And why is it that heavy maintenance is so much cheaper overseas. What is the Australian engineering fraternity going to do to compete, apart from scaring the public.
Some of your questions are not even worthy of a response but I think I should explain this one.
In Australia we have a target of releasing aircraft with no hold items or defects out of a heavy maintenance facility. A 737 recently undertook a c check in Sin, some Aussie LAMEs go up there, they do not partake in the work but randomly check some of the tasks after completion. During this process they found 450 defects and maintenance errors. When the 737's last went up there, upon arrival at home aircraft landed with over 90 defects. These were only the ones we know of.
Let's compare the facilities.
Australia. More expensive yes (about 15% more so) but there is no location in the world that can complete a c check in as fast a time and generally aircraft departs defect free. Facility runs with 2 crews. Total LAMEs are about 80 Mechanical and 15 Avionic.
Singapore. Cheaper and as far as I am aware, not one aircraft has come out on sched. The line doing the 737 check runs with 4 Mechanical LAMEs and 2 Avionics. One of the Avionic LAMEs resigned early on during the 450 defect aircraft leaving just one covering the 2 shifts. I don't know how many unlicenced guys there are. I suspect that the numbers are so low up there that some things are being missed and CASA have spent a fortune preventing us accessing their audit reports.
So that is what we are competing with. Scare campaign? Call it whatever you want bloke. The f****n big bolt that jammed the flaps on the first flight out of an overseas facilty may not have lead to a Garuda type accident but who knows what it will be next time. Let's hope it is not a loose set of wires that are arching and sparking inside your fuel tank.