[stevenstremciuc]

Xenophobic was the exact word that came to mind. I have a close personal relative who spent several years working for one of the airlines mentioned in the article at the Aeroman facility in El Salvador and pictured in that article. I've visited it myself several times. He has also worked at maintenance facilities in the U.S. The article reads xenophobic/sensationalistic.

What is so scary about planes being serviced/maintained at these locations as opposed to in the U.S.? Do they have factual data comparisons of maintenance issues at these sites including maintenance facilities in the U.S.? Or do we just assume that they're inferior and if the maintenance facility is in the U.S. there MUST be less of the issues described in the article and attributed to these remote facilities.

Is the article about the F.A.A. sucking at inspecting sites, and is that the fault of the airlines? Aeroman and other MRO's will all bend over backwards to keep airlines (and their regulators if required) happy with the work being done at their facilities, as it's great money and jobs for those areas. Maybe the article should be less scaremongering and more questioning about why the F.A.A. seems to suck so bad at their jobs (at least that's what I got out of the article, that's not my opinion at all).

[notahacker]

The article also conveniently overlooks the vast number of other certifications that Aeroman has to uphold, as if somehow the likes of EASA can't be trusted to inspect aircraft maintenance facilities. I'm even more perplexed by the evidence-free assumption that "private contractors in the US" (a designation which includes an awful lot of divisions of household-name conglomerates) must somehow have worse hiring practices than airline-owned maintenance divisions. And the rather odd categorisation of Singapore as in the "developing world", which it isn't by any definition of "developed country" that permits the designation to be applied to countries populated predominantly by non-white people...

All the statistical evidence points to air travel being safer than at any point in history but.... scary anecdotes and foreigners

[ams6110]

Also missing is any anecdotal recounting of maintenance mistakes in US service facilities, and there are no doubt plenty. I'll give you one, the problems that resulted in engines falling off of the DC-10 were caused by mechanics using an unauthorized "shortcut" in the process of removing and replacing engines.