by Scott Creighton

Yesterday a Southwest Airlines flight, Flight 812 out of Sacramento, sprung a leak. A hole opened up in the fuselage above the heads of the 118 passengers at about 36,000 feet. One passenger texted his wife “Plane going down. Love you“

The plane dropped to about 10,000 in what was called a “controlled decent” – passengers passed out, some hit their heads on the seats in front of them, all of them probably crapped on themselves, but thankfully, the pilots were able to land the plane safely and no-one died.

The FBI has already stated that this was a mechanical problem and not an act of terrorism, but Hillary Clinton hasn’t had time to change that story, let’s give her a few days to find a way to link this to Gadhafi.

Southwest airlines is notorious for outsourcing the maintenance of their fleet of 737s. They use an El Salvadoran company called Areoman. The reason they do that is very clear.

“Many U.S. airlines already outsource maintenance to foreign countries.  The company Southwest will use in El Salvador, Aeroman, has already performed heavy maintenance work for other major U.S. Airlines.

… Last year, BusinessWeek reported that mechanics at Aeroman make between $4,500 and $15,000 a year, while U.S. airplane mechanics earn an average of $52,000 a year.”  NBC

 

In 2005, Gary Kelly, CEO of Southwest Airlines went to a MRO conference in Texas. He gave a speech praising the MRO industry as being a key factor in their cheap flights and thus their business success.

“In an industry riddled with high energy prices, a glut of seats, and fierce competition, Kelly pointed to several items that have helped the airline maintain control of its costs. Among the items listed: operating a single aircraft type (Boeing 737), high asset utilization achieved through quick turns, avoiding high cost airports, focusing on Customer wants and values, high productivity, and outsourcing major maintenance projects. “  Southwest website

 

Most of the industry is moving in this direction claiming they are in the business of flying planes, not fixing them. This serves to make the airlines more money as that many of the companies doing the work (called MROs for “maintenance, repair, overhaul”) are barely regulated by the FAA.

The largest MRO in the states is called ST Aerospace. They go with “ST” because they don’t think many people would like their real name, Singapore Technologies. According to reports, ST has been caught “pencil whipping” repair logs to cut costs; basically claiming that the repairs were done, when they were not. ST also has a deal with the immigration department which allows them to bring in cheaper workers from overseas who can barely speak English and then using them as mechanics in their shop. You can watch all of this on Frontline’s feature report called “Flying Cheaper” but you can’t watch it on Frontline’s website, because for some reason, it won’t load. However, you can watch it here.

Now, I remember watching an investigative report which specifically talked about a company, one of the MROs, getting parts for repairs from another company which were not certified and installing them in passenger planes against FAA regulations. The part they focused on were aluminum ribs which make up the fuselage. They showed images of ribs being made on a table in the shop by a guy with a pattern and a hand-held router. These parts are critical and must be made to a tolerance of about one one thousandths of an inch. If they don’t fit properly, all kinds of horrible things can happen, like holes developing in airplanes at 36,000 feet. I’m not saying that Southwest is getting their replacement ribs from these guys, but it is worth looking into, especially since this is not the first time this kind of thing has happened to a Southwest plane.

A similar incident happened in Baltimore in 2009 just after Southwest had agreed to pay 7.5 million dollars for having lax inspection records on their fuselages.