Sunday, December 4, 2005
Skies safer, despite
woes
Unions blast maintenance outsourcing
By DAVE HIRSCHMAN
The Atlanta
(GA) Journal-Constitution
It seems a happy paradox: While the U.S.
airline industry has been going through wrenching and seemingly endless
post-9/11 economic turmoil, its safety record has never been
better.
Thousands of the industry's most experienced pilots have taken
early retirement, and veteran mechanics have been displaced as financially
stressed carriers cut jobs and outsource work they used to do
themselves.
Delta Air Lines has shifted many of its aircraft overhauls to
vendors in Miami and Vancouver, British Columbia, and striking Northwest
mechanics were replaced en masse. Unions warn that replacements are poorly
trained, and the AFL-CIO's transportation trades department say lax FAA
oversight of contract workers is "inexcusable and dangerous."
"We're
developing a gypsy work force of aircraft mechanics and technicians who have far
less experience than the people they're replacing," said Dave Suplee, an
International Association of Machinists safety director.
Growing
trend
About 53 percent of U.S. airline maintenance is now performed by
non-airline workers, up from about one-third in 1990, according to the
Transportation Department's inspector general. The outsourced work is valued at
$37 billion a year.
But Marshall Filler, managing director for the
Aeronautical Repair Station Association, a trade group representing firms that
perform contract maintenance work, said the airline industry's recent safety
record showed such fears were a "red herring."
"People have been hurt
economically by this trend toward contracting," Filler said. "People have lost
jobs and pensions. But it's not a safety issue. It's an economic issue cloaked
as a safety issue."
Not counting the four 9/11-related crashes, airlines
since 1998 have chalked up an unusually safe stretch, based on the rate of fatal
accidents per million departures. During that span, the highest annual rate was
0.196 in 2003, when 21 passengers died in a US Airways Express crash. The lowest
was in 2002, when there were no fatalities.
Delta, now in Chapter 11
proceedings, began sending much of its heavy maintenance — the periodic
disassembly and rebuilding of airframes and engines — to contractors in Miami
and Vancouver this year. JetBlue and America West take their fleets to El
Salvador, Northwest and Continental have repair stations in Hong Kong and
Singapore, and United recently began flying its 777s to China for heavy
maintenance.
34% cost reduction
Delta expects to lower maintenance
costs 34 percent through outsourcing and reducing its own work force. Avborne in
Miami will perform some Delta airframe overhauls, and ACTS in Vancouver won a
$300 million contract to do others. Avborne also overhauls airframes for
AirTran.
Delta has cut its work force from 76,000 at its 2001 peak to
about 53,000 today, and it expects to cut up to 9,000 more jobs by the end of
2007. Delta has said about 2,000 jobs will be eliminated from its Technical
Operations Center, based in Atlanta.
Tony Charaf, Delta's senior vice
president for technical operations, said the contractors Delta used were
"absolutely committed" to meeting the airline's safety standards.
"We've
trained our suppliers on Delta-specific policies and procedures," Charaf said.
"They'll meet our standards — not theirs. I'm very comfortable with the process.
Safety will never be compromised."
About 40 Delta employees oversee the
work performed by contractors, Charaf said, and a team of pilots, flight
attendants and mechanics inspects each overhauled airplane before it returns to
the Delta fleet.
"This is the right strategy for Delta's survival," he
said.
Improved diagnostics
Richard Aboulafia, aerospace analyst at
the Teal Group, credits new, technologically advanced aircraft for lowering the
amount of maintenance each plane requires. Major carriers have parked their
older, most maintenance-intensive aircraft in desert boneyards.
"Aircraft
are getting more maintenance-friendly," he said, "and there's better diagnostic
equipment available."
Companies like General Electric, Rolls-Royce and
Pratt & Whitney perform some of the outsourced work by repairing components
they originally built.
"These aren't Tijuana body shops," Aboulafia said.
"They're leading companies that do highly specialized work. Specialization is a
virtue, and they've built a critical mass where they can offer a great deal of
expertise."
No lowering of standards
Paul Nisbet, aerospace
analyst at JSA Research, says airlines and the Federal Aviation Administration
hold contractors to the same standards as airline employees.
"The FAA
uses the same regulatory process," Nisbet said. "And airlines know they stand to
lose an awful lot more if the work isn't done right than they could ever hope to
gain in cost savings."
FAA officials say the agency keeps a close watch
on airlines in financial distress and conducts "enhanced surveillance" of
carriers in economic trouble. The additional scrutiny is meant to ensure the
airlines aren't tempted to cut corners on safety.
"We target specific
areas if we feel they need additional attention," said Kathleen Bergen, an FAA
spokeswoman in Atlanta.
"We have inspectors around the country, and they
can be assigned to various airlines. Long before the airlines are close to
bankruptcy, we develop specific oversight plans. We prioritize the work and
assign people as needed."
