Original story on the Washington Post: FAA Criticized In Report on Airline Parts
At first glance, this story sounds pretty scary.
Passengers have flown on jetliners built with “substandard” parts, some of which may have been made in foreign countries, because the Federal Aviation Administration lacks an adequate system for checking the quality of airplane components, according to a federal oversight report.
Wow! That’s quite an opening paragraph. Next time I get into an airliner I just know it’s going to corkscrew directly into the ground. Let’s see what they back it up with.
The parts for commercial airliners such as the Boeing 727 and 737 were once manufactured almost exclusively in the United States. But the parts on today’s big jets, such as Boeing’s 777 and its planned 787, are made in such countries as China, Japan, Brazil, Italy, France and Australia, in addition to the United States. Boeing, Pratt & Whitney, GE and other plane manufacturers buy parts made overseas largely because they are cheaper.
Ok, so parts are made overseas. So what?
But the bargain-hunting has come at a price, according to a new report by the Transportation Department’s inspector general.
“Neither manufacturers nor FAA inspectors have provided effective oversight of suppliers; this has allowed substandard parts to enter the aviation supply chain,” reads the report, dated Feb. 26. The agency released the report yesterday after it was made public by the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit organization that focuses on government accountability.
SourceWatch: Project On Government Oversight
The report cited four engine failures in 2003 — three on the ground, one in flight — that were traced to “unapproved design changes made by a . . . supplier” of speed sensors on engine fuel pumps. It did not cite any more recent incidents, nor did it specify the degree to which continuing problems with parts threaten to cause similar failures.
Even the journalist sounds unconvinced at this point. They didn’t cite anything more recent than 2003, and they didn’t specify the possible danger of unapproved design changes.
And, frankly, only four engine failures in all of 2003? According to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, there are more than 87,000 flights a day, and an average about 64 million flights a year. Only four failures? Sounds like these parts suppliers are doing pretty damned good to me.
During a visit to one parts supplier, the inspector general’s office observed an employee who “used a piece of paper, scotch-taped to the work surface, as a measuring device for a length of wire on an oil and fuel pressure transmitter.”
And here’s the line that prompted me to write this blog post, after seeing coverage of the article at The Consumerist blog.
My immediate reaction was: so what? The article obviously implies that measuring the lengths of wire with a piece of paper scotch-taped to a work surface is bad in some way, but it doesn’t tell us why it’s bad!
- It doesn’t say whether the wires were the correct length after being measured this way.
- And even more important, it doesn’t even tell you why the wire needs to be cut! If it’s just being cut so it’s short enough to fit in the casing of this particular component, does it really matter how precise the cut is?
Sure it sounds scary, until you actually engage your brain and realize that paper can actually be cut to a specific length! And it can be marked, too! It’s a miracle material! Well, since the article doesn’t explain it, I can only assume it’s there merely to sound scary to people who don’t make use of their critical thinking skills or have never seen paper before.
So far, no airline accidents have been attributed to faulty overseas parts, the FAA said. “There are absolutely no imminent safety issues raised by the report,” FAA spokeswoman Alison Duquette said.
A confirmation that these horrible systemic problems you should be terrified of haven’t actually caused any accidents whatsoever, directly from the FAA.
The report identifies 17 major components of commercial airliners made by Boeing, including the wings, rudder, nose and engine nacelles. When the Boeing 727 was introduced in 1964, all 17 of the components were made in the United States.
By contrast, of the 17 major components of the Boeing 787, which is scheduled to make its first test flight this year, 13 were made exclusively or partially overseas.
“FAA’s process for supplier audits should be designed to address newer manufacturing business models, which have expanded the number of foreign suppliers, locations where parts are assembled, and the degree of independent manufacturing responsibility suppliers now have,” the report reads.
“Exclusively or partially overseas” is a handy statement. Since you bucket “exclusively” and “partially” in the same bucket, there’s no way to know whether all 13 of those components are made entirely overseas, or if all of them merely contain one small screw made in China. It would take a lot of effort to be more vague.
So what is this article really saying?
Ignoring the parts designed to scare you, like the idiotic paragraph about (gasp! shock! horror!) measuring wire with a piece of paper, every other part of this article is basically saying: “getting airline parts from foreign suppliers is bad.” Of course, it never explains why it’s bad. (It does, however, explain one way it’s good: it’s cheaper.) It also doesn’t mention airliners made by the entirely-foreign Airbus cooperative at all.
I’m a pretty patriotic guy, and I even make an effort to buy American whenever I have the chance, but this article is nothing but scare-tactic propaganda. Airliners are perfectly safe, whether we cut the length of wire in Mexico City or in Dallas, specifically because companies like Boeing, backed up by government agencies like the National Transportation Safety Board, have expended great effort to make sure they’re as safe as possible. And yes, that’s not 100% safe… nothing is.
And the part that bugs me most is that blogs like Consumerist are sharing and re-printing this article, with the scary wire cutting quote in the headline, all over the Internet without even stopping to think about it. If you run a blog that reprints stories, please at least spend 5 minutes thinking about the story first.
