Foreign repairs of U.S. planes worry lawmakers

and aerospace interests. On
McCaskill’s side is at least one airline, American, which does not outsource to
foreign repair stations and could benefit from the amendment because it could
increase costs to competitors who use overseas facilities. “We are
supporting the Transport Workers Union, which is working very hard on this
piece of legislation,” said American spokeswoman Mary Frances Fagan.
American runs a major domestic repair shop in Kansas City. The Department
of Transportation’s inspector general, Calvin Scovel, has raised concerns about
the FAA’s loose oversight of the foreign repair stations. At a June hearing,
Scovel said the number of FAA-certified foreign repair stations has more than
doubled since 1994, from 344 to nearly 700 last year. Such stations are not
subject to U.S. security
requirements, and FAA inspections are few and far between. The FAA doesn’t keep
track of uncertified repair stations, which airlines also can use for
maintenance, Scovel said.

The scope of the problem is unknown, McCaskill contends,
because the FAA does not check the uncertified stations, but the issue is not
new. In 1996 the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) faulted a Turkish
repair station that had worked on a ValueJet plane for not properly inspecting
an engine that later blew apart on an Atlanta runway. The
safety board said at that time that the FAA didn’t provide enough oversight
over foreign repair stations. The incident may have been averted, the board
ruled, with a thorough check that would have shown rust and other problems. The
increasing reliance on the foreign stations has raised the ire of big labor
unions, including the Teamsters and the Machinists. “They’re being
maintained by people who don’t undergo background checks, aren’t required to
take drug tests, and don’t necessarily have the mechanical training” that
workers in U.S. shops do, said Robert Roach Jr., general vice president for
transportation at the Machinists union. Also lobbying for stricter
foreign-repair regulations is the Business Travel Coalition, a group of large
companies whose employees travel frequently.

Opposition to the McCaskill-Specter proposal is mounting
from several quarters. The White House opposes the measure, saying there are no
safety concerns to justify it and noting that the FAA has agreements with
airline safety regulators in France, Germany and Ireland to perform
repair station inspections. The administration is pursuing similar agreements
with other countries. Last week, advocates for the Boeing Co. and other airline
and aerospace interests huddled with aides for Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas),
who is crafting an alternative to McCaskill’s bill. They say foreign repair
stations are run by well-trained workers, with national security and air travel
safety paramount. Airlines “have all the incentive in the world to make
sure the work is done properly and not just out of concern for the safety of
their crews and passengers,” said Tim Neale, a spokesman for Boeing.
“Airlines also have significant investments in their equipment and want to
keep it working properly.” Boeing’s experience with foreign repair
stations, Neale said, “is that the work force is very well-trained”
and the facilities “don’t pose a risk to public safety.”

Sarah MacLeod, executive director of the Aeronautical
Repair Station Association, a trade group, echoed that assessment and said
McCaskill’s amendment could cause airlines to curtail overseas flights or rely
more heavily on partnerships with foreign airlines. She noted that the
Transportation Security Administration was supposed to issue new security
guidelines for repair stations more than three years ago but has failed to do
so. The trade group and allied interests are working with Brownback on his
alternative, which aims to address the administration’s concerns about
preserving international inspection agreements, among other things. Brownback
said in a statement that he would work with McCaskill to reach a compromise, but
he wanted to make sure “we don’t punish the aviation industry for TSA’s
inability to issue safety criteria in a timely manner or undermine our
bilateral maintenance agreements with European countries and Canada.” McCaskill
is hoping to attach her measure to legislation reauthorizing the FAA, but that
bill has become bogged down in unrelated disputes. A test vote on the
underlying measure is set for tomorrow.