I detect that I have set a new personal record (woohoo!) for the amount of acronyms in a blog article title at four. If you’re reading this, you probably already have a good handle on what they mean, but more on that later. Before we get started I wanted to make a suggestion to those of you who are responsible for maintaining those pesky Approved Supplier Lists required by nearly all quality standards. Many of you give automatic approval to firms who are accredited, for example, to the ASA-100, ...

Many of you buy and sell avionics parts and/or have Repair Stations/Approved Maintenance Organisations. As such I’d like to share with you the options that exist globally regarding the credentials which avionics technicians may bring to your attention during the hiring process, including the relatively new NCATT (National Center for Aircraft Technician Training) Certification. Before starting, since this article is addressing a global topic, we need to point out that generally, the terms Technic...

I was once in Miami and a friend shared a story. He works in a Repair Station there that performs maintenance on aircraft, and has frequent FAA visits. It seems one day an FAA Inspector expressed concerns to him that he had doubts some Repair Station Technicians and Inspectors could competently comprehend English as contained in Quality and Maintenance Manuals. The person responded; “Then why did you issue them A&P and Repairman Certificates?” It is, after all, the FAA’s responsibility to determ...

If you’re reading this, then this blog somehow made it through the institutional censors. Of course, everyone abhors the thoughts of “censors”, so these guys refer to themselves by the more palatable term “proof readers”. Professional proof readers call themselves Editors, and if you make a living writing, you’d better be careful to appeal to your target audience lest you find yourself edited out the door. OK, enough fun with this sarcasm.   Businessmen and academia are perpetually analyzing the...

We need to have a frank talk about a continuing pattern of injustice and seemingly anti-competitive behavior in the aftermarket. I’ll start. Due to the current covid crisis, and perhaps to the delight of OEMs (herein manufacturers who are Production Approval Holders, PAH, or have Production Organisation Approvals, POA) who in recent years have made major forays into the aftermarket, there are many small independent MROs staggering on the brink of business failure. Aside from covid, are there any...

There is no doubt that the movement of OEMs into the aftermarket in the last 15 years has caused tectonic change in the MRO (Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul) and Distribution ecosystem. Such evolution is not uncommon, but unfortunately there appears to be ample evidence that more than a few of the OEMs are unfairly leveraging their monopolistic positions to withhold reasonable access to their repair/overhaul manuals (Instructions for Continued Airworthiness) from independent MROs. Independent ...