Ralph “the wrench” Cunningham, the maintenance chief at a nearby airline, agreed to answer a few questions for me this week as MD-80s and MD-88s were being grounded nation-wide for routine overdue maintenance.

KG: So Ralph – tell me about this exciting new way of doing aircraft maintenance at the airlines.

RC: Kevin, we have a revolutionary way of deciding when and how to do important safety-related inspections and repairs on our aircraft. We call it “Maintenance by Media” or “MBM” and it is working great so far.

KG: How does it work and exactly how is it different from the old way of doing things?

RC: Well… You probably remember from your career back a few years ago that we generally either did maintenance on our aircraft when it was required by the regs or when an airplane actually broke:

KG: nods head

RC: You may also remember the beginnings of MBM when the idea was in its infancy. We called them “MCOs” or maintenance carry-overs. We learned that it wasn’t important if you fixed anything on an airplane as long as you put a little MCO sticker on the item and noted it in the aircraft log book. From bald tires to leaking fuel lines, we could put off working on almost anything.

KG: I remember the MCOs. I once had twenty-seven of them on one airplane and they still dispatched it – out of a maintenance base, no less!

RC: That’s right! We simply took the whole process one big step forward. Now we don’t fix a damn thing on any airplane unless the media finds out about it and guilt’s our buddies over at the FAA into bugging us. That way, you can have hundreds of things wrong fleet-wide, but you only have to pay to fix the parts that CNN is aware of.

KG: That is pure genius! Even if the airplane crashes it only serves to alert the media, who, in turn, alert the FAA. Then, out go the minimum wage wrench monkeys to fix things – usually in low-cost, sunny, Honduras!

RC: It is kind of like your Toyota. I’m assuming from your airline background that when the “Check Engine” light comes on, you simply put a sticker over it and press-on, right?

KG: Absolutely. As long as the local news geeks don’t find out, I’m golden and if the light eventually burns out, better still.

RC: You have stumbled onto the airline’s secret. We’ve changed our attitude from “if it IS broke, don’t fix it” to “make CNN or the NTSB prove it is broke, then we’ll cancel two hundred flights and do a half-ass job cobbling together a fix.

KG: Ralph, thanks for talking to me about this vital safety feature of the new airline world.

RC: You’re welcome. Next time, you might want to ask me about our upcoming new program for flight delays called: It Ain’t Our Fault – Blame Jesus for the Weather. (IAOFBJFTW).

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