مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

Maintenance activities are the backbone of successful aircraft operations (Bazargan, 2015). In the aviation industry, maintenance is highly regulated by various global and local airworthiness authorities (i.e., the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), Europe; the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the United States; Agencia Nacional de Aviaç ^ ao Civil (ANAC), Brasil; and others) ~ (Regattieri et al., 2015). Under such a regulatory context, the main role of the maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) organization for an airline is to provide a fully serviceable aircraft when required by the operators at minimum cost and optimum quality (Al-Kaabi et al., 2007). While planning maintenance activities, an airline can choose to perform these activities “in house,” or outsource them. However, planning and coordinating aircraft MRO tasks is complicated because each aircraft has thousands of serviceable parts (Czepiel, 2003), which are arranged in complex and close connections that could eventually lead to system accidents (Arminen et al., 2010). In view of the stringent requirements set by regulatory ambiance and of the limited set of internal resources, such as available labor force, infrastructure hangar, and business scope, etc., an airline may choose to partially outsourced maintenance activities to a MRO organization or specialized repair station to execute activities that require more infrastructure or specialization (Al-Kaabi et al., 2007). Outsourcing MRO enables airlines to avoid significant capital investment in facilities, equipment, and inventories of parts and components (Tang and Elias, 2012). Repair service of an aircraft item (a spare part) is usually provided either by the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) that manufactures the equipment (Selçuk, 2013) or outsourced to a certified maintenance service supplier for that specific item. The tasks to be outsourced vary from company to company and aim to keep the aircraft available to fly for the longest period possible at an acceptable cost, given the security matters and in accordance with the regulatory standards of the country.

However, according to Pettersen and Aase (2008), airline companies have outsourced their operational maintenance functions, purchasing them from the lowest bidder. Thus, it is likely that safety issues have occurred due to this outsourcing. Quinlan et al. (p. 285, 2013) found the following three sets of contributory factorsadversely affecting safety outcomes: “First, economic and financial pressures on contractors often led to corner-cutting or unsafe practices concerning to safety. Second, subcontracting was linked to hazardous forms of disorganization including weakened induction, training, and supervisory regimes. Third, regulatory failure including insufficient regulatory coverage, implementation, and enforcement contributed significantly to poorer safety outcomes.” It should be noted that Quinlan et al. (2013) identified that those problems have affected a wide set of countries, which have different regulatory regimes. To address aviation maintenance safety factors, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) developed Annex 19 to the Convention on International Civil Aviation, dedicated expressly to safety management (ICAO, 2013a). In fact, it is expected that improving regulation, auditing and enforcement may deter unsafe aviation maintenance practices.

However, a group of factors exists relating outsourcing to hazardous forms of disorganization that could be associated with the lack of good management practices for promoting aviation maintenance safety. Czepiel (2003) analyzed a limited collection of information obtained from interviews with both U. S. airlines and repair stations, mainly regarding their respective quality assurance departments. This study notes that, for the case of some outsourced repair stations, their standards about personnel safety procedures and hangar equipment were well below that of air carrier maintenance. Czepiel (2003) also suggests that outsourced repair stations have not yet reached airline standards for developing maintenance human factors and maintenance resource management programs. These arguments reinforce the idea that, to overcome such disorganization mentioned by Quinlan et al. (2013), it is necessary to establish a good set of aircraft maintenance management practices that address safety problems while improving adherence to legal requirements and management practices that promote safety.