Another outsourcing tale: Shoddy airplane work

Think about this the next time you fly...that plane you're depending upon not to fall out of the sky was probably sent off-shore for it's heavy maintenance. By any measure, the work being done is shoddy and flying on one of them after it's been to El Salvador, China or even to a domestic cheap labor provider like TIMCO, Inc, is dangerous to your health.

Only a liberal would use an example of government doing a bad job as proof we need MORE government...

NO KIDDING:lol:
 
From the article:
According to CNN, airline spokeswoman Mary Frances Fagan now claims the seat locking mechanisms have been “gunked up” by passengers spilling beverages, which led to their coming unbolted.
Bullsh*t!

I used to work at SkyWest Airlines in Palm Springs as an Aircraft Mechanic for 5.5 years, 1999-2004. Believe me, the seats don't come loose just because someone spilled their drink. I guarantee you they were installed improperly and then on top of that an Inspector didn't catch it when he or she signed it off.

I don't know what regulations cover maintenance in foreign countries but in the US, aircraft must be maintained by Certified A&P's and signed off by Inspectors.

If they're using non certified maintenance people that's OK but a Mechanic and an Inspector have to sign off that persons work (That's where the problems begin). And that's just one of the reasons I left the Industry.

Another person gets paid the same as me but I have to sign off and be responsible for that guys work as well? No thanks!

I agree. I perform nondestructive testing for commercial and defense Aviation companies. Lack of proper inspection is the main issue. We find stuff they should have been found long before we find it.

We hear all the time that we are finding too many defects.
 
You had to reach way back up in there to pull this pile of Sh*t out now didn't you.
:eusa_clap::clap2:



We have had quite a few planes go down in the USA because of due to mechanical failure that were maintained by domestic A&P mechanics.

How many have gone down due to TIMCO, Inc?

Here in the USA workers in the aircraft shops have to much on their mind other than maintaining aircraft. They have to play Union NLRB politics, Affirmative Action politics, Discrimination politics, FAA politics, Harassment in the workplace politics & the accompanying law suits to sort all these things out. It is a wonder how any real mechanical inspection or maintenance work gets done in a aircraft hanger in the USA.
 
Wink Wink.

The unions deliberately loosened those seats. It was sabotage by the unions who don't care who is hurt or killed. As many planes that fly overseas ONLY American planes have the loose seat problem and that occurred ONLY during a labor dispute with the maintenance union.

That wouldn't surprise me at all. Heck, it wouldn't surprise me at all if during a contract dispute, a mechanic deliberately left a loose object in an engine!
 
The safety record of the airlines in America has never been better. There hasn't been a single crash as a result of mechanical failure in over 10 years. The only crash I can think of in recent memory is the plane that went down in the Hudson because it ingested a flock of birds, and no one died in that incident.

So using the airline industry to accuse the profit motive of causing safety problems just isn't very convincing.


So, it's not an issue until somebody is killed?

It is certainly difficult to agree with your position when NOTHING is happening at all and the safety record is stellar. You are using scare tactics in a place that has nothing at all to be afraid of. You are far more likely to die driving to the airport in your government motor car than you are from boarding that plane.

Here is a hint for you: outsourcing is not synonymous with poor quality. Every electronic device you own and every kitchen appliance you have that has a circuit board was, in part or in whole, constructed in China. Period. This is not because they turn out piss poor products. It is because they can match our quality at a fraction of the price. Want to know why?

Labor is only a fraction of that cost. There is plenty more of it tied up in regulation and other areas.

Why are IPhones constructed at a factory in china? Hint: it has nothing whatsoever to do with costs.

Ah yes, let us poison our rivers, make the air unbreathable, to compete with China.

Or maybe a better idea would be an excise tax on nations that have inadaquete environmental and labor laws. Free trade is only fair when the playing field is level.
 
The safety record of the airlines in America has never been better. There hasn't been a single crash as a result of mechanical failure in over 10 years. The only crash I can think of in recent memory is the plane that went down in the Hudson because it ingested a flock of birds, and no one died in that incident.