The union that represents about 2,700 FAA
airline inspectors, however, says they are understaffed and can't keep up with
demand.
"The workload is incredible — and we're losing staff," said Kori
Blalock, spokeswoman for the Professional Airways System
Specialists.
"Given the state of the industry, it's virtually impossible
for our inspectors to physically get to the foreign repair stations they're
supposed to inspect."
Despite the industry's overall stellar record of
late, two tragedies involving outsourced maintenance are well
remembered.
The most recent was the US Airways Express crash, just after
takeoff from Charlotte in early 2003. The accident was blamed in part on an
inexperienced mechanic at a contract maintenance center who incorrectly
installed a control cable.
Perhaps the most notorious fatal mistake took
place in May 1996 when SabreTech workers sent mislabeled and loosely packed
boxes of surplus emergency oxygen generators for shipment in the cargo hold of a
ValuJet DC-9 in Miami. Investigators concluded that the generators, which create
intense heat when activated, were accidentally triggered shortly after takeoff
and sparked a fire that took down the Atlanta-bound plane and killed 110
passengers and crew.
Shared blame
The National Transportation
Safety Board said that ValuJet — which now flies as AirTran — SabreTech and the
FAA all shared blame. The carrier beefed up its in-house maintenance and
contractor oversight after a safety grounding.
Today, AirTran spokesman
Tad Hutcheson said, AirTran outsources heavy maintenance, with engine repair
work going to GE and Rolls-Royce overhauling engines.
"GE does thousands
of engine overhauls a year, and they're very good at it," Hutcheson said. "With
our fleet of 104 airplanes, it doesn't make any sense for us to have our own
engine shop. The manufacturer that built our engines knows how to repair them
better than we do."
AirTran's maintenance director has an office at
Avborne's Miami airframe overhaul center, and an AirTran team monitors the work
there.
"They make sure the vendor is doing quality work," Hutcheson
said.
Avborne and ACTS, the two companies hired by Delta, declined to
comment for this article.
But ACTS Chairman Robert Milton, who also leads
the holding company that owns Air Canada, said in March the five-year contract
to overhaul Delta's 757-200s, 767-300s and 767-300ERs reflected the company's
"worldwide reputation for safety and reliability and underscores our cost
competitiveness."
American bucks trend
American Airlines is
countering the outsourcing trend. The Dallas-based company performs 80 percent
of its own maintenance and all airframe overhauls.
"We're actively
bringing work back in," said Courtney Wallace, an American spokeswoman, who said
the company planned to make its 7,000-employee Tulsa, Okla., maintenance
facility a profit center by repairing planes for other carriers, too. Delta and
other big carriers also court "in-source" business to varying
degrees.
"We've been able to streamline our operations and do our own
work better and faster," Wallace said.
"We benchmark ourselves against
the competition, and our work force consistently shows that it's the best in the
industry. We know our people, and they're our greatest resource. They ensure the
quality and safety of our fleet."
Suplee, the IAM union safety chief,
doesn't concede that the recent safety record shows outsourcing is perfectly
safe.
"Aircraft maintenance is going to the lowest bidder," he
said.
"The airline industry may have a good safety record now, but
eventually, these kinds of policies are going to catch up to
them."
SAFETY IN THE SKIES Despite economic turmoil and maintenance
outsourcing, airlines since 1998 have compiled the safest stretch in industry
history, in terms of the rate of fatal accidents. Here are statistics for the
past 20 years, as compiled by the Air Transport Association, an industry trade
group:
Note: Incidents resulting from
illegal acts are included in accident and fatality totals but not in rates, the
way the National Transportation Safety Board reports statistics.
Fatal accidents
Total
Aircraft
Fatal
per million
onboard
Year
departures
accidents
departures*
fatalities
2004
10.55 mil.
1
0.095
13
2003
10.22 mil.
2
0.196
21
2002
10.28 mil.
0
0
0
2001
10.63 mil.
6
0.188
525
2000
11.05 mil.
2
0.181
89
1999
10.86 mi.
2
0.184
11
1998
10.54 mil.
1
0.095
0
1997
9.93 mil.
3
0.302
2
1996
7.85 mil.
3
0.382
342
1995
8.11 mil.
1
0.123
160
1994
7.83 mil.
4
0.511
237
1993
7.72 mil.
1
0.13
0
1992
7.52 mil.
4
0.532
31
1991
7.50 mil.
4
0.533
49
1990
7.79 mil.
6
0.77
12
1989
7.27 mil.
8
1.101
130
1988
7.35 mil.
3
0.272
274
1987
7.29 mil.
4
0.411
229
1986
6.93 mil.
2
0.144
4
1985
6.07 mil.
4
0.659
196