Plane crash in South America

[Jesster]

And how does that change what I said? Maintenance requirements on aircraft are far more strict in the military and inspections are done far more often. That was my job, Min. I know what I'm talking about.

Unless you meant the sample size thing. I wasn't using that as a comparison. I used that to state that plane crashes in general are less common than the news makes it seem.

What they are saying is that they are not meeting their own requirements.  Let's face it, we also have a lot of aging planes that probably should be junked - like the A10 - but which are kept in service because local politicians don't want to lose jobs in their districts.  Our military establishment seems to do everything except focus on defense.

The problem is not unknown.

http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/a...craft.aspx

The U.S. military operates fleets of Cold War-era aircraft that will not be replaced any time soon. For the Pentagon, this creates daunting challenges, experts warn. Airplanes will have to fly much longer than planned and, at a time of tight budgets, the cost of maintaining aging equipment is projected to soar.

Yes, I know the planes are aging. I personally worked on one of them (KC-135). Maintenance keeps up with them just fine compared to the civilian side, though. While the civilian end has newer planes in general, they aren't held to the same standards of maintenance. They wait far too long to do the periodical checks as well. You can keep an old plane running just fine as long as you keep up on the work, but not doing the same for a newer craft lets far too much slip by.

Please don't argue about this based on some magazine you read when, yet again, I worked in this exact field.