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FAA MUST ENSURE OVERSIGHT OF FOREIGN REPAIR STATIONS
The Professional Aviation Safety Specialists, AFL-CIO (PASS) represents 11,000 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) employees, including approximately 2,800 Flight Standards field aviation safety inspectors located in 109 field offices in the United States including eight international field offices. FAA inspectors are responsible for certification, education, oversight, surveillance and enforcement of the entire aviation system, including air operator and air carrier certificates, repair station certificates, aircraft airworthiness, pilots, mechanics, flight instructors and designees.
FAA aviation safety inspectors responsible for overseeing the certification of and the work performed at foreign repair stations have serious concerns regarding the oversight of these facilities. In recent years, the overall dynamic of the aviation industry has experienced significant changes. One such change in practice is the outsourcing of maintenance work to repair stations in this country and abroad. Whereas much of this work was once done at the air carrier’s facility, according to the Department of Transportation Inspector General (IG), air carriers’ use of outsourced repair stations has grown from 37 percent of air carriers’ maintenance costs in 1996 to 62 percent in 2005, or nearly $3.4 billion of the $5.5 billion spent on maintenance. During the first three quarters of 2006, the amount of outsourced maintenance had already increased to 64 percent.
A large portion of this work is being performed at facilities in foreign locations; there are currently over 690 foreign repair stations certified by the FAA. FAA inspectors at international field offices (IFOs) are charged with certifying these repair stations and then recertifying them approximately every two years. FAA inspectors at certificate management offices (CMOs) in this country provide oversight of the maintenance work performed on their assigned air carriers at FAA-certificated foreign repair stations. However, many inspectors say that they are not confident with the level of oversight of foreign repair stations and that serious safety issues are not being addressed.
There is also considerable concern over the regulations governing foreign repair stations. For example, as opposed to domestic airline or repair station employees, workers at contract foreign repair stations are not required to pass drug and alcohol tests. In addition, criminal background checks are not required at foreign repair stations. There also continues to be major concerns regarding security at these facilities, with many of the repair stations lacking any security standards. If a foreign repair station wants to work on U.S.-registered aircraft or any aircraft that operate in this country, those repair stations should be required to meet the same safety standards as domestic repair stations.
Another issue is that the FAA continues to expand the use of bilateral agreements with foreign countries to oversee repair of U.S. carriers. The Bilateral Aviation Safety Agreement with Maintenance Implementation Procedures allows foreign authorities to provide oversight of the work performed at repair facilities without any involvement from FAA inspectors. This eliminates the need for the inspector to travel to the repair station at all and entrusts responsibility entirely to a foreign entity. According to the IG, however, foreign inspectors do not provide the FAA with sufficient information on what was inspected, the problems discovered and how these problems were addressed. The IG has recently stated that despite some additional efforts, the concern remains that the “FAA is still not regularly visiting the facilities in the countries where agreements exist with other aviation authorities.” The IG cited an example in which FAA inspectors for one air carrier had not visited a major foreign engine repair facility even though the repair station had performed maintenance on 39 (74 percent) of the 53 engines repaired for the air carrier. Furthermore, FAA inspectors had not conducted any spot inspections of this facility in five years.
The increasing use of foreign repair stations has been drawing even more attention to the inspector staffing problem. As the industry continues to expand, the number of FAA inspectors has not kept pace; in fact, nearly half of the workforce will be eligible to retire in the next five years. There must be an adequate number of experienced and trained FAA inspectors in place with budgetary and management support to properly oversee foreign repair stations.
Congressional Action Requested
The House FAA reauthorization bill (H.R. 2881) includes language mandating that all certificated foreign repair stations must be inspected at least twice a year by an FAA inspector and that all workers working on U.S. aircraft at foreign repair stations be drug and alcohol tested. PASS supports this language and would like to see similar language included in the Senate version of the bill (S. 1300).
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