27/09
I have worked as a heavy jet LAME, a Flight Engineer and a light aircraft LAME over a 40 year period including flying into and through the USA.
Firstly there is a huge difference between light and heavy aircraft maintenance assuming that we are talking about heavy jets verses single engine Cessnas.
One of the major differences is that jets run up huge amounts of hours compared to light aircraft. Thus it can be ok to defer a minor issue on a Cessna to the next 100 hourly but not on a long haul jet. Remember unlike your local flying school bug smasher who mainly does circuits, a failure on a long haul may ground you on the other side of the world with 500 pax and nowhere to go.
The other issue that the Fed Sec refers to is skill levels in the US. I have been out of that scene for some time but with some rare outstanding exceptions my opinion is that the overall A&P (equiv. to a LAME)is not good.
A typical arrival would end up in the US with a conversation like this.
FE "We have XX defect." A&P "What do you want me to replace?"
In the rest of the world the same question would be met with a statement of what the LAME intended to do. From questioning the A&P this wasn't a show of respect for the FE, it was a very worrying lack of knowledge. As I said there were outstanding exceptions but they were rare.
My feeling was that the situation that I saw was a direct result of their training which was college based not apprentice based.
Wunwing