Aviation Video Commercial planes crash videos. This Boeing 7. 67 2. ER belonging to Ethiopian Airlines was en route from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to Nairobi, Kenya, on November 2. The plane was hijacked by three Ethiopians seeking political asylum in Australia, and asking the crew to fly to Australia. The pilot explained they had only taken on the fuel needed for the scheduled flight and thus could not even make a quarter of the journey, but the hijackers did not believe him. The pilot secretly headed for the Comoro Islands, which lie midway between Madagascar and the African mainland. The plane eventually ran out of fuel. A fight with the hijackers prevented the crew to land on Comores aiport. The pilot tried to ditch the aircraft in shallow waters 5. The plane left engine and wingtip struck the water first. Cracks In Wings Of A380 Airplane A320The left engine then struck a coral reef, slowing that side of the aircraft quickly, causing the Boeing 7. The other 5. 0 survived with injuries. The Disturbing Truth About How Airplanes Are Maintained Today. Not long ago I was waiting for a domestic flight in a departure lounge at one of the crumbling midcentury sheds that pass for an American airport these days. There were delays, as weve all come to expect, and then the delays turned into something more ominous. The airplane I was waiting for had a serious maintenance issue, beyond the ability of a man in an orange vest to address. The entire airplane would have to be taken away for servicing and another brought to the gate in its place. This would take a while. Those of us in the departure lounge settled in for what we suspected might be hours. From the window I watched the ground crew unload the bags from the original airplane. When the new one arrived, the crew pumped the fuel, loaded the bags, and stocked the galley. It was a scene Id witnessed countless times. A380Airbus A38042004A3802005. The Airbus A380 is a doubledeck, widebody, fourengine jet airliner manufactured by European manufacturer Airbus. It is the worlds largest passenger airliner, and. Guardian/Pix/pictures/2012/1/20/1327073479834/A380-superjumbo-007.jpg?w=1200&h=630&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=crop&crop=faces%2Centropy&bm=normal&ba=bottom%2Cleft&blend64=aHR0cHM6Ly91cGxvYWRzLmd1aW0uY28udWsvMjAxNi8wNS8yNS9vdmVybGF5LWxvZ28tMTIwMC05MF9vcHQucG5n&s=b2611a99f9299db99eb869c34c2193a4' alt='Cracks In Wings Of A380 Airplane' title='Cracks In Wings Of A380 Airplane' />Soon we would board and be on the way to our destinations. As for the first airplane, the one with the maintenance problemwhat was its destination going to be When you have time on your hands, you begin to wonder about things like this. My own assumption, as yours might have been, was that the aircraft would be towed to a nearby hangar for a stopgap repair and then flown to a central maintenance facility run by the airline somewhere in the U. S. Or maybe there was one right here at the airport. In any case, if it needed a major overhaul, presumably it would be performed by the airlines staff of trained professionals. If Apple feels it needs a Genius Bar at its stores to deal with hardware and software that cost a few hundred dollars, an airline must have something equivalent to safeguard an airplane worth a few hundred million. About this I would be wrongas wrong as it is possible to be. Over the past decade, nearly all large U. S. airlines have shifted heavy maintenance work on their airplanes to repair shops thousands of miles away, in developing countries, where the mechanics who take the planes apart completely and put them back together or almost may not even be able to read or speak English. US Airways and Southwest fly planes to a maintenance facility in El Salvador. Delta sends planes to Mexico. United uses a shop in China. American still does much of its most intensive maintenance in house in the U. S., but that is likely to change in the aftermath of the companys merger with US Airways. The airlines are shipping this maintenance work offshore for the reason youd expect to cut labor costs. Mechanics in El Salvador, Mexico, China, and elsewhere earn a fraction of what mechanics in the U. S. do. In part because of this offshoring, the number of maintenance jobs at U. S. carriers has plummeted, from 7. But the issue isnt just jobs. A century ago, Upton Sinclair wrote his novel The Jungle to call attention to the plight of workers in the slaughterhouses, but what really got people upset was learning how unsafe their meat was. Safety is an issue here, too. The Federal Aviation Administration is supposed to be inspecting all the overseas facilities that do maintenance for airlinesjust as it is supposed to inspect those in America. But the