Fly the Drunken Skies
by Jeff Davis
It is one of the many unspoken secrets of our wonderful capitalist society that the biggest danger to air passengers comes not from Arab terrorists, but from the pilots and ground crews and mechanics of the airlines. Many of these jobs are now staffed on the basis of Affirmative Action quotas. To further reduce the cost of maintenance, many airlines have moved their maintenance outside the US. The biggest causes of airline disasters in recent decades have been poor maintenance and pilot error.
One news article reports “JetBlue, Southwest, America West, Northwest and United are among the carriers who outsource major maintenance of their aircraft to contractors in other countries, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
• As JetBlue’s new A320 Airbus fleet ages, aircraft are sent to a repair hub in El Salvador;
• America West also sends its jets to El Salvador;
• Southwest has always outsourced its major maintenance;
• US Airways mechanics agreed Friday to pay cuts and the outsourcing of 2,000 mechanics jobs;
• Northwest sends its wide-body jets to Singapore and Hong Kong;
• Bankrupt United Airlines recently won union approval to begin using outside contractors for heavy maintenance.
It wasn’t long ago that major airlines employed their own highly-skilled mechanics, each with his or her own Federal Aviation Administration license.” (more…)