switched on Sapinish Pilots
Its worries me that some of you Pilot types can't see what your Spanish Colleagues Can. As a Licensed Engineer i sometimes wonder if you all have your heads buried in the sand. Maintenance is something you dont see whilst you are sat at the sharp end. You get on the Aircraft and assume that the thing has to be working properly as there are no amber or red lights on when all things are running or that all the little yellow stickers mean someone who has years of training has decided that the aircraft can fly with an acceptable fault although he may have made that decision at five in the morning after dealing with maybe 4 or 5 other aircraft with defects that needed to be dealt with.
EASA and their new regulations with respect to Maintenance have raised a few eyebrows amongst the Engineer community with EASA stating that the new diluted regulations are written with a view to them being modified as circumstances dictate. In other words if the reg's have missed something which has been proven by an Incident (or accident) then and only then will they be rewritten. Little like shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted. This is due to the fact that the different National Aviation Authorities had different Regulations and the whole task of combining them to make one is a near impossible task, so it is easier to start again from scratch basically.
Most Engineers in the UK who operated under the ANO and the CAA now find that the rules they adhered to and were trained to have been removed or diluted to such an extent that we can see Big problems with respect to safety in the near future.
As i said earlier all Pilots like the Spanish need to wake up and smell the coffee your the ones that have to fly on them we just have to dispatch them with a clear conscience and walk away.
On a postive note you can be assured that the engineers representative body the ALAE are working on your behalf and are having an input into the rewriting of the EASA regulations by proving to EASA that some of the incidents have happened or will happen.