Bean Counting and the Art of Aircraft Maintenance
It is a common complaint today. The accountants and fancy pants MBA's show up after a company is bought out, taken over, or for some reason has a management change. In order to make the P/L Statement look good after the takeover, or change in management, cost cutting measures are enacted and a mass sell off of spare parts, special tools, and maintenance related items goes on. Money for upkeep, overhauls, and husbandry disappears, along with the employee's pension scheme.
I have seen it firsthand. I watched aircraft find their way to the scrap heap because it was not economically viable to do a major overhaul on them due to corrosion. The fact that overhaul intervals had been extended repeatedly, despite the aging of the aircraft and the time period allowed to do the inspections had been shortened , and the amount of repairs that could be done had been cut as well, might well have had a direct influence on why the aircraft had been in such a state. It makes one feel very good to know you had made the final commercial flight in an aircraft as it was scrapped for being unrepairable.
Are we seeing a new crisis developing in the helicopter industry? For all of these years, the helicopter operators have been cutting one another's rates in order to take business from the competitor.None had the will to raise rates significantly until PHI did so in the Gulf of Mexico in response to the arrival of the pilot's union and the major pay raise that brought about.
The net result of low rates has been a reluctance to buy new aircraft, or to modernize the fleets and now in the face of the new style of management ,regarding the underfunding of spares and engineering capabilities by some of the operators,this problem is bound to get worse. Are we going to see a greater incidence of accidents of aging aircraft due to mechanical reasons?
Are the operators cutting too close to the bone as a result of the new style of management?
What can pilots and engineers do to maintain the necessary safe standards required to keep aircraft flying reliably and safely? Are the authorities turning a blind eye to this situation.....do they even care about events in the helicopter industry?
How "old" can a helicopter be before it is too old to be used in commercial passenger service? How airframe hours are too many? Is the airframe an "on condition" subsystem of the aircraft? How do we determine the length of intervals for major inspections? Should the government be involved in overseeing the quality of major inspections of ageing helicopters? Should an international company's safety record in their home country be required to include all accidents worldwide or should they only have to report to each country the aircraft are licensed in? Should the government be involved in the setting of spares stocking levels?
Any firsthand observations of these kinds of things going on out there.....any horror stories that might point out the veracity of the complaints heard in any bar when pilots and engineers gather?