This is an article about complying with maintenance regulations. We rely much more on traceability and documentation, today, than we did twenty years ago. But as we rely more on traceability, it is important to reflect on why we rely on traceability, what is the purpose of the traceability, and based on these first two…

Is your Part 145 organization evaluating its suppliers? A new European rule now requires Part 145 organizations to engage in supplier evaluation. The new standards offer a number of different strategies for accomplishing this evaluation, so it doesn’t have to be a burden; but it has become a requirement, so Part 145 organizations ought to…

Congress has passed a new FAA Reauthorization Act. The law authorizes FAA expenditures but it is also used as a vehicle for changing substantive law, as well. This year’s law includes a provision that could pose a thorny issue for Americans, in that it offers an opportunity for the FAA to potentially side-step traditional rulemaking…

A friend sent me an email asking about incidents and accidents occasioned by turbulence. The member found it odd that turbulence (an every-day industry occurrence) would yield an incident or accident report. The query identifies one of the problems with our industry’s reliance on the accident-incident determination as the basis for identifying whether there may…

The Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (ESIGN) was signed into law on June 30, 2000 — 18 years old this year. If there was any justice in the world, we’d all be buying the law a cigar and allowing it to vote. ESIGN established a general rule of validity for electronic records,…

As I sit down to write, America is on the verge of a trade war with China. And as the earliest salvos of that trade war were announced, where was I headed? China. I spent the week, after the President announced the trade sanctions against China, in Shanghai. I was certain that it would be…

Everybody talks about getting closure. It is a theme in pop songs and sappy movies. But surprisingly few discussions exist about closing your packages. Aircraft parts are shipped throughout the world. When you close the box on a shipment, are you thinking about whether your closure complies with the regulations? When you ship aircraft parts,…

If you work in a repair station, then being able to obtain the replacement parts that you need is tremendously important to your day-to-day business. But a recent agreement between China and the United States sets a precedent for excluding parts for commercial (non-safety) reasons; and this sort of exclusion could put repair stations and…

If you work for a dual-certificated (FAA & EASA) repair station then you have probably been wondering what is going on with documentation requirements. You are probably throwing around terms like “MAG 6,” “8130-3” and “Bilateral Agreements” at parties and around the water cooler. And if you haven’t been discussing these items, then you should…

Are you familiar with Spec 106? It is a specification written by the air carrier community that details how suppliers should handle and document aircraft parts. One of the problems with this specification is that it has not been updated in over 15 years. Many people in the aviation industry are familiar with the Spec…