Aircraft Maintenance Engineering is a SERVICE INDUSTRY. The service involves applying skilled staff, performing skilled tasks in a customised manner, to keep the customers capital assets in full working order. The major asset of a service company is not the premises, equipment or inventory, it is the skills of the employees.
Reducing the number of skilled people permanently employed is a good practice if the need for them is variable. You employ permanently only those needed for the regular work and hire just enough outside contractors to boost numbers when additional work comes in. An attempt to cut costs by substituting contract labour for permanent staff is the first step in corporate suicide for a service company. A sign of desperation. If I were employed in FLS I'd be looking for a new job without waitng to be laid off!
The UKCAA are not exactly a bunch of human dynamos. If even they are camping in the records section and paying an active interest in what is going on, the end surely cannot be far away.
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Through difficulties to the cinema