European aviation maintenance standards under threat

Aircraft Engineers International (AEI) has come to the preliminary conclusion that at present there is a downward trend as far as safety standards in aviation engineering are concerned.

Observations made so far by AEI Affiliated Organisations are as follows:

1. Airline Pilots (unlicensed and unskilled in Aircraft Maintenance) illegally perform maintenance actions at outstations when the aircraft is grounded due to technical problems.

2. Abuse of "Single Event Authorisations" set-up to prevent an aircraft being stranded at an unknown airport after an unforeseen diversion of the flight.

3. Maintenance licences have been issued in a manner not compliant with the regulations. AEI has evidence of Personnel not being capable of performing maintenance for which they have been authorised.

“Just recently the EU has on several occasions made news headlines for imposing bans on Non European Airlines considered unsafe to enter into European airspace. The EU has no problem placing these "foreign" airlines on the "Black List" yet fails completely to manage those European airlines under its control by way of EASA.

Aircraft Engineers International

4. During 2006 the EASA standardisation department has uncovered more than 1000 maintenance failings or non adherence/compliance to the regulations by the various European Aviation Authorities without follow up to solve them.

5. Present proposals to improve Maintenance Regulation's are bound to fail due to enormous commercial pressure applied by European Airlines and Maintenance Organisations.

The AEI said in a release: “Just recently the EU has on several occasions made news headlines for imposing bans on Non European Airlines considered unsafe to enter into European airspace. The EU has no problem placing these "foreign" airlines on the "Black List" yet fails completely to manage those European airlines under its control by way of EASA.”

Aircraft maintenance experts from around the globe will gather at a 3 day conference in London from 20-23 September to discuss and evaluate the threat posed to European aviation maintenance.