Who is responsible for making sure outsourced maintenance is done safely?

Outsourcing of commercial aircraft maintenance is expected to continue growing. Currently calculated at about 50 percent of most airline maintenance, prognosticators suggest that outsourcing may reach 60 percent in another four years.

This trend has airline maintenance personnel gnashing their teeth because their jobs are disappearing and they are concerned about safety and security. They feel that nothing is safer than maintenance performed internally by employees of the airline as opposed to sending aircraft, engines, and components to external companies.

The big issue, according to Kevin Wildermuth, Region III director for the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association, is "lack of regulatory oversight" of repair stations that perform work for airline customers. Wildermuth goes on to cite four prominent accidents that "were, at least in part, a result of the lack of regulatory oversight at the repair stations performing the work." The accidents are: ValuJet, 1996; Swissair, 1998; Emery Worldwide, 2000; and Air Midwest, 2003.

Kevin, you've almost got it right. Those accidents were the result of a lack of oversight. Not necessarily regulatory oversight, but some kind of oversight. In fact, every accident can probably be traced back to a lack of oversight, and there's always someone who should have done something sometime to prevent the accident.

In the case of those four accidents, a little more training, management awareness of what was being done, following procedures, and double-checking the work would probably have prevented each one from occurring.

That, in my book, is oversight. And that kind of oversight can be done by anyone in the chain of people involved in any kind of maintenance process. All sorts of people dropped all sorts of balls leading to those accidents. Some of the balls had been pretty obvious, too, if anyone had cared to take notice. The FAA, for example, was well aware of some questionable maintenance that was taking place at one of those airlines; it not only was not a secret, but these issues were brought to so many people's attention, it's a wonder that the airline's pilots didn't simply refuse to fly.

It's extremely easy to blame someone for not doing something in hindsight, after an accident. But to paint the airline industry with such a broad brush—that outsourcing is inherently unsafe—is counterproductive and simply inaccurate. First, there have been plenty of tragic accidents where in-house maintenance was involved. Second, some of the safest airlines in the world outsource much of their maintenance. Does that mean that outsourcing is good? Not necessarily, just that it works and can be done safely.

But, outsourcing is only safe if oversight is performed properly. Airworthiness is the sole responsibility of the operator of the aircraft and it is not the FAA's responsibility. What it comes down to is that we are a self-regulated industry, but when we don't regulate ourselves properly, no matter who does the work, that's when accidents happen.