A&P Revocations!

Some years ago, an A&P designated examiner was convicted of fraud for
issuing mechanic's certificates without giving much of a test. He was
located in Sanford, Florida. Nearly 3000 certified letters were mailed out
last week to everyone who used this examiner from October 1995 to Aug 1998.
The letter states that everyone receiving a letter has 3 weeks to get ready
for a section 77409 recertification exam at a FSDO. The options provided for
those who can't take the test during the stated period are voluntary
surrender or emergency revocation.

Personally this sucks. There are plenty of legal issues still to be brought
up with the inspector general's office regarding the matter (Is all the work
that these mechanics signed off in the past 9 years now invalid?). I post
about it in case any affected persons may not have received their letter.

D.

Hey Capt.
Yes we all had heard about the Sanford FL incident years ago, and every
mech I knew at the time had been told their A&P was subject to all the
things you mentioned. Actually I was of the understanding that those mechs
in question were all told at that time. At least that is what every mech I
knew at that time had said. Personally I never saw anything from the FAA ,
just A&P's around the country that knew they were going to have to retake
their A&P exams.

Patrick

"Capt.Doug" wrote in message
...
Some years ago, an A&P designated examiner was convicted of fraud for
issuing mechanic's certificates without giving much of a test. He was
located in Sanford, Florida. Nearly 3000 certified letters were mailed out
last week to everyone who used this examiner from October 1995 to Aug
1998.
The letter states that everyone receiving a letter has 3 weeks to get
ready
for a section 77409 recertification exam at a FSDO. The options provided
for
those who can't take the test during the stated period are voluntary
surrender or emergency revocation.

Personally this sucks. There are plenty of legal issues still to be
brought
up with the inspector general's office regarding the matter (Is all the
work
that these mechanics signed off in the past 9 years now invalid?). I post
about it in case any affected persons may not have received their letter.

D.

On Fri, 08 Oct 2004 22:25:33 GMT, "Capt.Doug"
wrote:

Personally this sucks. There are plenty of legal issues still to be brought
up with the inspector general's office regarding the matter (Is all the work
that these mechanics signed off in the past 9 years now invalid?). I post
about it in case any affected persons may not have received their letter.

As one who recently went through 2 years of school full time and a
good deal of personal expense to obtain my A&P certificate, please
excuse me if I fail to feel any sympathy for those mechanics. They
tried to skirt the system and get by on the cheap, and ended up
getting exactly what they paid for. The FAA, for all their faults,
was gracious in letting them re-test at all.

The people I feel sorry for are the aircraft owners who have the
signatures of said mechanics now gracing their logbooks, since as you
said, that calls into question the validity of any work they approved.


================================================== ==
Del Rawlins--
Unofficial Bearhawk FAQ website:
http://www.rawlinsbrothers.org/bhfaq/
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If they can pass the test then they have no problem...and a crash school can
teach you to pass the test in two weeks.

A&P vocational education in the USA is an unmitigated joke. Many of these
schools are utterly useless , but they do certify you to test. Eighteen months
of attendance and in some cases tens of thousands of dollars for very little
learned skill is what I have seen.

They should get rid of the 18 month school or 30 month experience requirement
and let you test up front for a provisional license, on which an IA has to
inspect all jobs you do for the first three times you sign off that job. They
should also split up turbine and recip engines, and composite, sheetmetal, and
wood/tube/fabric structure into separate ratings. The full AMT rating should
only be given after you have worked on aircraft , and only for relevant work on
the appropriate type. Airline personnel are only annoyed by talk of Ceconite
and museum piece Lycomings.

Maybe some of the community college programs where you get an Associate degree
are not a scam but the commercial programs largely are. We interviewed two
people from one of the commercial schools in Virginia recently and I can tell
you that if I had my car oil changed at Jiffy Lube, if either one of them
worked there, I'd find another location!

(Del Rawlins) wrote in message ...

....sniped

As one who recently went through 2 years of school full time and a
good deal of personal expense to obtain my A&P certificate, please
excuse me if I fail to feel any sympathy for those mechanics. They
tried to skirt the system and get by on the cheap, and ended up
getting exactly what they paid for.

Well, maybe...but...
I think it would be unfair and a mistake to assume all 3000 were
trying to "...skirt the system and get by on the cheap.." Many could
have been just as competant and prepared as you say you were but
simply got that particular DE by luck-of-the-draw.

Regards,
Sid Knox

They could be A&P that went thru school just like you. Just the wrong
examiner that the FAA decided to bust for poor record keeping of the like.


