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The common trend by the airlines has been to
outsource thousands of high skilled jobs to
aircraft maintenance repair companies overseas
that are not tightly regulated or inspected by
the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as
those maintenance divisions are typically run by
the air carriers themselves.
In 2007, the FAA's Inspector General reported of
nine major air carriers reviewed 71 percent of
their heavy airframe maintenance checks were
sent to overseas repair stations. In 2009 the
numbers are even higher. Southwest Airlines now
flies its 737’s to El Salvador for major
overhauls.
In 1999 American, United, Northwest, US Airways,
Delta, TWA, and Continental all performed the
majority of their aircraft maintenance work
in-house. Regional airlines also kept a large
portion of their work internal and within the
United States.
However, just after 9/11, the in-house standard
changed, the percentage of work outsourced in
terms of maintenance dollars had risen from an
average of 26% in 1999 to over 40% in 2009, a
figure which remained under 50% primarily
because American Airlines was performing most of
its work in-house, now that will skyrocket.
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