safety auditing firm. Currently on the PAMA board of directors, Fuller is also president of Solatec, a company developing solar-power products.