...sniped

As one who recently went through 2 years of school full time and a
good deal of personal expense to obtain my A&P certificate, please
excuse me if I fail to feel any sympathy for those mechanics. They
tried to skirt the system and get by on the cheap, and ended up
getting exactly what they paid for.

Well, maybe...but...
I think it would be unfair and a mistake to assume all 3000 were
trying to "...skirt the system and get by on the cheap.." Many could
have been just as competant and prepared as you say you were but
simply got that particular DE by luck-of-the-draw.

Regards,
Sid Knox

Alot of those guys and girls had been working on planes for 15 or 20 years
and took their A&P at the Sanford location because he was cheaper than
anyone else. If you think you know more than a mech that has worked on the
line for 15 or 20 years who doesn't yet have his A&P just because you went
to school....you have alot to learn.
At one time I even thought about trying to make it to that guys place
and taking it...because it was cheap. I have 20 plus years experience on
numerous types of aircraft ( fixed and rotor) and I have never needed an A&P
license to work. But always having a family to support it is difficult to
take off for a week of work and spend 1000 bucks doing it as well. So money
is a key factor to most people in the real world. I agree that those mechs
should have no problem with the retaking of the test..but everyone has to
admit it sux to have to do it again when you have already paid for it. I
doubt very much if they will get any money back from the place.
And I am sure their are some who took it there because it was a "gimme".
I had heard that through the grapevine as well in the industry...so I never
took it there for that reason. Usually if something seems funny....you can
count on it.
But to sum it up I have known thousands of A&P's through the years. Most
of them, especially the ones out of school know how to read a manual and set
a torque..a monkey can do that. Very few A&P's actually know how to do very
little to the "A" part of that license. I can tell you from years of
experience that A&P is a piece of paper , the real knowledge is what's in
his/her head and the ability to use one's hands in a talented way. I can
shoot the entire lap seam on the fuselage of a Gulfstream-V in an 8 hour
shift, I have also repaired a tailboom of a Cobra helo on the side of Mount
Etna in Sicily ( pilot landed on the remains of a tree stump!), WOW how did
I ever do that , I don't have that piece of paper!!!! Not to mention I
helped engineers write the Assembly Outline to build the spars of the C-17.
try to remember their are absolute idiots out there with A&P's just like
there are idots without them. A piece of paper does not a mech make!

Patrick
"Cy Galley" wrote in message
news:IVbad.215910$MQ5.62609@attbi_s52...
They could be A&P that went thru school just like you. Just the wrong
examiner that the FAA decided to bust for poor record keeping of the like.


...sniped

As one who recently went through 2 years of school full time and a
good deal of personal expense to obtain my A&P certificate, please
excuse me if I fail to feel any sympathy for those mechanics. They
tried to skirt the system and get by on the cheap, and ended up
getting exactly what they paid for.

Well, maybe...but...
I think it would be unfair and a mistake to assume all 3000 were
trying to "...skirt the system and get by on the cheap.." Many could
have been just as competant and prepared as you say you were but
simply got that particular DE by luck-of-the-draw.

Regards,
Sid Knox

On Sun, 10 Oct 2004 12:35:58 -0400, "W P Dixon"
wrote:

try to remember their are absolute idiots out there with A&P's just like
there are idots without them. A piece of paper does not a mech make!

That is totally true and to avoid getting into a long drawn out
argument, I do not think that I am somehow better because I have gone
to school than somebody who got theirs based on experience. I think
that I am a better mechanic than *I* would have otherwise been without
the school and that if you want to be exposed to as many different
aspects of aviation mechanics as possible in a short time that a good
school is the best way to accomplish that. I have nothing but the
utmost respect for anybody who got their A&P through experience.
Either way that you go, you still have to put in your time. I chose
school because it was the fastest way in my particular case and we
happen to have a good program in my area.

But I don't buy the fact that it was just luck of the draw that people
chose this guy for their testing and happened to get nailed by the
evil FAA (as accurate as that adjective may be). As you said, the
deal seemed fishy and people sought him out because he was the
cheapest (not that he didn't have every right to set whatever prices
he wanted) and had a reputation for being easy on the test. My
problem (and lack of sympathy for those guys) is based on the belief
that the bar should be set the same regardless of how you got your
experience and that those people who sought out a guy known for lower
test standards ended up getting exactly what they paid for.

This is no different than an aircraft owner who seeks out an IA known
for "paperwork" annual inspections. When they are both busted by the
FAA it is hard to feel sorry for either of them. The real victims are
the guy's passengers who think they are flying on an aircraft that has
been properly inspected.