So using the airline industry to accuse the profit motive of causing safety problems just isn't very convincing.


So, it's not an issue until somebody is killed?

Karma may be looking for him right now.
 
Just because a maintenance failure hasn't led to a crash....yet...that does not mean there's no problem.

"These findings are very, very disturbing," says John Goglia, a former presidential appointee on the National Transportation Safety Board. "We don't know what's going on in those facilities [foreign repair companies]. If we're not monitoring them properly, how do we know it's safe?"

Goglia says the fact that there have been so few crashes in recent years masks a troubling trend that the public can't see as airlines have been slashing costs.

"The margin of safety is getting thinner," he says. "The absence of an accident doesn't mean you're safe. We should be monitoring and doing our job before there's an accident, not after."


To Cut Costs, Airlines Send Repairs Abroad : NPR
 
So, it's not an issue until somebody is killed?

It is certainly difficult to agree with your position when NOTHING is happening at all and the safety record is stellar. You are using scare tactics in a place that has nothing at all to be afraid of. You are far more likely to die driving to the airport in your government motor car than you are from boarding that plane.

Here is a hint for you: outsourcing is not synonymous with poor quality. Every electronic device you own and every kitchen appliance you have that has a circuit board was, in part or in whole, constructed in China. Period. This is not because they turn out piss poor products. It is because they can match our quality at a fraction of the price. Want to know why?

Labor is only a fraction of that cost. There is plenty more of it tied up in regulation and other areas.

Why are IPhones constructed at a factory in china? Hint: it has nothing whatsoever to do with costs.

Ah yes, let us poison our rivers, make the air unbreathable, to compete with China.

Or maybe a better idea would be an excise tax on nations that have inadaquete environmental and labor laws. Free trade is only fair when the playing field is level.

Interesting that I have never, in any shape or form, said that we should poison our country and have actually advocated for an import tax. Too bad you were just being a worthless troll…
 
So, it's not an issue until somebody is killed?

It is certainly difficult to agree with your position when NOTHING is happening at all and the safety record is stellar. You are using scare tactics in a place that has nothing at all to be afraid of. You are far more likely to die driving to the airport in your government motor car than you are from boarding that plane.

Here is a hint for you: outsourcing is not synonymous with poor quality. Every electronic device you own and every kitchen appliance you have that has a circuit board was, in part or in whole, constructed in China. Period. This is not because they turn out piss poor products. It is because they can match our quality at a fraction of the price. Want to know why?

Labor is only a fraction of that cost. There is plenty more of it tied up in regulation and other areas.

Why are IPhones constructed at a factory in china? Hint: it has nothing whatsoever to do with costs.

Hint: Sure it does.

No, it does not and that is part of the problem with the employment picture here in America. Democrats such as yourself never understand why we lose jobs so handily because you have this asinine myopic view that cost is EVERYTHING and that regulation or standard practices are meaningless. Even though regulation increases costs sharply, dems refuse to believe they have any real impact in business decisions.

I repeat, cost HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH APPLES DECISION. That is fact. Flexibility and production capability were why Apple built the IPhone somewhere else. BTW, Apple employes twice the workforce in American jobs than it does overseas.
Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/b...d-a-squeezed-middle-class.html?pagewanted=all
96 hours. American companies would take an estimated 9 MONTHS to get up to the same level. It was not cost that forced this decision, it was outright capability. The fact is that Chinese factories are capable of doing so much more at a vastly increased rate where we are just left in the dust.

We have a problem, namely in the fact that China does not care about worker rights. We are going to NEED to come up with a way to compete with those factories on a massive scale. Mostly, that is going to require some level of automation (something else that the democrats always want to fight, ATM’s anyone?) because we are not going to expose Americans to the type of conditions that China is forcing on their people. We are also going to need to deal with regulatory bullshit that slows things down to a snail’s pace. You have to understand that time is money in the business world and many times the time is far more important than what workers actually make .


