Editor’s Notebook

Challenges

As the new editor of Aviation Maintenance magazine, it may be useful to share with the readers my perspective on the major issues affecting aircraft maintenance. This is about people, and the work that they do to ensure the safety of airplanes. Aircrews take the machine into the air, air traffic controllers keep airplanes separated from one another, and maintainers ensure that the airplane is kept in working order. The operative term is "airworthy" condition.

To do this requires straightforward and understandable documentation of the work to be done, qualified technicians, good checks and balances (as in signing off on the work), a workforce that gets enough rest, because working tired is a sure-fire way to make mistakes, and adequate oversight of the work by both the airplane operator and by regulatory authorities.

In all areas, there is room for improvement.

Consider fatigue management, a hot topic regarding pilots. It is less discussed about mechanics, despite the fact that ever more maintenance is done at night, and on the "back side of the clock," the hours between midnight and 6 a.m. when the body naturally most wants to sleep. It is during this period that mistakes are most likely to be made, when documentation needs to be clear to penetrate a foggy mind, and when supervision is most important to catch errors before the airplane leaves the hangar.

In publishing recently its list of "Most Wanted" safety improvements, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) not only called for updated flight and duty times for pilots, it called for modernized duty times for mechanics, too. As the NTSB noted pointedly, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) "has conducted research on fatigue in maintenance, but no rulemaking [has been] proposed."

Documentation is even less discussed but is critical to understanding the work that needs to be done. After the fatal crash on takeoff in January 2003 of a Beechcraft 1900D regional airliner, in which part of the reason for the crash was restricted elevator movement, the manual was revised. Turns out that if a technician were to rig the 1900D's rudder trim cable as directed by the previous edition of the manual, the system would operate in reverse fashion. Efforts by the pilot to correct a left-turning tendency would cause the aircraft to yaw further to the left, instead of to the right. This is hardly the only time when maintenance error has caused a crash. Recall the 2000 loss of a DC-8 freighter, in which the NTSB found a retaining bolt was improperly installed, the cotter pin was missing, and the airplane crashed for want of pitch control.

In the case of the 1900D, the elevator control rigging was performed as part of a general maintenance inspection at night, by an untrained on-the-job mechanic, whose work was signed off by a technician who was supposed to have supervised him, but who had been called over to work on an engine problem. The overall work, by the way, was performed at a non-certificated repair facility, with little operator or FAA oversight.

Operators who contract out their maintenance are tending to hire more quality assurance people to make sure the work is done right. But the last level of oversight, that provided by the FAA, may be lacking. Details are contained in a December 2005 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The GAO said budget cuts are hurting the FAA's ability to oversee the safety of the airlines, particularly those not covered by the Air Transport Oversight System (ATOS). This is the system of continuous safety surveillance in place at the larger airlines, but which has not yet been implemented for almost 100 operators.

Expanding ATOS to cover additional carriers will be extremely difficult. As the GAO remarked, "In 11 of the 13 FAA field offices that we contacted, officials indicated a shortage of inspectors needed to oversee the non-legacy airlines, which has sometimes resulted in inspections being delayed or eliminated."

The message to the maintenance community could not be more plain: people, you're on your own to provide good oversight, understandable and clear documents, and to make sure the work is done properly by a qualified workforce that isn't numbed by fatigue.