The year is already a third through
and it seems like it just began. Life is good and, as I'm wont to say, "if
you gotta work, this ain't a bad gig.". A lot of changes are in store for
airline types, but the biggest came when mandatory retirement was moved from
age 60 to 65. I've got no desire to retire. Although I've got another 14
years before reaching age 60, working 12 days a month feels like
semi-retirement already. The most stressful part of my life is what I
inflict on myself with all the paramotoring stuff. I'm not complaining, mind
you, I do it willingly. Lord knows I couldn't live off the income. But
still, deadlines are deadlines.
The Maintenance Issue
Southwest is a great airline to work for. And all this hubbub about
maintenance is somewhat surprising to me. Being an insider at several airlines
before, I can attest that Southwest has, what I consider to be, the best
maintenance of all. Not that any were particularly bad, mind you, but Southwest has been the best.
The reality, from my perspective, is that someone at Southwest probably discovered
an inspection that either wasn't done by the correct procedure or wasn't
properly documented. They corrected the
problem, told the FAA liaison, and asked if they could redo the inspections
as airplanes overnighted in their respective cities. The FAA liason said
yes and that's what maintenance did. The airline even started an internal
audit, before any news coverage, to correct the original problem. They
recognized a problem and set out to correct it. That's the way it appears from my seat.
One example of quality is deferred maintenance. All airlines allow
certain non-critical
items to be inoperative and be "deferred" for some number of days. It would be nearly impossible to run an airline
otherwise. The list of items that can be so deferred is highly regulated and
must be on the approved minimum equipment list (MEL). It spells out the
items, special considerations, time limits and other details. Some airlines will
commonly have one to three items on a significant percentage of their fleet
at any given time.
Southwest Airlines usually has none. Being profitable affords the ability to not skimp on maintenance.
Naturally, given my amount of time aloft in these aircraft, I'm quite
thankful.
I've also found the airline to be proactive on overall safety issues, too. Of
course there are things I would like to see improved, but changes must be
made carefully. And many of the improvements I suggest are beyond the
airline's control anyway.
Nothing against the news media—as a writer for several magazines, I'm part of
it myself. But lets face it, sensational sells. It's just human nature for
them to sensationalize as much as their editorial policy allows. I'm
extremely happy for a free press but we always have to be careful about
consumption. |
If you gotta work... Mount Hood guards the southeast
entrance to Portland International Airport. It's the best view around unless
you want to brave the cold, howling wind to climb it. I don't do cold, let
alone cold with a howling wind. Photo by Jim Ribar March 25, 2008 |
