Airliner Maintenance Outsourced Overseas

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There’s been plenty of talk about outsourcing maintenance work on airliners, with concerns raised about quality control and oversight. And recently there was a roundup of maintenance workers in North Carolina with illegal immigration status, some of them from countries considered possible sources of terrorism. But what about outsourcing the maintenance work overseas? America West and JetBlue have some of their maintenance done in El Salvador, according to a report in last week’s ABC11-Eyewitness News in Durham, N.C. Also, Continental and Northwest send some of their planes to Hong Kong or Singapore for maintenance work. Northwest told Eyewitness News the Singapore facility is on a military base surrounded by armed guards, and all work is monitored by Northwest staff. American Airlines says it keeps about 80 percent of its maintenance in-house. “We go through the extra steps required to make sure this is the safest place there is,” American Airlines executive Otis Deboard told ABC11. “It’s better to have it in house, so you know what’s going on with your fleets. So you know what’s being put on those airplanes, as far as parts and those things.”

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