Innocent BS. I agree with you about doing the job for the love of it....after all it can't be for the large pay cheque can it?
As for moaning, I have been doing it for 1/4 century as well, but, up until recently our moaning has only gone as far as our seriously corrupt managers who would surely treat us to the sack if we took matters any further. I was hoping that this very website would help the regulators get a real idea of whats going on.I can only imagine that they work on the theory that no news is good news and their MOR 'In tray' is, to them, a real indication of the state of the industry.
If so then they are as sad as the HF exam questions they set us!
It does'nt stop there. Even though the regulators are such hippocrits that they examine (and charge) the living daylights out of us to test our knowledge and issue licences, but do nothing to support us in upholding those standards, we perhaps may find the national press reading this stuff. I'm sure that if serious 'maintenance violations' were aired in public by an over enthusiastic reporter, that would be more effective than our whole QA dept put together.
UK TV shows such programmes as 'Builders from hell'with a series to cover plumbers electricians car dealers and other such business enterprises. It clearly shows that a % of the population are nothing better than unconvicted criminals.Why oh Why do the aviation regulators think that maintenance organisations should be any different? The whole system is so infested with cowboys at least up to middle management.It does make you wonder if the people who write the legislation are doing so purely to make it easier to allocate blame in the event of a catastrophic incident(they don't seem interested in anything less), whilst knowing you do not have a hope in hell of sticking to it. The company management policy seems to be :those with the highest responsibility for safety have the least authority to get what we need to do the job,whilst those with the least knowledge have the most authority (to prevent us getting what we need).If you all need reminding how management regard gambling with safety, try the Challenger incident where the night before launch The MANAGER told the chief ENGINEER to take off his engineer's hat and put his managers hat on and agree that the seals (that the engineer had grave concerns about) were fit for flight. From a TV documentary several months ago. It cannot be stressed too highly that we have to keep up the pressure on cowboy managers to acheive compliance. We should never resort to accepting that our fate as engineers is to be treated like mugs by corrupt managers. Come on, we are better than that.
[This message has been edited by The Weasel (edited 18 March 2001).]