Really, in China they can accomplish this:
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps0DSihggio]Ark Hotel Construction time lapse building 15 storeys in 2 days (48 hrs) - YouTube[/ame]
A 30 floor building in 15 days. They have been building a road near my house for over 5 fucking years. That is the difference in bureaucratic bullshit that we experience here and it is going to sink us on the national stage if we do not address this.
 
It is certainly difficult to agree with your position when NOTHING is happening at all and the safety record is stellar. You are using scare tactics in a place that has nothing at all to be afraid of. You are far more likely to die driving to the airport in your government motor car than you are from boarding that plane.

Here is a hint for you: outsourcing is not synonymous with poor quality. Every electronic device you own and every kitchen appliance you have that has a circuit board was, in part or in whole, constructed in China. Period. This is not because they turn out piss poor products. It is because they can match our quality at a fraction of the price. Want to know why?

Labor is only a fraction of that cost. There is plenty more of it tied up in regulation and other areas.

Why are IPhones constructed at a factory in china? Hint: it has nothing whatsoever to do with costs.

Hint: Sure it does.

No, it does not and that is part of the problem with the employment picture here in America. Democrats such as yourself never understand why we lose jobs so handily because you have this asinine myopic view that cost is EVERYTHING and that regulation or standard practices are meaningless. Even though regulation increases costs sharply, dems refuse to believe they have any real impact in business decisions.

I repeat, cost HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH APPLES DECISION. That is fact. Flexibility and production capability were why Apple built the IPhone somewhere else. BTW, Apple employes twice the workforce in American jobs than it does overseas.
Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/b...d-a-squeezed-middle-class.html?pagewanted=all
96 hours. American companies would take an estimated 9 MONTHS to get up to the same level. It was not cost that forced this decision, it was outright capability. The fact is that Chinese factories are capable of doing so much more at a vastly increased rate where we are just left in the dust.

We have a problem, namely in the fact that China does not care about worker rights. We are going to NEED to come up with a way to compete with those factories on a massive scale. Mostly, that is going to require some level of automation (something else that the democrats always want to fight, ATM’s anyone?) because we are not going to expose Americans to the type of conditions that China is forcing on their people. We are also going to need to deal with regulatory bullshit that slows things down to a snail’s pace. You have to understand that time is money in the business world and many times the time is far more important than what workers actually make .


Really, in China they can accomplish this:
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps0DSihggio]Ark Hotel Construction time lapse building 15 storeys in 2 days (48 hrs) - YouTube[/ame]
A 30 floor building in 15 days. They have been building a road near my house for over 5 fucking years. That is the difference in bureaucratic bullshit that we experience here and it is going to sink us on the national stage if we do not address this.


Yet, other companies thrive in the same regulatory environment you claim is driving jobs overseas.

Why is that?
 
Hint: Sure it does.

No, it does not and that is part of the problem with the employment picture here in America. Democrats such as yourself never understand why we lose jobs so handily because you have this asinine myopic view that cost is EVERYTHING and that regulation or standard practices are meaningless. Even though regulation increases costs sharply, dems refuse to believe they have any real impact in business decisions.

I repeat, cost HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH APPLES DECISION. That is fact. Flexibility and production capability were why Apple built the IPhone somewhere else. BTW, Apple employes twice the workforce in American jobs than it does overseas.
Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/b...d-a-squeezed-middle-class.html?pagewanted=all
96 hours. American companies would take an estimated 9 MONTHS to get up to the same level. It was not cost that forced this decision, it was outright capability. The fact is that Chinese factories are capable of doing so much more at a vastly increased rate where we are just left in the dust.

We have a problem, namely in the fact that China does not care about worker rights. We are going to NEED to come up with a way to compete with those factories on a massive scale. Mostly, that is going to require some level of automation (something else that the democrats always want to fight, ATM’s anyone?) because we are not going to expose Americans to the type of conditions that China is forcing on their people. We are also going to need to deal with regulatory bullshit that slows things down to a snail’s pace. You have to understand that time is money in the business world and many times the time is far more important than what workers actually make .


