Thursday, September 30, 2010

Outsourcing safety: Airplane repairs move to unregulated foreign shops

'All the manuals are in English,' Spanish-speaking employee says through a translator

“In 1991, a mechanic at a Turkish repair shop overhauled an engine on a U.S. passenger jet and missed a crack in the engine.

Four years later, on a June afternoon, the 57 passengers on ValuJet Flight 597 heard a loud bang as the plane bolted down a runway in Atlanta. Shrapnel from the busted engine ripped through a fuel line. The engine and cabin caught on fire. One crew member suffered serious puncture wounds from the shrapnel, and another crew member and five passengers suffered minor injuries.

A National Transportation Safety Board investigation  of the ValuJet accident concluded that if the Turkish repair station had required the same rigorous record-keeping as U.S. airplane maintenance facilities, the crack probably would have been discovered and the engine part replaced.”

PHOTO-On January 8, 2003, negligent repairs to the tail section of the plane caused the pilot flying Air Midwest Flight 5481 to lose control and careen into a hanger at the Charlotte-Douglas International Airport, killing 21 people. Air Midwest had outsourced the plane's maintenance checks to a West Virginia company, which in turn outsourced them to another company

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