Blacksheep says 'when the general public cotton on'....the standards of the aircraft engineers qualifications etc has been slowly lowered over the years....the general public don't give a monkeys....as long as they have a cheap flight. If there is an accident the blame will end up on an engineer (assuming its a maintenance issue) and some poor unlucky person will be shafted. As long as you the LAE know what you are doing and only act within your approval then you should be alright. Going back to the original article, I agree the role of the LAE is to be even further diminished, and as we don't have any strong union, politica etc backing, we are fighting a losing cause. Being 'one' with Europe hasn't helped in the slightest. It has made things worse with regards to standards I believe......