Broken wings: both current and former employees of DynCorp, one of the federal government's largest contractors, have accused the company of taking a fly-by-night attitude toward maintenance of military aircraft

0 Comments | Insight on the News, April 29, 2002 | by Kelly Patricia O'Meara

The source continued: "We're told that these new people were to be helpers and workers and not technicians. This is not the case. They are being treated as qualified people and signing off on work that they are not experienced in.... Would you believe I'm working beside ex-security guys, waitresses and car repairmen? We have people who are working on aircraft with absolutely no aviation experience nor ground-equipment skills. Would you rather fly in a helicopter maintained by a waitress or an experienced aviation technician?"

According to this DynCorp employee: "It is my opinion that this is an accident waiting to happen and something should be done, and soon, before loss of life or extreme damage to equipment is experienced. The management here is looking at the bottom line, and they surely do not seem to care what kind of person works on the helicopters. I guess that makes good business sense, but to me not at the cost of our servicemen and women. I'm forwarding this to you through another as I don't want to be identified. DynCorp fires people who write down on paper problems they think should be kept in-house."

From the beginning of the military action in Afghanistan aircraft were being lost in crashes unrelated to enemy action. Asked if it is possible that any of those crashes might have resulted from faulty maintenance or technician error by DynCorp personnel, a whistle-blower tells INSIGHT, "I think the aircraft -- MH models that the Special Forces use -- came from the 160th at Fort Campbell, Ky., and Hunter in Savannah, Ga. DynCorp has the maintenance contract at both of those places. So yes, I'd have to say DynCorp worked on those aircraft."

Asked the same question, Greer tells INSIGHT: "I believe it would be safe to say any aircraft that have crashed on which faulty maintenance has been found to be a cause or contributor to that crash, and where the crashed aircraft was assigned to the European theater of operations between September 1999 and today, has, in fact, been worked on by DynCorp's unqualified personnel."

Johnston, who filed a Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization (RICO) lawsuit against DynCorp for alleged wrongful termination, tells INSIGHT he's pleased other employees are expressing alarm but says, "I don't think it should take a magazine article to get these guys to come forward. If something is wrong in their own backyard they ought to come forward immediately, especially when it's dealing with the U.S. government."

Johnston isn't surprised by the new accusations. He says "about 75 percent of the [DynCorp] technicians in Bosnia easily could have been replaced by military personnel. These guys just didn't have the expertise that the other 25 percent of us contract technicians had. I think there were about three or four guys there that actually had a license to work on aircraft. Out of about 40 employees, there were maybe a handful that I knew of who had proper federal A&P [airframe and power-plant] licensing to work on these aircraft."