US House OKs safety plan for foreign aircraft work

2009-05-22 00:55:02 -

WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. inspectors would conduct more checks of overseas aircraft repair stations under a bill approved Thursday by the House of Representatives that seeks to deal with safety considerations as major U.S. airlines send maintenance work overseas.
The European Commission has threatened to pull out of an aviation safety deal over that requirement.

A U.S.-European Union agreement says each will have comparable safety requirements and inspection systems.
The legislation also would authorize $13.4 billion to accelerate the U.S. transition from a radar-based air traffic control system to one based on Global Positioning System technology.
The bill, approved by a vote of 277 to 136, would require the Federal Aviation Administration to increase its overseas inspections from once a year to twice a year, and foreign workers would have to submit to the same drug and alcohol testing and criminal background checks that apply to U.S. workers.
A report last year by the Transportation Department's internal watchdog said nine big U.S. airlines are farming out aircraft maintenance at twice the rate of four years earlier and now hire outside contractors for more than 70 percent of major work. While most of the outsourced work is still done in the U.S., often at nonunion repair shops, more than one-quarter of the repairs are done overseas.
The European Commission has threatened to withdraw from the pending aviation safety deal if the provision on overseas repair stations becomes law. The Senate must act on the bill, and the president must sign it before that happens.
Republican lawmakers called the provision a «job killer,» predicting that European airlines will stop sending their aircraft to repair stations in the United States.
«Our interest here is putting people to work and making this system safe, not doing away with jobs,» said Republican Rep. John Mica, who waved a list he said contained 11,000 aircraft repair jobs in the United States that would be lost.
Rep. James Oberstar, Democratic chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said the Europeans are «crying wolf.
«I wouldn't want to have to come back on this floor at some future date and have to respond to an air tragedy because an aircraft wasn't properly inspected in a foreign repair station that wasn't properly crewed or supervised by U.S. personnel,» Oberstar said.
On the Net
House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee: transportation.house.gov
Federal Aviation Administration: www.faa.gov