Its the same in Europe. All the time passengers only want to pay £29 for a trip to Spain or £139 to the USA the airlines are going to cut costs.
Maintenance is seen as an unnecessary cost by management. Most passengers and Joe Public don't even stop to consider that the plane waiting at the gate has had any maintenance at all. The assumption is that no expense has been spared on making sure the airplane is in tip top condition.
The reality is that more and more heavy maintenance is being carried out in far flung destinations, in shorter and shorter times as, with less and less oversight by airlines and regulators.
The engineering licence here in the UK has been watered down to nothing more than a multi choice exam thanks to European harmonization. Some people I've met with full licences seem totally clueless, even on the basic fundamentals.
As the aircraft systems have become more integrated with better fault reporting, it's now seen that back office staff, often full of post grads, monitor the aircraft for faults and raise tasks for the folks who wear overalls to fix. Often these tasks are completely unachievable since the person who has asked for the work to be carried out has no concept of what is required.
In the meantime, the airlines are pushing for the scrapping of the engineering maintenance licence and move to a system of company approvals to solve the shortage of engineers. Can anyone see a problem with this?