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All In The Family

George’s Point of View

Maintenance abroad, no matter how good the mechanics are; monitoring; who does it; how good is it?

  • If something terrible should happen, our hands are tied in the courts.
  • If the person at fault is in, subject to, and adjudicated in a foreign country, the laws may be antiquated, inadequate, indefensible or unenforceable.
  • In the U.S., suing a company from a foreign country does not guarantee that a court here will hear the case. The injured or the victim families suffer unrequited consequences.

Let’s keep our U.S. planes serviced right here in the U.S.

Scene: Back to the future


Doc Brown
No wonder this circuit failed.
It says “Made in China”.
Marty McFly
What do you mean, Doc?
All the best stuff is made in Japan.
Doc Brown
Unbelievable.

What is the quality of imported products? It all depends on the decade. The appetite, desire and need for imported spices impelled the development of trade, forced Columbus to hop in the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria and go looking for a trade route, and we all know that he found, instead, the American continent.

Spices, fruits and veggies out of season, products are all imported.

So should airlines based in the US be exporting their maintenance outside of the country? Aside from ridiculous logistics, I think the problem here is regulation. How can standards of regulation be upgraded to optimum levels if our maintenance is shipped out of the country? Aside from that, it is impractical and somewhat silly. Think about it–when our bathroom faucet springs a leak, do we send the house to China? Do we uproot the bathroom and send it to China? Do we even send the part? No, we have maintenance–the plumber, ubiquitous panty line notwithstanding–comes IN and with his expensive clock ticking away, replaces the part and saves the day.

That’s not to say that Mohammed must always come to the mountain. But in the wake of proliferating engine shutdowns, defective parts, structural design issues and hull failure, maybe we need to rethink sending our maintenance out of the country. Maybe it is cheaper, but is it better?

Let’s look at the big picture, where relying on non-US standards takes us: Look at the fiasco of Chinese drywall–where families across the country are suffering with degrading, stinking, sulphur infested drywall as their home values and quality of life plummets. Look at the ongoing stream toy recalls, as warnings of children’s toys covered by lead paint, or lead components are broadcast daily. Look at the massive pet food recall of 2007, where 17,000 complaints and over 2000 pet deaths were related to melamine in dog food with chinese rice components containing melamine.

Until every outside resource is going to have the quality rating of Quantas, do we really want to export our maintenance? Not only does it not make sense…well face it, it just does not make sense. Maintenance and the maintainers should reside under the umbrella–and the sharp teeth–of our legal system. Under our own US regulatory system, we need to hone the edge of our own country’s in-house maintenance, exercise the craft that once made “Made in the USA” the top of the line INTERNATIONAL standard, and frankly, let our corporate dollars feed—not bleed—our own job-hungry nation.

SEE: http://www.wbur.org/news/npr/113942431

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    Dana Air Returns to the Sky


    Dana Air is returning to “service” six months after killing 153 in the notorious crash on Sunday, 3 June 2012. Dana Air Flight 992 crashed into two Lagos buildings. Poor maintenance and bad aviation safety practices led that Dana Air MD-83 to a dual engine failure that killed 153 aboard, 10 on the ground and caused many other injuries (on the ground.)

    We might ask why Dana Air is returning to so-called service when it had the highest number of aviation fatalities in 2012 and the world’s highest McDonnell Douglas MD-83 death toll.

    Should they really be offering flights when they have not explained away the cause of the Dana Air Crash? Perhaps they will keep flying until their remaining five McDonnell Douglas MD-83 have crashed, people grow more sense than to choose Dana Air on flights between Lagos and Abuja or LENDERS and LEASEHOLDERS choose to write better safety controls in their contracts.

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    Air Blue Flight 202 -Don’t forget the Families


    Some people woke today and remembered 152 passengers who crashed into a hillside in Pakistan. The plane was flown by Airblue and it was the last ride those 152 people would ever remember. For the last ten months, every morning the families wake and remember someone on that plane who is no longer here. Even though as of July 28, it will have been a year since the crash, to their families, time doesn’t matter so much. Justice does.

    On July 28, Airbus sent out a press release regrettably confirming their year 2000 model Airbus A321 operated by Airblue operating a scheduled service, Flight ED 202, from Karachi to Islamabad crashed, killing all aboard. Airbus promised to provide full technical assistance to Pakistani authorities. Thanks for the concern and sympathy, but ask the families, where is their assistance?

    We have not heard anything about Pilot Pervez Iqbal Chaudhry who was 61 years old, and suffering from diabetes and hypertension. Was he suffering fatigue if he had observed prayers of the holy day preceding the crash? We don’t know. His flight schedule has not been released.

