Outsourcing Aircraft Maintenance Designed Around Safety, Diversification, and Performance

Within the next decade, U.S. air carriers are expected to outsource over 70 percent of all maintenance performed on their aircraft. To reduce the potential for errors, air carriers must adopt an outsourcing initiative that enables the selection of Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO) facilities to be based on results-driven criteria around safe and reliable practices.

A well-planned and developed air carrier maintenance outsourcing initiative must emphasize an MRO audit plan utilizing safety, diversification, and performance as the primary evaluation standards before making a selection based on cost alone. The purpose of this paper is to provide an objective analysis on why the imperative elements of safety, diversification, and performance are critical to the air carrier and how they should be incorporated into a predefined list of air carrier outsourcing objectives in order to determine the best possible provider of aircraft maintenance service.