[stickfigure]

I think you just illustrated the problem with the article - you've turned a personal anecdote into a fairly ugly stereotype. There are a lot of well educated, highly skilled, and generally underemployed people in El Salvador, Mexico, and - yes - China.

I'll be concerned when I hear statistical evidence of higher failure rates from overseas shops. There are plenty of anecdotes of developed-country maintenance crews making serious mistakes - including one responsible for crashing a Concorde and killing everyone on board.

[omginternets]

>you've turned a personal anecdote into a fairly ugly stereotype.

You seem to be implying that this personal anecdote isn't representative of a larger trend, which is strange.

It's certainly possible to do business with developing countries, but one has to be especially careful with regards to work quality. This is neither new or xenophobic. Claiming otherwise is absurd.

With aviation and other life-and-death products, I find these concerns to be especially relevant.

Moreover, I (respectfully!) contend that your comment is a prime example of political correctness pushed to a dangerous extreme. Just because it's a stereotype doesn't mean it isn't mostly true, unpalatable though that thought may be. It so happens that Chinese people eat a lot of rice, and Chinese manufacturers have a rich history of cutting costs by deceitfully degrading quality. These two statements are neither false nor bigoted.

[jinst8gmi]

> You seem to be implying that this personal anecdote isn't representative of a larger trend, which is strange.

In what sense does a single data point represent a trend?

> It's certainly possible to do business with developing countries, but one has to be especially careful with regards to work quality.

You also need to be careful of work quality from developed countries. There is no shortage of examples of shoddy work being done in developed countries.

[omginternets]

>In what sense does a single data point represent a trend?

It doesn't. It's the other way around: a single datapoint can be congruent or incongruent with an observed and measured trend. This is the case with the present example.

>You also need to be careful of work quality from developed countries.

You always have to be careful of craftsmanship, but to imply that there's no systematic variance as a function of national origin is disingenuous at best and insane at worst.

Again, I'm positively flabbergasted by the extent to which people want to play with words and run in circles around such issues, especially given the extent to which these problems are documented.

Has it really become that taboo to observe that certain countries have a poor track record, on the whole? Am I only allowed to criticize my home country, now?

[jinst8gmi]

There are many highly competent people and organisations in "developing" countries. It only makes sense to evaluate things on a case by case basis. Making blanket generalisations is not constructive as there are countless cases where naive generalisations and prejudices turn out to be false.

[omginternets]

>There are many highly competent people and organisations in "developing" countries

Yes, you're repeating yourself.

> It only makes sense to evaluate things on a case by case basis.

I disagree. Case-by-case evaluation is necessary, but general trends are highly informative, useful, and not intrinsically racist/xenophobe/bigoted.

You're arguing that we should ignore evidence on the basis of political correctness, and I'm arguing that this is silly and dangerous.

[jinst8gmi]

> You're arguing that we should ignore evidence on the basis of political correctness, and I'm arguing that this is silly and dangerous.

I'm arguing that we should only consider evidence. You're arguing in favour of generalisations and prejudice.

[varjag]

> You seem to be implying that this personal anecdote isn't representative of a larger trend, which is strange.

If you let me chime in: by odd coincidence, we use a Slovenian contractor for aluminium die casting of our products. We have troubles with missed deadlines, non-negotiated requirements (like rising minimum batch size years into production) and poor communication.

Does our isolated experience represent a trend with, shall I call it, Eastern Europe?

[omginternets]

>Does our isolated experience represent a trend with, shall I call it, Eastern Europe?

It may well be representative of a larger trend within Slovenia (or eastern Europe). I don't know.

I can only speak for China (and certain parts of Western Europe, i.e. Italy).

[tolien]

> I'll be concerned when I hear statistical evidence of higher failure rates from overseas shops.

The issue seems to be getting that evidence, when the airlines have a strong disincentive not to report broken planes and the FAA finds it hard (for reasons of resources and the mechanics of travelling to a distant facility) to surprise-inspect facilities. That's not unique to offshored facilities, though.

[sokoloff]

There are very clear requirements for reporting certain in-flight failures, and very clear requirements for dispatching with some equipment inoperative. In addition, log books can be inspected by the FAA for patterns of failure, or for information after a specific failure.

I think this is a complete non-issue for everyone except US-based Airframe & Powerplant mechanics. If you're worried about aviation safety, don't fly on regional carriers in Eastern Europe, South America, or any third-world country. Flying on any major (for flights operated by the major, not under a codeshare) is the safest form of long distance travel by quite a wide margin.

On the small private planes that I fly, we have annual inspections where the airplane is carefully inspected and in order to do that, lots of disassembly and re-assembly is required. It's inherently dangerous, and I do an extremely careful pre-flight and will not take passengers on the first flight post-maintenance. I've found an oil line only finger tight (dumped oil directly onto the exhaust at any speed over 1700 RPM), various electrical and avionics anomalies, and other smaller mechanical issues. And in my case, this is all done by FAA-certified, English-speaking, hard-working, dedicated A&Ps right here in the good old USA. That you can find examples of maintenance errors from overseas repair shops is unsurprising; it's because you can find it from any repair shop.