FIRMS BATTLE FAA OVER DRUG TESTING

Approximately once a month, a portable drug- and alcohol-testing lab
arrives at the 64,000-square-foot Kent facility that houses Pacific
Propeller International (PPI).

Workplace Systems, an independent testing consortium that PPI pays a
$1,000 annual fee plus $20 per test, selects a handful of employees at
random to provide breath and urine samples. The lab screens the
samples to ensure PPI's workers are clean and sober, per government
mandate. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has required
aircraft-repair shops to administer drug tests to employees who
perform "safety-sensitive" work since 1990; it added alcohol tests in
1995.

PPI maintains and overhauls high-tech propellers that power both
short-range commercial aircraft and military transports, so President
Jeff Heikke accepts the tests as a necessary cost of doing business.
Though the expense is not onerous, Heikke said, the program requires
extensive recordkeeping and is frequently audited.

"It's quite a bit of paperwork and dotting of i's," Heikke said. Now
the FAA wants to extend its drug-testing program, and PPI is not
pleased. The 60-year-old company is one of four plaintiffs suing the
federal government to block a rule change that the aircraft-repair
industry thinks will create "a drug- and alcohol-testing regime that
is irrational, unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious."

An FAA regulation slated to take effect Monday would require that any
subcontractors hired by repair stations start testing workers who
handle "safety-sensitive" tasks.

"The testing should follow the work," said Laura Brown, an FAA
spokeswoman.

The agency put its motives more starkly in federal documents: "Only
one link in the safety chain would have to fail for an accident to
occur." Backing up its concerns, the FAA said around 18,000
maintenance workers tested positive for drugs in the first 15 years of
the program. Roughly 540 other workers tested positive for alcohol
from 1995 to 2004. PPI, the Aeronautical Repair Station Association
(ARSA) and their supporters counter that testing subcontractors will
add onerous costs and bureaucracy but do nothing to improve safety.

"It's a silly rule," Heikke said. "It's really affecting vendors that
have no airworthiness content."

What's more, they say, the new rule could cause U.S. airlines to
outsource more work to foreign repair stations, since FAA drug and
alcohol rules do not apply to maintenance shops outside the U.S.

The FAA gave the industry a reprieve last week. Though the rule takes
effect Monday, the agency extended the "implementation date" until
Oct. 10 to give subcontractors more time to figure out what work
qualifies as "safety-sensitive."

In the meantime, the federal Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C.,
will review the suit filed by PPI, two other repair stations and ARSA
seeking to have the new language thrown out altogether.

Boeing is a member of ARSA but is not taking part in the lawsuit. "We
do sympathize with those businesses that may be impacted financially
by this ruling," said Cindy Wall, a Boeing spokeswoman. The company
hopes the FAA and ARSA can work out an agreement that supports
airplane safety and minimizes costs, she said.

Boeing operates four repair stations, including one at Boeing Field in
Seattle.

Shifting Realities

The new rules are an attempt by the FAA to
keep pace with the rapidly shifting realities of the airline industry.

U.S. carriers have been under incessant pressure to cut costs in
recent years, as first the terrorist attacks of 2001 sapped demand and
then soaring fuel prices vaporized their profits.

Many concluded it was too expensive to maintain and repair their own
planes. They laid off mechanics, shuttered hangars and sent their jets
to third-party repair stations, such as PPI or Goodrich Aviation
Services in Everett. The outside repair stations, in turn, hired
subcontractors. The FAA noticed the trend years ago. Since January
2002, it has been trying to ensure that anyone working on airplanes or
airplane parts, regardless of who pays them, is subject to drug and
alcohol tests. The airlines and the independent repair stations have
fought an expansion of the testing rules. They contend a new layer of
drug and alcohol testing would be superfluous. One of their strongest
arguments: Only repair stations and mechanics that have been
certificated by the FAA can inspect repairs and certify that a plane
or parts are ready to return to the air. And all FAA-certificated
repair stations already have drug- and alcohol-testing programs.

The repair group wrote in its formal comments to the FAA that the
proposed rule would require its members "to look behind the end result
to the person who performed maintenance, no matter how insignificant
the job or how far removed from the aircraft."

ARSA also said no crashes or other accidents have been blamed on drug
or alcohol use by subcontractors.

FAA countered with a simple argument: Why risk it? "We do not believe
we should wait until there is actual loss of human life .. before
expanding the testing requirement," the agency wrote in January. Who
should pay?

No one in the aviation industry wants to be perceived as soft on air
safety. Yet the repair industry would bear the costs of any new drug-
and alcohol-testing requirements.

Another concern is that subcontractors for whom aviation is just a
small sliver of their overall business might choose to exit the
industry, rather than bear the burden of instituting drug and alcohol
tests. Already, said Heikke, two of PPI's 10 subcontractors have
decided not to do work for the company because of the imminent testing
requirements. The 65-employee firm also is worried about losing
customers to foreign rivals. On its Web site, PPI touts itself as the
"largest independent propeller repair and overhaul facility in the
world," but it is not the only one. Mike Thornton, PPI's
quality-assurance manager, said the company's chief competitors
include one domestic repair station, Aircraft Propeller Service in
Wheeling, Ill., and three outside the U.S. -- Hamilton Sundstrand in
the Netherlands; ST Aerospace in Singapore, and Standard Aero in
Winnipeg, Ontario. The FAA drug- and alcohol-testing mandates do not
apply to foreign maintenance providers, eliminating a significant
expense. "All this does is place an additional burden on domestic
repair stations, the repair-station subcontractors, and provides
competitive advantages for our foreign repair-station competition,"
Thornton wrote in PPI comments to the FAA.