F. A. A. no longer has the money or the manpower to do this. One of the fastest growing of the offshore repair sites is on the perimeter of El Salvadors Monseor scar Arnulfo Romero International Airport. Named for the archbishop who was assassinated during Mass in 1. Jets flying the insignia of US Airways, Southwest, Jet Blue, and many smaller American carriers are a common sight as they touch down and taxi to the Aeroman complex at the edge of the field. Aeroman was once the repair base for El Salvadors modest national airline. It has mushroomed into a complex of five hangars, 1. The company has picked up the familiar multi national technobabble, describing itself as a world leader in providing aircraft maintenance solutions. About 2,0. The airplanes that U. S. carriers send to Aeroman undergo whats known in the industry as heavy maintenance, which often involves a complete teardown of the aircraft. Every plate and panel on the wings, tail, flaps, and rudder are unscrewed, and all the parts withincables, brackets, bearings, and boltsare removed for inspection. The landing gear is disassembled and checked for cracks, hydraulic leaks, and corrosion. The engines are removed and inspected for wear. Inside, the passenger seats, tray tables, overhead bins, carpeting, and side panels are removed until the cabin has been stripped down to bare metal. Then everything is put back exactly where it was, at least in theory. Related The Human Factor. The work is labor intensive and complicated, and the technical manuals are written in English, the language of international aviation. According to regulations, in order to receive F. A. A. certification as a mechanic, a worker needs to be able to read, speak, write, and comprehend spoken English. Most of the mechanics in El Salvador and some other developing countries who take apart the big jets and then put them back together are unable to meet this standard. At Aeromans El Salvador facility, only one mechanic out of eight is F. A. A. certified. At a major overhaul base used by United Airlines in China, the ratio is one F. A. A. certified mechanic for every 3. In contrast, back when U. S. airlines performed heavy maintenance at their own, domestic facilities, F. A. A. certified mechanics far outnumbered everyone else. At American Airlines mammoth heavy maintenance facility in Tulsa, certified mechanics outnumber the uncertified four to one. Because heavy maintenance is labor intensive and offshore labor is cheap, theres a perception that the work is unskilled. But thats not true. If something as mundane as the tray of a tray table becomes unattached, the arms that hold it could easily turn into spears. There are 7. 31 foreign repair shops certified by the F. A. A. around the globe. How qualified are the mechanics in these hundreds of placesIts very hard to check. In the past, when heavy maintenance was performed on Uniteds planes at a huge hangar at San Francisco International Airport, a government inspector could easily drive a few minutes from an office in the Bay Area to make a surprise inspection. Today that maintenance work is done in Beijing. The inspectors responsible for checking on how Chinese workers service airplanes are based in Los Angeles, 6,5. Lack of proximity is only part of the problem. To inspect any foreign repair station, the F. A. A. first must obtain permission from the foreign government where the facility is located. Then, after a visa is granted, the U. S. must inform that government when the F. A. A. inspector will be coming. So much for the element of surprisethe very core of any inspection process. That inspections have had the heart torn out of them should come as no surprise. Como Instalar Los Gadgets En Windows Vista. It is the pattern that has beset the regulation of drugs, food, and everything else. A facility in El Salvador. By Rodrigo FloresImage. Brief. What effect does all this offshoring have on the airworthiness of the fleetNo one gathers data systematically on this questionwhich is worrying in itselfbut you dont have to look far in government documents and news reports to find incidents that bring your senses to an upright and locked position. In 2. 01. 1, an Air France Airbus A3. U. S. and European airlines in Xiamen, China, flew for five days with 3. The plane traveled first to Paris and then to Boston, where mechanics discovered the problem. A year earlier, an Air France Boeing 7. Chinese facility was grounded after it was found that some of the planes exterior had been refinished with potentially flammable paint. In 2. 01. 3, yet another Air France aircraft, this one an Airbus A3. Caracas from Paris, had to make an unscheduled landing in the Azores when all the toilets overflowed and two of the airplanes high frequency radios failed.