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Airlines using uncertified repair shops
FAA Inspector General hits airlines, safety agency, for lack of oversight of critical repair work.
December 20, 2005: 8:51 AM EST

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - Airlines are using uncertified workers for critical maintenance work, which operate without enough oversight of either the carriers or the Federal Aviation Administration, according to an agency investigation.

Air carriers have used non-certificated facilities for years, said the report by the FAA's Inspector General, but mostly for minor maintenance tasks. The report said that has changed in recent years, as it identified 21 facilities that performed maintenance critical to the airworthiness of the aircraft.

"Some of the critical repairs we identified that non-certificated repair facilities perform include engine replacements and adjustments to flight control systems," the report said.

The nation's major airlines, struggling to cut costs and stem operating losses since 2001, spend $4.9 billion annually for aircraft maintenance, with more than 50 percent of this maintenance work being outsourced, according to the report. But the report did not detail what percent of the outsourced work is being done at the non-certified facilities.

The report said the use of a non-certified facility has already been cited as a key factor in one fatal crash -- the January 2003 Air Midwest crash in Charlotte, North Carolina. "The mechanics incorrectly adjusted a flight control system that ultimately was determined to be a contributing cause of the crash," said the report. All 21 people on that flight were killed in the crash.

The report said that both the agency and the airlines are not exercising enough oversight of the non-certified facilities doing work.

"Air carriers we reviewed relied primarily on telephone contact to monitor maintenance work performed by non-certificated facilities rather than onsite reviews of the actual maintenance work," said the report.

The probe was requested by U.S. Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., the ranking member of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

"I have said repeatedly that the FAA must require airlines to operate at the highest level of safety," said a statement from Oberstar. "Airlines contract out this maintenance work to save money, but with those savings we must ensure that there is not an erosion of the margins of safety and a greater risk to the traveling public and innocent souls on the ground."

Oberstar's home state is also home to Northwest Airlines, which shifted most of its maintenance work outside its hubs in Minneapolis and Detroit to outside contractors in August. An airline spokeswoman said she could not immediately answer what percentage, if any, of the airline's outside contracts are certified.

The demand to use outside contractors for so much maintenance was one of the issues that led the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association to strike the airline in August. The airline has used the contractors and replacement workers to do its maintenance work during the ongoing strike, but it has since filed for bankruptcy court protections.

Northwest was not one of the airlines included in the Inspector General's study, which reported its investigators visited with American Airlines and its American Eagle feeder airline, Continental Airlines and its Continental Express feeder airline, AirTran Airways and Frontier Airlines.

David Castelveter, spokesman for the Air Transport Association, the industry's trade group said that it had seen the report but would have no comment until it had an opportunity to study it.

For more on financial problems facing the airline industry, click here.  Top of page

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