Air Carriers's Use of Non-Certificated Repair Facilities

摘要

Major air carriers spend up to $4.9 billion annually for aircraft maintenance. Currently, over 50 percent of this maintenance is performed by external repair facilities. Based on our review, a substantial majority of these facilities are certificated by FAA. But noncertificated repair facilities are now performing more significant work than anyone realized. Our past reviews have focused on the growing trend toward air carriers use of certificated repair stations and FAA oversight of those entities. Air carrier and FAA officials have previously pointed out that contracting out aircraft maintenance does not compromise the quality of the work performed. Neither our prior work nor this report is focused on contract maintenance versus inhouse maintenancerather, our work focuses on the fact that aircraft maintenance, no matter where it is performed, requires effective oversight. The United States continues to maintain the safest aviation system in the world, and ensuring that the overlapping controls of safety oversight are working in all parts of the aviation system will help keep it that way. These controls were not working when the 2003 Air Midwest crash occurred in Charlotte, NC. This crash brought to light a relatively unknown group of outsourced maintenance providers that FAA needs to consider: noncertificated repair facilities.