Passing strange reading through these posts that the same confusion and differing "Opinions" seems to be as rife in the engineering side of our industry as on the operations side. I confess I am no expert on maintenance, I rely as much as possible on the advice of them that are, if a LAME tells me this should be done, then do it.
What seems to creep into anything to do with regulations per say, is compliance at the end of the day relies on the "Expert" opinion of CAsA, FOI's for operation, AWI for maintenance among whom there seems to be the same level of confusion and differing opinions.
From my experience in the USA, outwardly anyway, aircraft generally appear far better maintained than here.
I guess there are sh.t boxes there the same as here, but by and large they are few and far between, on the surface anyway.
Statistically there doesn't seem to be problems with maintenance in the US, and for sure there isn't the same level of confusion over what to do and when to do it.
It is also patently clear that maintenance costs in the USA are vastly less expensive than Australia.
A few pointed questions across the Tasman seems to indicate that our Kiwi brethren don't seem to have the same problems or costs that we do either.
Their reg's are in plain English and everyone seems to "Get" what they mean.
I often wonder how much the costs of committing aviation in Australia would reduce if we were to adopt similar Reg's as the country where most of our aircraft are built.
Would our aircraft end up better maintained or worse?
Would aviation be more safe or less safe?
Would we be having the same discussions on this website?