    The black box, was found July 31 of last year, and sent to the Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses pour la Sécurité de l’Aviation Civile, but the BEA (whose involvement is one of “observer” under 1944 Chicago Annex 13) has no page up for the crash. Ask the families, where is their assistance?

    The NTSB (also observer) only has this statement: The investigation is being conducted by the Pakistan Safety & Investigation Board, Civil Aviation Authority. The NTSB appointed an Accredited Representative to assist the investigation under the provisions of ICAO Annex 13 as the Country of Manufacture and Design of the engines. Ask the families, where is their assistance?

    The ball is in Pakistani court.

    The Pakistani government announced compensation of Rs 500,000 ($5,847) to each family. (Pakistan is signatory to Hague Protocol and Montreal Convention of 1999, under which compensation could be as much as Rs12 million per victim.) The pending Carriage by Air Act 2010 offers minimum compensation of Rs500,000 for death and injury of domestic flight passengers. Airblue has replaced the plane and business is booming.

    But not the families of the 152 victims. We still don’t know why it happened. We haven’t heard about families getting compensation. If this were an international flight, there would be an active treaty (Montreal Convention) outlining the guidelines. But in this domestic flight, the families still hanging in the wind, waiting for a report, and waiting for compensation. We know that to get adequate compensation, the families will have to fight it out in court. If you ask the families where their assistance is, they will tell you that there has been none. Should they have to petition the court for the most fundamental victim’s right—just to find out why the airline they trusted with their loved ones lives, the plane they trusted with their loved ones—crashed?

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    Maggots Delay Plane


    Pictured: Interior cabin of a US Airways Airbus A330-243
    Click to view full size photo at Airliners.net
    Contact photographer Peter Van Dyke

    An Atlanta to N. Carolina US Airways jet was delayed today due to falling maggots.

    Maggots were falling from an overhead compartment inside the plane. When the compartment was examined, the source appeared to be a container of meat that had been in the plane since Monday.

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    George’s Point of View

    How is it that the meat was overlooked for two days? Doesn’t the flight crew and maintenance check the bins? Do you have any idea how rancid meat would get in two days during hot summer days in the south, in hundred degree weather? Even if they didn’t see it, surely they smelled it…And who is to say that the meat has been there since Monday? Maybe its been there even longer? If they’re not inspecting it every day, how can they have any idea HOW long it was there?

    I am surprised that a plane is not fully inspected on a daily basis–in fact, between each flight–in search of something more dangerous than rotting meat.

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  • Hospitalization, Not Criminalization

    By now everyone has heard of Jet Blue Captain Clayton Osbon. It appears he has already been tried and convicted in the media. When I look at the facts—or at least what we know of the facts—of his situation, and his history, I can not help but wonder what else is going on.

    Since his breakdown in the cockpit, he has been held at The Pavilion at Northwest Texas Hospital in Amarillo. A psychiatric hospital is a good place for him to be.

    This is a man who has spent many years in the cockpit, with nothing but an exemplary record. This is a man who is well known by neighbors and friends as a man of good character. This is a man whose friends say on camera, “that was not Clayton” as they refer to his unhinged behavior. He was behaving out of character. His wife said “It is our belief, as Clayton’s family, that while he was clearly distressed, he was not intentionally violent toward anyone…There are several different sides to every story. Just keep that in mind.”

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    Royal Jordanian Embraer Maintenance Delay

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    Raising the Bar on Pilot Training

    Whether one looks at what happened in US cockpits on the Colgan Air flight (49 aboard killed, 1 on the ground, 4 injuries on the ground), or at Air France Flight 447 (228 killed), or if one looks at foreign crashes such as in Mangalore (166 aboard, 8 survivors), it appears that pilots need better tools to indicate when they are in trouble; and better training on how to respond in emergency situations such as when components fail, or flight is becoming unstable for whatever reason. It does little good to be warned that something is wrong if the warning comes at a point when it is too late to do anything about it.

    One wonders if the Thales pitot tubes are equipped to warn when there is a heating failure; or if there is a backup heating system for the tubes; if that backup system were equipped to give a warning. One wonders if there might not be an additional set of pitot tubes installed, one that might be stored internally, but that the pilot might be able to engage automatically if the tubes fail; or barring that, one wonders if there should not be some other mechanical (as opposed to digital or mathematic) “speedometer device” alternative on board for emergency situations… in case pitot tubes again happen to fail in the dark of night over an unlit ocean hurtling for the duration of a four minute stall to an inevitable watery grave.

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