With airline safety already in the public spotlight, new alarms are being raised about U.S. airlines’ growing reliance on foreign repair stations, in Asia, Eurpoe and elsewhere for everything from simple maintenance to major aircraft overhauls.
Some transportation experts and lawmakers, including Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo), say lax oversight of such repair stations represents a gaping hole in airline safety and national security.
Defenders of the foreign shops say they are safe and well-run. Opposition, they say, is being driven, in part, by Union leaders who have seen good-paying maintenance jobs shipped overseas.
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) along with the Business Travel Coalition (BTC) applauds the recent amendment to the FAA Reauthorization Bill sponsored by Senators Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Arlen Specter (R-PA). The amendment seeks to strengthen the safety and security protocols associated with aircraft maintenance outsourcing and foreign repair stations. Outsourcing has increased from 37% of maintenance expenditures for major U.S. airlines in 1996 to 64% in 2006.
The McCaskill-Specter amendment seeks to address many oversight gaps that the U.S. DOT Inspector General has identified over several years and to provide funding sufficient to deal with this significant shift in maintenance work to overseas facilities. (For complete analysis of the outsourcing issue, please go to www.tinyurl.com/5swy4a )
Specifically, the amendment requires:
· the FAA to identify non-certified repair facilities and to expand surveillance and oversight of them,
· that significant maintenance work be performed or directly supervised by FAA-certificated personnel,
· the FAA to inspect certified foreign repair stations twice a year with at least one inspection without advance notification,
· drug and alcohol testing for employees of foreign repair stations who perform safety sensitive functions,
· foreign repair stations to comply with TSA security protocols,
· the FAA to update its fee schedule for foreign repair station certification and recover the fully burdened costs of inspection programs for these stations, and
· annual reports from the DOT Inspector General on implementation of the amendment.
By law, Congress must vote to reauthorize the FAA every five (5) years. The current authority expires next month. Congress is allowed to pass a temporary extension, meaning full action could be delayed until next year. We ask all of you to contact your Senators and Representatives and urge them to vote to adopt the amendments proposed by Senators McCaskill and Specter. Below is a link to help find your representatives’ contact information:
http://directory.usayfoundation.org/
Don’t wait, contact them now! We thank you in advance for your support in this most crucial matter.