Hi AVOdriver
Sorry for the late reply. Thank you for your input. Once again, it just confirms what so many people are aware of, but somehow other "powers that be" have profit and money as a priority rather than airworthiness and a safe fleet.
Most importantly though is the very real potential threat of losing an entire field of specialised engineering skills and knowledge to the next generation when AMEs of your generation come to retire.
I regularly hear not-so-well-informed individuals exulting the virtues of new generation aircraft needing very little maintenance because they are so well made and so not need for real, highly trained and competent AMEs (just LRU changes, type comments)??!!! I just don't know where this idea comes from. Yes, newer aircraft are certainly well made, but maintenance for such machines will ALWAYS be required. Matter in this universe always degrades one way or the other, there's no shortcut to maintenance of man-made machines.
Then again, I think this viewpoint is sadly spreading to many other areas of human skills hence our nation having all be lost its manufacturing, combined with a real shortage of engineers.
There's plenty of work to be done to bring back the nation to a golden age of engineering, manufacture and production!! And it certainly starts with apprenticeship and training the new generation to really be able to work and be competent in their chosen fields. Not this robotic learning by heart and regurgitation in an exam!