================================================== ==
Del Rawlins--
Unofficial Bearhawk FAQ website:
http://www.rawlinsbrothers.org/bhfaq/
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On 10 Oct 2004 00:56:15 GMT, (Steelgtr62) wrote:

If they can pass the test then they have no problem...and a crash school can
teach you to pass the test in two weeks.

I happen to agree with that and my mentioning of the fact that I have
been to school probably just distracts from the issue that most of the
people who tested with the DE in question sought him out for a reason;
they wanted an easy test. I mentioned school to make the point that
as somebody who didn't try to cut any corners I can't feel sorry for
those who did.

A&P vocational education in the USA is an unmitigated joke. Many of these
schools are utterly useless , but they do certify you to test. Eighteen months
of attendance and in some cases tens of thousands of dollars for very little
learned skill is what I have seen.

Well, all I can say to that is that like any other education, you get
out of it exactly what you put into it. If the ONLY objective is the
piece of paper from the feds that says you are a mechanic, you can sit
in class and do only what is necessary to score 70% on everything. My
approach was that if I had to sit there in order to get the stupid
piece of paper, then I was going to get the most out of my investment.
I asked a lot of questions and often took projects a lot farther than
was completely necessary, and my grades reflected that.

They should get rid of the 18 month school or 30 month experience requirement
and let you test up front for a provisional license, on which an IA has to
inspect all jobs you do for the first three times you sign off that job.

I agree that if you have the skill and the knowledge, then the
government shouldn't have be able to make you do busy work to fulfill
some arbitrary experience requirement. I disagree on the need for a
provisional license, however. The existing A&P certificate is already
provisional enough in that you need an IA to approve any major repairs
or alterations. I don't need to get IA approval on knowing how to
pack wheel bearings or time a mag once I have passed the tests that
prove I have a basic level of mechanical knowledge and understand how
to read a manual. Regardless of any of that, whatever the system is
the bar should be the same for everybody getting their certificate
which is why all those people had to re-test.

They
should also split up turbine and recip engines, and composite, sheetmetal, and
wood/tube/fabric structure into separate ratings. The full AMT rating should
only be given after you have worked on aircraft , and only for relevant work on
the appropriate type. Airline personnel are only annoyed by talk of Ceconite
and museum piece Lycomings.

They tried that, and it received the most negative comments of any
NPRM in FAA history if I was told correctly. Regardless of your
opinion of rag and tube or old engines, some of us do like them.
Personally my eyes start to gloss over when people are talking about
the air conditioning or blue water systems on a modern jetliner. And
it is silly that some of that stuff is taught in A&P school, because
under the regs most airline mechanics are not required to hold an A&P
(although the airlines like to use that as an employment screening
tool).

Maybe some of the community college programs where you get an Associate degree
are not a scam but the commercial programs largely are. We interviewed two
people from one of the commercial schools in Virginia recently and I can tell
you that if I had my car oil changed at Jiffy Lube, if either one of them
worked there, I'd find another location!

Well, you are going to find idiots in any occupation. I know because
I had some of those people as classmates, whether it was in management
classes for my business degree or in fuel systems class getting my
A&P. And they now have the same supposed qualifications as I do.


================================================== ==
Del Rawlins--
Unofficial Bearhawk FAQ website:
http://www.rawlinsbrothers.org/bhfaq/
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On 10 Oct 2004 07:38:26 -0700, (sidk) wrote:

(Del Rawlins) wrote in message ...

...sniped

As one who recently went through 2 years of school full time and a
good deal of personal expense to obtain my A&P certificate, please
excuse me if I fail to feel any sympathy for those mechanics. They
tried to skirt the system and get by on the cheap, and ended up
getting exactly what they paid for.

Well, maybe...but...
I think it would be unfair and a mistake to assume all 3000 were
trying to "...skirt the system and get by on the cheap.." Many could
have been just as competant and prepared as you say you were but
simply got that particular DE by luck-of-the-draw.

You are probably right there. There may have been guys who didn't
know and who were genuinely surprised at the test they were given.
For all I know that may be how the guy got busted. Either way though,
I think it is safe to say that most people sought him out specifically
because word had gotten around that he was the guy to go to for a
quick and easy examination. I may be totally off base (it has
happened before) but I feel that in any business that you will attract
the sort of clientele that you cater to, and that as a customer you
generally get what you pay for.

================================================== ==
Del Rawlins--
Unofficial Bearhawk FAQ website:
http://www.rawlinsbrothers.org/bhfaq/
Remove _kills_spammers_ to reply