Union: Airlines outsourcing plane maintenance

The Transport Workers Union of America (TWU) said Wednesday that incidents like the recent one involving a Southwest Airlines jet could be avoided if airlines kept their maintenance work in America.

The Southwest plane had to make an emergency landing last week after a hole opened up in its roof.

While the TWU, which represents airplane maintenance workers, has a vested interest in keeping this kind of work in the country, a new study released by the organization showed that airlines have increasingly been sending their planes oversees to be serviced, including Southwest.

The benefits of outsourcing maintenance to the airlines are relaxed regulations, but the safety risks to passengers are much greater, the TWU said.

“There is considerable evidence that many firms, indeed entire industries, seek to gain a competitive advantage by outsourcing abroad their productive activities, mainly to take advantage of lower standards of regulation or lower levels of enforcement,”  Emanuel Thorne, chairman of CUNY’s Brooklyn College economics department, said in a statement announcing the study. 

“Outsourcing airline maintenance to avoid appropriate FAA regulation may be one such instance,” Thorne said.

The TWU study found that 40 percent of the maintenance for the major airlines was outsourced. Southwest sends many of its 737 airplanes to El Salvador for work, the group said.

Since the incident last Friday, where Southwest Flight 812 from Phoenix to Sacramento, Calif., landed in Yuma, Ariz., shortly after take off, the airline has maintained its planes are safe.

"Our highest priority is the safety of our Employees and Customers," Southwest Vice President Mike Van de Ven said this week in a statement. "Prior to the event regarding Flight 812, we were in compliance with the FAA-mandated and Boeing-recommended structural inspection requirements for that aircraft. What we saw with Flight 812 was a new and unknown issue."

None of the 118 passengers or five crew members aboard Flight 812 last Friday was injured.