CHICAGO - The potential for maintenance mishaps to cause crashes is the of recent origin frontier of aviation safety.

CHICAGO - The potential for maintenance mishaps to cause crashes is the of recent origin frontier of aviation safety. Economic presss have stimulated many US airlines to contract revealed more of the maintenance traditionally performed "in-house," and the repair stations are relying always more on contract labor.

brace these two trends to the erosion of experience in the lake of technicians, and the resulting "triple whammy" at hands a new challenge to the safety of the industry.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) regarded about the trend, has conven a one-year review of the practices associated with aviation maintenance work performed at contract repair facilities. Sometimes called third-party repair facilities, they are certified in a less degree than Part 145 of the Federal Aviation Regulations.

A hearing here last week marked the public kickoff of the Safety Board's review. Its timing appears to have been tied to the latter indictments of three SabreTech employee (see ASW, Jul 19)

"The NTSB is the national safety board, not the national accident investigation board," exclaimed NTSB Vice Chairman Robert Francis, who directed the August 30 forum. "This discourse is a way to be pro-active and to pre-empt accidents," he declared.

For month Board member John Goglia has been briefing industry executives about the significant number of maintenance mishaps that have l to embarrassing incidents of the like kind as an engine falling distant from a 747 during takeoff, and missing codgers on a horizontal stabilizer l to the fatal crash of a regional aircraft.

Now, the Safety Board is taking Goglia's road exhibit to to a more formal horizontal of concern. "Something's changing excellent dramatically in the industry," Francis told Air Safety Week. That change is a 30 percent increase between 1990-1996 in the amount of aviation maintenance work performed by the agency of contract repair stations. According to Francis, this unravelling translates into a single, big-picture statistic: "Now 50 percent of the work is done through organizations outside the carriers."

There is another, more arresting statistic. Instances of "inadequate quality" in the Service Difficulty Report (SDR) data base have skyrocket nearly 500 percent during the same period that Francis observ that the amount of out-sourced work increased through a third.

Of 85 major aircraft accidents the board investigated in the period 1985-1996 poor maintenance was a factor in undivided out of five cases. Francis and his mate Board members clearly do not want to view that percentage increase. At its sunshine hearing in succession the crash of ValuJet Flight 592 Board members give utterance toed strong concern about the amount of out-sourcing at the carrier and about hollows in oversight (see ASW, Aug. 25 1997)

At last week's hearing, attended by the agency of many of the key "players" in the industry, the discussions focused upon the risk-benefit of contracting gone out oversight of the work performed, and the skill on a level of the workforce. Highlights of these three areas follow:

* The decision to out-source. a carriers believe that maintenance work, particularly the capital-intensive heavy maintenance, is best impose in the hands of the ables Tony Quillen, director of heavy maintenance for Southwest Airlines [LUV] described contracting gone out as a natural division of labor. For Part 145 repair stations, maintenance is their core business and expertise. "Our core business is carrying passengers."

Southwest soon contracts out about half of its heavy "D" check work. The carrier also performs minimal component part repair inhouse, parceling out an 90 percent of that work, Quillen explained. He said repair stations also are more flexible, in space of times of their ability to start and end lines based on the workload.

His sentiments were repercussion of sounded by Frank Basile, senior manager for aircraft conversions at Federal Expres [FDX] "Our core business is moving packages," he said. The company, he added, out-sources about 80 percent of its maintenance work. "We build our relationship with a Part 145 facility to provide the services that we use," he explained. Basile said this approach has been the FedEx business and operating philosophy from the commencement and that it now fits the times.

"Airplanes are more complicated today," he said, citing their more advanced avionics, the special plating and processing techniques be in want ofed for metal parts, and in like manner forth.

An alternate view was not past nor futureed by Yvonne Daverin, quality assurance director for United Airlines [UAL]. The carrier performs almost all of its acknowledge maintenance work, up to and including "D" checks. Les than 20 percent of United's work is contracted on the outside The in-house capability, she said, provides for a stable workforce and a greater inherent flexibility to answer to demands such as airworthiness directives (ADs). "Over the years, we have exhibited our own core competencies," she said.

Jay Hiles, senior air safety investigator for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) and a 21-year Certified Aircraft Technician for USAirways [U] took a more acerbic view of contracting-out. It's a cost-saving measure, unstained and simple, he declared. "The majority of the workforce for the carriers consists of certified airframe and powerplant (A&P) mechanics. Non-certificated mechanics who comprise a significant fraction of the workforce at Part 145 repair stations are not paid the same," he said. Indeed, Hiles argued that the unadulterated cost to the carrier of outsourcing could be greater. a certain number of carriers, he said, are finding more discrepancies that have to be rectified when an airplane be deriveds back from a "D" check.