Really, in China they can accomplish this:
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps0DSihggio]Ark Hotel Construction time lapse building 15 storeys in 2 days (48 hrs) - YouTube[/ame]
A 30 floor building in 15 days. They have been building a road near my house for over 5 fucking years. That is the difference in bureaucratic bullshit that we experience here and it is going to sink us on the national stage if we do not address this.


Yet, other companies thrive in the same regulatory environment you claim is driving jobs overseas.

Why is that?

Because there is a market and that is not going to change. What is going to change is the SIZE of that market which is why fewer and fewer companies are thriving. In essence, we have become a service industry because services cannot go to china or elsewhere. You can’t open a restaurant in China that serves people in Idaho. Jobs are moving away because we are chasing them away. As those jobs move, the amount of cash available is going to decrease and eventually all sectors feel the pain. We continue to try and stave it off by injecting vast amounts of cash into the system but that is only causing the mountain to grow higher and the eventual fallout to get larger. Essentially, all those ‘jobs’ plans have shit to do with actual jobs.

We still have some competitive faculties in this nation. We are rich in resources, automation and expertise. We are, however, falling behind and we need to address that if we do not want to look at the Chinese as the leaders of the world. The fall from the lofty place we were in (far more than the next several economies COMBINED) takes time but it is possible if we do not stay on top of our game.
 
Another outsourcing tale - Sabotage with fake tech gear...
:eusa_eh:
Fake tech gear has infiltrated the U.S. government
November 8th, 2012 - A record number of tech products used by the U.S. military and dozens of other federal agencies are fake. That opens up a myriad of national security risks, from dud missiles to short-circuiting airplane parts to cyberespionage.
Despite laws designed to crack down on counterfeiters, suppliers labeled by the U.S. government as "high risk" are increasing their sales to federal agencies. Their presence in government's supply chain soared 63% over the past decade, according to a new study released by IHS, a supply chain management consultancy. Suppliers with the high-risk branding are known to engage in counterfeiting, wire fraud, product tampering and a laundry list of other illicit and illegal behaviors.

Last year, 9,539 banned businesses were found to have sold technology the government. Roughly 10% of those incidents involved counterfeit parts or equipment. "What keeps us up at night is the dynamic nature of this threat, because by the time we've figured out how to test for these counterfeits, they've figured out how to get around it," said Vivek Kamath, head of Raytheon's supply chain operations. "It's literally on almost a daily basis they change. The sophistication of the counterfeiting is amazing to us." The number of fake tech products floating around in the market quadrupled from 2009 to 2011, according to IHS - and they're sneaking into some high-profile places.

In September 2010, the Missile Defense Agency found that the memory in a high-altitude missile's mission computer was counterfeit. Fixing the problem cost $2.7 million. Had the bomb launched, it most likely would have failed, the agency said. Two years earlier, the FBI seized $76 million of counterfeit Cisco routers that the Bureau said could have provided Chinese hackers a backdoor into U.S. government networks. A number of government agencies bought the routers from an authorized Cisco vendor, but that legitimate vendor purchased the routers from a high-risk Chinese supplier.

China continues to be the largest source for counterfeit and pirated goods found in the United States, accounting for 62% of the $178 million in products (with an estimated retail value of $1.1 billion) that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency seized last year. Some in Congress have pushed for a crackdown. "Counterfeit parts pose an increasing risk to our national security, to the reliability of our weapons systems and to the safety of our men and women in uniform," Sen. John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, said last year in support of anti-counterfeiting regulations.

Source
 
Thanks for a breath of fresh air on this issue, Bripat. Indeed, no mechanical failures in 10 years, and the plane that went down due to a flock of birds that had no passenger deaths was due to an astutely well-trained all-America pilot who saved lives with his quick thinking.

If he had worked for a typical American corporation, he would have been let go for being "too expensive" and they would have either dumped his work on the remaining employees or hired a schlub for $10/hour. We have a real problem with talent drain in this country due to this practice. You get what you pay for.
 

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